 multimedia blog "Targeting journalists", R.N.C. Diary (part 1)
I've lived on and off in the Twin Cities since 1998, with the majority of my time being spent in the Tilsner Artists' Cooperative in Lowertown, St Paul. This page will contain an ongoing diary of brief notes about what is going on in the city, blog postings, and photos. My band, Pocket of Resistance, is opening up the Lowertown Block Party in St. Paul on Sunday, August 31st, so we're about to be tossed right into the middle of the circus. 27 August 2008 Oh dear, it's happening already... and this was such a peaceful small town in the Midwest. Police Seize Journalists Notes About RNC Protest Plans - from theuptake.org "will journalism be done by you or to you?"
Letter to the Mayor of Minneapolis August 27th, 2008 Dear Mayor Rybak, I am a British national and Permanent Resident of the United States who has lived in the Twin Cities on and off since 1998. I love these towns. Much of my career has been spent involved with independent journalism. I was extremely disturbed to hear this morning of the police confiscation of video and photographic equipment, cellphones, and notes from three independent journalists of the NY-based Glassbeads Collective who are here to cover police behavior during the Republican National Convention. I enclose a link to a video of the press conference held by the three and a representative of the National Lawyers Guild this morning: http://the-uptake.groups.theuptake.org/en/videogalleryView/id/539/ This seizure -- flimsily and retroactively justified as as "trespassing investigation" -- is shockingly happening at a time when the eyes of the world are focused on the Twin Cities, with 15,000 journalists in town and 50,000 out-of-town guests in the city. The citizens of St. Paul and Minneapolis deserve responsible governing at a time when their public image -- which will affect the social and economic futures of both cities -- is visible to the entire world. Leading up to the Convention we have been told by police representatives that drivers are going to get pulled over "for anything" in order to give them the authority to search and question people. How deeply sad. The police of both cities need to be instructed to lay off journalists and keep their necessary, stepped-up security for the Convention within the bounds of reasonable, common sense policing. In this country, we are totally within our legal bounds to point cameras at anyone in a public space, including--and especially--public servants who are accountable to the people. The three journalists deserve their property back immediately. That should be utterly non-negotiable in any country that aspires to be a democracy, let alone a country whose First (not second or third ) Amendment to its founding document explicitly guarantees freedom of speech, and therefore a free press, and whose Fourth Amendment explicitly guarantees us all freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.
I trust you will urgently raise this matter in your regular meetings with the police chiefs. And finally, thank you for the time and energy you spend running our city. While people may politically disagree with aspects of what you do, it remains undeniable that you spend a lot of time taking care of a myriad of administrative things that make living here so great. Sincerely, Nigel Parry UPDATE 28 AUGUST 2008: The three journalists got their stuff back. They've set up a reporting base for the Convention in a friends loft, so I'll get to talk to them later in the week. Related Links 29 August 2008
I didn't practice guitar for Sunday's gig yesterday, there's been a lot of that going on and I need a break. I tied up some work loose ends and pretty much got ready for today. Today I helped a friend get ready for IndyMedia making its headquarters in his loft, hitting the supermarket to stock up the fridge and sorting out his place. We passed through what would become "the exclusion zone" as we drove to the Tilsner Artists' Cooperative in Lowertown, St. Paul. At his loft, I got a chance to read the protesters action plan, a 4-page, professionally-printed tabloid-sized orientation handout. While it complained about how freedom of speech has taken a hit and repression has rocketed during the Republican administration (no arguments there), their plan is to literally stop people attending the convention by blocking intersections, taking actions in hotels, airport taxi ramps and other "relevant" places. I thought I'd brought back a copy but I'll get it and post the quotes later. Honestly? It all seems the height of hypocrisy. Direct action is what you do when someone isn't allowed on a bus because of the color of their skin, or to block a missile shipment heading to kill someone in a foreign land, or to draw attention to some suppressed truth that no one has a clue about. You know: pertinent things. But stopping people from going to a political convention? So you think that the Republicans are evil wankers? I get it. But how is stopping them exercising their right to assemble and speak freely going to help things? All that will do is piss off and fire up the already-tweaked police, and a lot of bystanders, professionals such as journalists, and local residents are going to get tear gassed and beaten up. It was good instinct. Later tonight, the downtown St. Paul HQ of the protest group that put out this very orientation newspaper would be raided by the St. Paul police. Their heavy hand was about to be felt all week.
BAND PRACTICE Band practice was at 9pm in St. Paul, near the Turf Club. It was our first of two before the gig. If that sounds a little last minute, it kind of is, but three of us had played together quite a bit and at least the other three were good musicians. ;-)
During the band practice, I got text messages from a protester Twitter feed (CrashingtheRNC). As we were practicing all hell was breaking loose in St. Paul at the "Convergence Center", i.e. the protester HQ. The police had raided it. Here were the updates I received: Word is that the RNC convergence space was raided. Everyone there is in handcuffs. Reports I read later on Twin Cities IndyMedia added some depressing details such as "Folks are getting released if they agree to have their picture taken" and "Reports say cops are pointing guns at people inside." Here's a longer IndyMedia report from 11:51PM: "At 9:15 Friday night, the Saint Paul Police entered all doors of the RNC Convergence Space in St. Paul, MN with guns drawn. The Space serves as a community center and organizing space for the upcoming protests against the Republican National Convention. At the time of the raid, people were sitting down to dinner and watching a movie. The "R.N.C. Welcoming Committee" released this statement: PRESS STATEMENT FROM RNC WELCOMING COMMITTEE AFTER SHERIFF AND SPPD RAID OF CONVERGENCE SPACE If you want to bitch about democracy and constitutions at the St. Paul Mayor, Christopher B. Coleman, here's his website contact form. I probably won't bother, I've bitched at one Twin Cities mayor this week already, the local government of the cities seems insane right now, and I don't plan to spend any more time in jail this decade. Overall, I was mostly disappointed. There was not a single coherent account. It was another frustrating, activist-quality, press release, with not enough detail, although to be fair putting it next to the other reports, the overall story was filled in more. Hmmm. "Activist quality." I should probably explain that phrase, which comes from spending two decades involved at different levels in activist communities and projects. The grammar and punctuation of the press release alone makes you wonder who is running their show? Sure they've just been raided by the cops but here's a press release I wrote with two friends while sitting in the rubble of my demolished home, a couple of hours after it happened. Actually, my bad. This is probably not a skill one should have. Even if there's never a good excuse for bad writing. That said, the anarchist folks do need to be a little less anarchic about their communication. Like it or not, they are the presumed official face of a very large consensus-formed opposition at a historic political conference. The number of protesters is estimated to reach or even exceed 100,000 people. Meanwhile, the press release people of the most visible bunch of them can't spell. That's not good. The introduction posted on their website ended with the line, "What we create here will send the convention crashing off course into insignificance." I can't bring myself to even think "bring it on". :-)
As well as CrashingtheRNC, other protester Twitters worth following include rnc08_legal and protestrnc2008, the latter of which gives mainstream protest info such as dates of protest meetings, marches, and breaking news. I'm subscribed to all for the duration of the convention. It's actually a really effective way of getting a heads-up on things happening just a few blocks away. For art-oriented protest activities, follow the UnConvention website, a project from Art Through Technical Alternatives, The Cinema & Media Studies Department at Carleton College in Northfield, Intermedia Arts, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, the University of Minnesota Institute for New Media Studies, and the Walker Art Center. This stuff will be cool for sure. I didn't waste any time with any of this during the practice. All of this craziness was expected, so I moved on after briefly telling everyone about the raid. Despite the fact that we had never played with the drummer before, we nailed all the songs—apart from one which we'll either nail at the Sunday pre-show practice or drop from the set list. But we got close to nailing it so my guess is that we'll probably be able to keep it. At some point, Greg looked at his watch. It was suddenly 5 hours later, 2:00am. Time to go home... Our small little world in Lowertown is about to get very strange. Stay tuned. 30 August 2008 Duncan has been talking about the Minneapolis laws on holding someone for a crime during the last couple of days. He wasn't the only one. Andy Birkey in the Minneapolis Independent interviewed Bruce Nestor from the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild who are working with protestors. "I am fearful," said Nestor, "of the 36-hour hold in Minneapolis." Nestor is referring to the Minneapolis Police Department policy of holding detainees for up to 36 hours before charging them with a crime. One rumor circulating in activist circles is that Minneapolis cops will sweep up a number of “usual suspects” this weekend. Owing to the fact that the 36-hour policy does not apply on Sundays or holidays (such as Labor Day on this coming Monday), the clock would not start on those holds until next Tuesday morning–meaning that anyone detained late in the day on Friday could be held until midday next Wednesday, when the convention is more than halfway over.And it certainly looks that might be happening on some levels. There were more updates from Twitter waiting when I woke up today. Apparently the raid last night was by the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office, not the police.
My friend who has IndyMedia HQ-ed in his loft had a "routine fire inspection" the other day (as well as other units in the building). We used to get those annually in the Tilsner. Strangely, the guy didn't look at the usual things the fire inspectors look at, like what's plugged into the wall, but just glanced around the space as a whole. Last night and during the early morning, there were more raids. Twin Cities Indymedia reported that "Last night, CUAPB president Michelle Gross and CUABP vice president Darryl Robinson were among many people detained during the convergence space raid. Upon returning home after the raid, they found their garage and Darryl's car had been broken into. Nothing of value was taken but boxes of documents were clearly opened and gone through and many items were moved around. The activists believe strongly this invasion of their privacy is a direct result of their work and that it was probable that it occurred while they were at the convergence space." Other raids included the Food Not Bombs house, which is taking care of feeding protesters. One R.N.C. Welcoming Committee member was arrested a block or so away from my apartment in Minneapolis last night. They were followed by the police when they left the place they were staying and were arrested. More news from the raid on the Convergence Space last night from Mary Turck on the Twin Cities Daily Planet website: "I heard somebody saying, 'They’re coming, they’re coming!' And feet pounding on the back stairs, pounding on the door saying they had a search warrant. They busted through the door. They’ve got their guns cocked at people." Sammy Schutz held tightly to five-year-old Gabe, who had been watching a video with his mother and father and about 20 other people when the police stormed into 827 [sic: 627] Smith Avenue in St. Paul, ordering everyone down on the floor. “All I could feel was Mama Bear—do whatever you want to do to me, but I need to get my son out safe. He was watching his dad get handcuffed. And he’s saying, ‘Mommy, mommy, why did they crash through the door?’” Gabe’s question remained unanswered. Ramsey County sheriff’s deputies said they were executing a search warrant, but would not show a copy of the warrant to lawyers or reporters. More than a dozen police vehicles, almost all unmarked, and more than 20 sheriff’s deputies and St. Paul police arrived at the building about 9:45 Friday night and were still there at 1 a.m., when I left.
“They said if you don’t show us ID and get your picture taken, we will arrest you and take you away,” said Michelle Gross, president of Communities United Against Police Brutality, who had arrived five or ten minutes before the raid began, planning to attend a meeting. “They never said what the basis for arrests would be. We were waiting for a meeting, for God’s sake! I cannot tell you how much like a police state that felt to me.” City Council member Dave Thune said he was trying to find out who ordered the building locked up and on what grounds. “This isn’t the way we do things in St. Paul,” Thune said. “I don’t want the city to get sucked into something that the sheriff’s office is concocting.” Thune said that someone had called in the city contractor and ordered him to secure the building, but this was not done according ot St. Paul city procedures.  “Normally,” said Thune, “we only board up buildings that are vacant and ramshackle. The fire inspector has no idea what’s going on. He hadn’t been called. The person who is on 24/7 call was not called. I talked to him trying to find out who did issue that order and why.”The building at 827 [sic: 627] Smith Avenue had been rented by the RNC Welcoming Committee as a “convergence space,” open to activists for meetings, eating, and just hanging out. Earlier in the week, a large downstairs room in the former theater held tables of literature and about a dozen computers, set up for free wi-fi access for visitors. Large maps showed downtown St. Paul streets. The kitchen was spotless, with stainless steel refrigerators and a gas range, looking like a commercial kitchen in a church basement. The second floor room, where Sammy and her family were watching a video on consumerism Friday night, had comfortable theater seats and space for meetings. [...] Dave Thune reported that sheriff’s deputies hauled out literature and other items in boxes. Literature available in the Convergence Center earlier in the week included “The Struggle is Our Inheritance: A History of Radical Minnesota,” “Anarchy: A Pamphlet,” “a guide to 2008 antiRNC organizing,” and “Need to Know Basics: Coldsnap Legal Collective’s Minnesota Legal Primer for the RNC.” [...] See video of the aftermath of the raid in the Convergence Center. Today I need to be doing some more practicing, and I'm thinking of visiting St. Paul to see what's up. We'll see, it was a long night last night. Search Warrants The Pioneer Press released a PDF of the search warrants used to search activist homes. This was the warrant used to search the Food Not Bombs housing in a family home.
RECENT NEWS & RELATED LINKS (Last Updated: 5:53PM) This report is so far off the charts into fantasy that it needs a reality check.
There were old people in the Convention Center when it was raided, as well as young children. Do you really expect us to believe they were sitting there surrounded by things like: * large amounts of urine, including three to five gallon buckets of urine * Wrist rockets (high-powered slingshots) * A machete, hatchet and several throwing knives * Homemade caltrops (devises used to disable buses in roads) * Metal pipes * Axes * Bolt cutters * Sledge hammers Are they really intending machete violence and would these people really be that stupid to have those things in their expected-to-be-targeted space? You're asking us to swallow both like silly little children. Come on Pioneer Press, you need to get a little more credulous about what the police are telling you. Twitter reports from the house raid I followed, Food Not Bombs, say police found nothing there and no one was detained. A home housing a video collective that documents police actions at events like these was also raided and no one was arrested. More updates when there are... CLICK HERE FOR PART TWO OF THE RNC DIARY 
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