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Dance like Big Brother isn't watching |
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Written by David Goodner
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Tuesday, September 02 2008 |
A critical analysis of the first day of the RNC protests
Street blockades are a common form of nonviolent protest in Europe and
Latin America, and over a dozen members of the University of Iowa
Anti-war Committee traveled to St. Paul MN on September 1 to implement
the tactic during a peace march on the first day of the Republican
National Convention.
The results were mixed, at best.
Twenty-two members of UIAC car-pooled together up to St. Paul, and
fifteen joined the Campus Antiwar Network’s unpermitted “Mobile
Blockade Brigade”. The Campus Antiwar Network, along with other
groups totaling between 800 and 1500 people, attempted to shut down the
RNC by blockading interstates, on/off ramps, bridges, and other key
intersections to prevent Republican delegates from entering the Xcel
Center. Our action was not a suppression of free speech, but an
exercise in it. We were forced to listen to the Republicans for the
last eight years, now it was time to force them to listen to us.
About 50 of us rendezvoused on the corner of 9th and Robert Street,
about a dozen blocks Northeast of the Xcel Center, and immediately
swarmed into the intersection to seize it. Several members took yellow
police “caution” tape from their bags and began wrapping it across the
streets. Traffic came to a standstill, and police began to arrive on
the scene. Once the riot squads showed up, we took off for the most
strategic intersection in our sector, 10th St and Jackson, which held
an on and off ramp for Interstate 35E. But we couldn’t hold it for
very long because our nonviolent brigade was not equipped to deal with
riot police armed with pepper-spray, teargas, tasers, and rubber
bullets.
The next three hours was like a game of cat-and mouse. We seized
intersections at random, halted traffic, and then dispersed when the
cops started forming lines to rush us. At one point several people got
out of their cars to give us high-fives. Once, we allowed an ambulance
through our blockade on humanitarian grounds.
At one point, we doubled our numbers because random crews kept joining
us, and we held one intersection for nearly twenty minutes because
Slate magazine, MSNBC, CNN, and dozens of other media outlets had
swarmed into the intersection with us. The ensuing impromptu press
conference allowed us to state our objections to militarism and war,
articulate our vision of the peaceful world we wanted to see, and kept
the cops from kicking the crap out of us. The police were almost as
hostile towards the media as they were to us, but their assaults on the
press were limited to verbal onslaughts, with the possible exception of
Amy Goodman and the Democracy Now! crew, who were arrested on bogus
felony riot charges.
At one point, we ran into a “black bloc” of anarchists, whose actions
of petty vandalism, like slashing tires and breaking windows,
undermined our claims of nonviolence. We separated ourselves from them
at the first opportunity.
After we were forced off the I-35E ramp, we moved south on Jackson
Street to Kellogg Boulevard, due East of the Xcel Center, where one of
the six “Loading Zones” for the Republican delegates was located.
Things got ugly after we began linking arms and standing in front of
the delegate buses. Ten of our members, including myself, were sprayed
in the face with pepper-spray, two were violently thrown to the ground
by police officers, and one cop on a motorcycle drove right into our
squad, hitting one person, who suffered minor injuries. Two of our
members were arrested on misdemeanor obstruction charges and were later
bailed out.
Up the street, a “Funk the War” contingent of about 300 black-clad
anarchists were having a dance party in the intersection of Kellogg and
Wabasha. Police fired tear-gas into the crowd, and also fired rubber
bullets, tasers, and concussion grenades. Anarchists attempted to slow
the police line by dragging newspaper bins, traffic signs, dumpsters,
and sandbags into the streets. Skirmishes between protesters and
police were widespread by 4pm, when downtown St. Paul was clearly in
the middle of a riot.
According to the Coldsnap Legal Collective, 256 people were arrested on
Monday; 119 on felony riot charges. About 30,000 people marched in the
permitted peace march.
The direct action blockades failed to shut down the first day of the
conventions, and, save for one Slate article, coherent political
arguments by peacemakers were absent from the mainstream media accounts
of the protests.
You can check out some public Facebook photo albums (no Facebook account required) here, here, and here.
The Slate article is available here.
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