Posted on 08/31/2008 2:02:21 PM PDT by MplsSteve
Aided by informants planted in protest groups, authorities raided at least six buildings across St. Paul and Minneapolis to stop an "anarchist" plan to disrupt this week's Republican National Convention.
From Friday night through Saturday afternoon, officers surrounded houses, broke down doors, handcuffed scores of people and confiscated suspected tools of civil disobedience.
The show of force was led by the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office in collaboration with the FBI, Minneapolis and St. Paul police, the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office and other agencies.
But a St. Paul City Council member described it as excessive, while activists, many of whom were detained and then released without charges, called it intimidation designed to quash free speech.
At least five suspected leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee, a self-described anarchist group, were taken to the Hennepin County jail, and another was being sought, said Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher.
On Saturday afternoon, he displayed a number of the confiscated items: a gun, throwing knives, a bow and arrows, flammable liquids, paint, slingshots, rocks and buckets of urine.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
And truth be told, I'd be glad to see this even if the Dems were holding their convention here. No one has the right to disrupt a legally convened convention or injure/kill anyone!
I hope they're are more raids and more arrests so that this convention goes off without a hitch!
Comments or opinions - anyone?
I absolutely agree. And I’m really glad this article mentioned infiltration of these groups. That ought to get then worrying!
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Aren’t we jumping to conclusions here... I mean doesn’t everyone keep buckets of urine on hand, and the knives, gun and rocks, I mean, they probably needed them to protect themselves from each other, flamable liquids and bow and arrow, maybe they were planning a cookout to save money eating out, goin’ huntin’, the paint could have been to paint welcome signs for the GOP, and the slingshot, hmmm, maybe that was just to pass notes to each other...see it is all explainable!
Cheri Honkala (Professional Protestor) of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, one of the protest groups, described the Friday raid as "terrorism" intended to divert attention from issues the groups are raising.
As a single mother of two sons, Cheri has experienced raising a child while moving in and out of homelessness. She is a former history teacher and social worker with over 15 years of experience organizing poor people. In 1991, she started the Kensington Welfare Rights Union with a group of mothers on welfare and began leading poor Philadelphia families in the struggle for living wage jobs, health care, housing for everyone and daily survival.
Cheri is the National Coordinator of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, Founder and Former Executive Director of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Co-Chair of the National Welfare Rights Union and a Member of the Interim National Council of the Labor Party.
******
Leading a feisty army of homeless people, fiery activist Cheri Honkala is about to descend on the Republican Convention.
Fearing violence, Honkala has put out a call for international human rights observers to watch over her group during the RNC.
She is a former history teacher (that is scary) and social worker, why the heck was she homeless? And how are these feisty homeless people getting to St Paul?
Idiots like her need to experience “homelessness” like many experienced during the depression. For starters that means no cell phones and no new protest t-shirts. In fact if she wants to really get it right she could hand her son off to a farmer and never look back.
oh, this was talking about 2004....but if she was fearing violence, she should find better people to hang out with...
Economic Human Rights Violations in the USA
While the Bush administration continues to make war and hurt people around the world, it is committing grave human rights violations against its own people as well, implementing economic policies that impoverish and kill people across the US, while at the same time limiting and repressing efforts of the poor and others to speak out on the human rights situation in the US.
As the Bush administration violates human rights around the world, there is a media "blackout" which is determined to keep conditions of poverty, the poor and our movement for economic human rights invisible to the world. We have been intentionally disappeared from the eyes of the world. We are in Geneva to make our movement and ourselves visible and to look for support from the international community as we build a movement within the US. Our lives depend on our speaking out and telling our story to the world: yet when we speak out we are jailed, threatened, our families are attacked and our children are taken away by the government. Our families and lives are at risk either way, but all we have left is our voice, and so we have come to Geneva to appeal to the world community at this dangerous time in history.
These people are Stalinists. Anyone who disagrees with their leftist beliefs has no right to free speech, free assembly or even the right to live.
I’d like to see everyone’s civil liberties protected. I don’t like “free speech” cages, etc.
On the other hand, if, with a legitimate warrant, they have evidence that there is a conspiracy to assault people with human waste, disable busses, that sort of thing, then I think it’s legitimate.
I don’t think the First Amendment means you get to throw urine on people. I also don’t think it means you sit in a cage several thousand feet from whatever you are protesting if you want to do a lawful protest.
But a St. Paul City Council member described it as excessive, while activists, many of whom were detained and then released without charges, called it intimidation designed to quash free speech.
Waaahhhhhhhh.....
What a bunch of whine little babies
Look it is no more simple then this. Youbbreak laws you get dealt with. We are a nation of laws.
And oh by the way. Bottles of piss are not free speech.
I realize that for public school re-educated youths that may be hard to understand but again you just have to suck it up, no pun intended and deal with it........
Those arrested were Monica Bicking, 23, Eryn Trimmer, 23, Garrett Fitzgerald, 25, Nathanael Secor, 26, and Erik Oseland, 21. A sixth protestor, Luce Gullen-Givens, was also arrested.
500 activists led by Veterans for Peace marched from a rally at the State Capitol into downtown behind a flag-draped coffin
With retired surgeon David Harris of Red Wing in the lead, they crawled under a security tape and started nudging a loose piece of security fencing.
seized in raids, including Molotov cocktails, a book called “Recipe for Disaster” and tools aimed at disabling buses
a group call the RNC Welcoming Committee, which says on its website: “Together we can derail this purely ceremonial show of this repressive system and remake it with our own hands...”
They look like extras in a Deadwood episode.
The Web site for the RNC Welcoming Committee doesn’t directly answer the question of whether the group’s allies will resort to smashing windows during the convention. But the site says that private property, or the power it represents, “is often used to exclude groups or classes of people from the basic necessities of life.” Therefore, the group says it can’t condemn damage to downtown businesses.
Harris, a 73-year-old retired surgeon, says his group plans to march straight up to the Xcel
Another group, Scholars for 9/11 Truth, wants to march from the Capitol to the Xcel on Sept. 3. The group is part of a larger movement that questions the mainstream account of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.
“This was a crime scene that they hauled the debris away from. To haul it away was unconscionable,” said Doug Devorak of Apple Valley, a member of the group. “They call us conspiracy nuts. Well, a conspiracy happens whenever you have two or more people. We’re not nuts. We just want to take a scientific look at the facts.”
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/06/25/protestfactions/
Scholars for 9/11 Truth
Member List
Michael M. Andregg (FM)
Domestic intelligence, Justice and Peace Studies, St.
Thomas University, St. Paul, MN
Mark Bamberger, Ph.D. (FM)
Professor of Geology and Environmental Sciences, Miami University and Capital University
More...
What a pack of effin losers!
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