Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than "fire code violations," and early this morning, the Sheriff's department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying.Jane Hamsher and I were at two of those homes this morning -- one which had just been raided and one which was in the process of being raided. Each of the raided houses is known by neighbors as a "hippie house," where 5-10 college-aged individuals live in a communal setting, and everyone we spoke with said that there had never been any problems of any kind in those houses, that they were filled with "peaceful kids" who are politically active but entirely unthreatening and friendly. Posted below is the video of the scene, including various interviews, which convey a very clear sense of what is actually going on here.
In the house that had just been raided, those inside described how a team of roughly 25 officers had barged into their homes with masks and black swat gear, holding large semi-automatic rifles, and ordered them to lie on the floor, where they were handcuffed and ordered not to move. The officers refused to state why they were there and, until the very end, refused to show whether they had a search warrant. They were forced to remain on the floor for 45 minutes while the officers took away the laptops, computers, individual journals, and political materials kept in the house. One of the individuals renting the house, an 18-year-old woman, was extremely shaken as she and others described how the officers were deliberately making intimidating statements such as "Do you have Terminator ready?" as they lay on the floor in handcuffs. The 10 or so individuals in the house all said that though they found the experience very jarring, they still intended to protest against the GOP Convention, and several said that being subjected to raids of that sort made them more emboldened than ever to do so.
Even more fascism very professionally covered by the good people at MNID. They do shame our fellating Villagers at the Xcel Center, don't they?
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more video
This one from MinnPost is pretty good covering the first day of protests:
http://www.minnpost.com/videos/protest/
Pics here: http://www.minnpost.com/galleries/a_day_...
More video:
http://www.twincities.com/video?bcpid=16...
More media:
http://www.kare11.com/video/player.aspx?...
http://wcco.com/video/?id=46901@wcco.day...
And MPR has a 4-D interactive map of the protests. (3D panoramas on a google map listed by time of day)
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/feature...
here's what the videos tell me, intranets
the police/feds/whomever were very obviously reading emails and skimming blog reading habits of these poor kids, well in advance of the convention. they so obviously knew which houses to hit, and which "anarachist" groups were where.
how did they do that, i wonder? did they get warrants to dig thru cell phone and email communications? will we see said warrants?
no, of course not. all ur electronic communication belong to us. there is no doubt of that anymore. everything any one of us does or says online or on the phone: completely available to the fascists.
thanks, AT&T. and blue dogs who made FISA possible.
sticks up middle finger to NSA minders of this blog fuck you, fascist. seriously, with a rusty chainsaw. you coward.
moles and provocateurs
At least one foolish RNC lawyer thought he was so smart and bragged about it on a public mailing list. Oops.
http://tc.indymedia.org/2008/sep/rnc-mol...
According to sheriff
Somehow all this data on illegal planned activities was all known about from one paid informant and a second informant.
The affidavit is scary especially the obsession with molotov cocktails, which is just silly when you consider what the claimed goals are. Even property damage is better accomplished with a brick, hypothetically.
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/affadavit0...
Any Chesterton readers here?
Sort of reminds me of The Man Who Was Thursday. All the anarchists turn out to be secret police agents.
Good grief! What is going with the Twin Cities police and
sheriff's departments? Who is calling the shots on things like this impoundment of an environmental training group bus?
Can they do this??? Serious
question. Are there no limits to what they can do?
Took major negotiations for them to retrieve their pets, chickens, and someone's shoes! Insanity. Inanity. Just totally wrong.
Via ShakespearesSister linked to Starhawk and to GodlikeProductions.
I've considered living in the Twin Cities (when I get Medicare and can leave my insurance company's "area" and still get covered for my cancer), but this makes me triple think that idea.
That's fucking awful
What next? Gardening blogs?
Please consider turning this into a post; it deserves front paging.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
From the occupied territories of Minnesota
the rnc welcoming committee is the group that's got the police so rattled, but i suppose all DFHs
look alike.
[hi, nsa!]
About the "weaponized urine"--Good grief, sheriff!
National Lawyers Guild reponds to charges of buckets of "weaponized" urine (it's one, and from an apt not connected with the house where the toilet wasn't working or there wasn't one).
Boys with toys just have to make raids?
Via Avedon's Sideshow.
Citizen out for a walk and to take some photos gets entrapped:
Guy writes of being detained and information collected, then no charges after everyone had been told they were being arrested for felony incitement to riot.
The funneling and corraling was very similar to what was done during the February '03 anti-Iraq Invasion rally in NYC: Keep giving people misinformation (instead of telling us the rally area was filled an no one was being allowed near the area, we were told to just keep going east and, for us, north. Until we were forced to halt, told to go into the street, then police formed blue line barriers and put barricades in place to eventually use horses to push us into corners of each block, and just press, press, press us together as tightly as possible. Children and some women toward the middle were screaming with fear and crying.), cut off exits, crowd them together, and intimidate them. The Twin Cities authorities had more weapons and toys to play with.
Those detained and toyed with were told they could not come downtown for a week or they would be arrested! Is that legal? Or just more game playing?
You WILL learn compliance! Now!
What would the Founding Fathers and their rabble rouser followers and supporters think of this situation?
Via Bag News Notes with must see photo--even the horses had riot masks!