When I click to see the video, I’m getting a message that says “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available.”

???

Silly question: Weren’t the officers a bit out of their jurisdiction?

Hi Jane.

Me, too. Maybe Jane could post the direct YouTube link. Apparently some vids embedded off their site do this when trying to connect to the video.

Working now.

Jane, thanks for your coverage (and thanks to Glenn!)

Twin Cities Indymedia is also providing coverage: including (terse) live reports via RSS feed. Indymedia has proven useful for media covering other recent mass protests (as well as the rest of us!)

Try to refresh and see if it will start then. Sometimes there is a time out.

Boy… they looked like a dangerous bunch to me.

Jane and Glenn thank you for your coverage. For a few seconds, I felt as though I was back in the sixties. Obama’s speech inspired me because he pointed out the good that government can do. Your video points out the opposite.

The house was wonderful. It was very much “back in the 60s.” What a breath of fresh air after Denver, where I felt like I was on a forced march. It was soul-sucking.

Video is all set now and quite something – thanks Jane!

taking laptops and personal journals, holding kids on the floor with submachine guns … what a lovely america

Following a link at Glenn’s place, I took a glance at the transcription of the search warrant.

If someone served that warrant on my house, there’s a lot of that stuff in my garage: “glass containers such as bottles and jars; wicks such as cloth, paper and twine; Styrofoam and soap flakes, gasoline, mineral spirits, lamp oil and brake fluid; metal, glass, plastic or cardboard containers; chlorine derivatives; paints and spray paints, sticks and poles, nails, screws, bricks . . .”

Yep. That’s my garage, all right.

Mrs Peterr is busy right now with those chlorine derivatives, cleaning the bathroom, and I’ve got to deal with the metal, glass, plastic, and cardboard containers, to take them to the recycling center.

Once they cart away the metal, glass, plastic, and cardboard containers filled with Food Not Bomb’s food…

that won’t leave much food behind.

Which, of course, is the intended result.

Hell, I wouldn’t have much of an apartment left…

wow.

Now raiding I-witness video while automatic weapons drawn in a simultaneous raid.

Ain’t democracy grand?

#
Sat, 08/30/2008 – 13:29
Raid at I-witness video space
cred_rating:
Three

Reported with Rochester IMC called in at 1:25pm with news that the space is being raided now. Cites confirmed 1 source. No 2nd source.
Reporter heading to the scene now.
#
Sat, 08/30/2008 – 13:22
update- cops are raiding 951 Iglehart in St. Paul, automatic weapons drawn. one arrest so far.
cred_rating:
Five
#
Sat, 08/30/2008 – 13:16
Saint Paul Cops Raid Activist House in St. Paul. Activist Arrested. Details to come
cred_rating:
Five

“Food Not Bombs’ food”

(freaking typos)

Hi Jane,

Any chance of meeting you and your people for dinner this week? I’ll buy first round.

Or lunch, or elevensies?

Read about the raid but didn’t know it was FNB. They are long been very active in Orlando feeding the homeless annd continue to do it in defiance of an ordinance that was passed prohibiting “group feedings” aimed at preventing exactly what they were doing. That news sucks.

In America?

This happened in America?

I’m sorry. i had read about the “other raid” of the “weelcoming committee.” kinda sucks when I can’t keep track of the raids. not good. I remember Republican convention in Miami in 72 (I think) when they ringed the hall with buses to keep people away. pretty low tech security back then. Same mentality.

Waaaay too much security needed for the RNC event…they’ve been scrambling trying to recruit law enforcement from other jurisdictions to cover. I’ve heard law enforcement reps on local media practically begging for cops from other localities to help them out.

Maybe it’s a $50 million security pie, but they were havin’ trouble giving it away….

YEs, it’s a Republic wet dream come to life.

So there WERE search warrants? Any chance of getting copies? Might be instructive….there must be a reason as to why the cops were reluctant to show them.

This sounds like Chicago ’68 when the police stormed up into the Hilton raiding campaign headquarters staff of Gene McCarthy. Teargassed ’em.

Thug mentality alive and well, eh?

You just can’t take a chance that a bunch of dirty hippies that don’t like bombs will interrupt the Republics as they revel in the glory that is the waning days of Bush/Cheney and the dawning of McCain/Beauty Queen.

I imagine these cops were doing their jobs- checking out an alleged security threat- it’s HOW they do it that matters- and at whose direction.

New Gallup Polls shows Obama holding on to his 8 point lead from yesterday- and his 10 point convention bounce. Lots of polling on McBush’s veep pick- weakest numbers since Bush Sr. Picked Mr. Potatoe Head

McBush’s vp pick makes even Mr. Potatoe Head look good.

These numbers pretty much speak for themselves, but men have a favorable imperssion of Palin by a 35-point margin, whereas women have a favorable impression of her by an 18-point margin. Conversely, by a 23-point margin, women do not think Palin is ready to be President, whereas Palin lost this question among men by a considerably smaller 6-point magrin.

Why does this gap exist? Don’t know, but it may simply be a matter of ideology. Men are generally a bit more conservative than women, and opinions of Palin are very strongly determined by ideology. Conservatives have a favorable impression of her by a 79-8 margin, but this falls to 43-35 among moderates and 26-46 among liberals. Likewise, by a 48-22 margin, conservatives think she’s ready to be President, but she loses this question 23-54 among moderates and 9-67 among liberals.

From 538.com

Doesn’t this kind of human rights violation start with activists and then move on to students, artists, writers and their ilk? And in the 21st century, most assuredly, won’t bloggers be put on that list? Shut down the populist voice, isn’t that the poitn? I blame Pelosi and congress for this chit. We put dems in power in 06 to stop this. Same comment I made in Spences Blackwater post this morning.
DAMMIT! This stuff just infuriates me.

jane – many thanks to you and glenn for covering this story so well.

i beg the indulgence of the mods and readers for the length, but i received this via email and there is no link yet (and may not be for days). the report is from starhawk, and while, since i’m not there, i can’t vouch for the contents – i do vouch for the author from personal experience of having worked with this group:

RNC2—Raid on the Convergence Center
By Starhawk

It’s Friday night. Our Pagan Cluster is sitting on the bluff of the Mississippi having our first real meeting, when Lisa gets a call. The cops are raiding the Convergence Center, where we’re organizing meetings and trainings for the protests against the Republican National Convention. It’s not a role play, the caller says. It’s real.

Instantly, we jump up and hurry back the six or eight blocks to the old theater we are using for meetings, trainings and social gatherings. I ‘ve spent the last two days doing magical activism trainings, teaching people how to stay calm and grounded in emergency situations and when things get chaotic. Now it’s time to put the training into practice. Aaron, a tall, red-headed young man who could be one of my nephews strides along beside me. “Are you grounded?” I ask him. He nods, and runs ahead.

Nobody can keep up with Lisa, who speeds ahead like an arrow, walking, not running, but still covering the ground quickly. Andy and I trail behind. We’re often street buddies, because we’re both big, slow, and supremely calm and stubborn, willing to wade into almost any situation and become the immovable object.

We’re stopped by a line of cops just before we reach the building. They refuse to let us through, or to move their van which is blocking Scarecrow’s car. There’s an investigation underway, they say, and won’t say more.

Brush, our dear friend, is inside, having gone to a jail solidarity meeting, ironically enough. So are two very young people who had just joined our cluster that night. I try calling Brush’s cell phone, but get no reply.

We wait. That’s what you do when the cops have guns trained on kids inside a building. You wait, and witness, and make phone calls, and try to think of useful things to do.

We call lawyers. We call politicians. We try to call media. We call friends who might know politicians and media.

Through the kitchen door, we cansee young kids sitting on the floor, handcuffed. We walk across the street, back, made more phone calls. An ambulance is parked in front, and the paramedics head into the building, leaving a gurney ready. Susu, from her car around the corner, reports that the cops have been grabbing pedestrians from the street, forcing them down to the ground, handcuffing them.

Song, one of the local organizers, calls her City Council member. She wants to call the Mayor, Chris Coleman, who has promised that St. Paul will be as welcoming to protestors as to delegates, but no one has his home number.

What I have forgotten to tell people at the training is how much of an action is just this: tense, boring waiting, with a knot of anxiety in your stomach and your feet starting to hurt. Song talks to a helpful neighbor, who’s come over to find out what’s happening. He knows where the mayor lives, says it’s just a few blocks away, and draws us a map.

We decide to go and call on the Mayor, who could call off the cops. About five of us troop down there, through the soft night and a neighborhood of comfortable homes and wide lawns on the bluffs above the Mississippi. The Mayor’s house is a comfortable Dutch Colonial, and lights were on inside. We decide that just a few of us will go to the door, so as not to look intimidating. Song is a round, soft-bodied middle-aged woman with a sweet face. Ellen is a tiny brunette with a gap-toothed smile, and Lisa, formidable organizer though she is, looks slight and unthreatening. The rest of us hang back. Someone opens the door. Our friends have a conversation with the mayors’ wife, who is not pleased to be visited by constituents late at night, and who tells us we should call the office. The Mayor, she says, is asleep, and she will not wake him up.

We think a mayor who was doing his job would get up and go see what’s going on. Nonetheless, we head back to the convergence space.

A protestor has been released from the building. A small crowd has gathered across the street, and Fox News has arrived. They interview Song, who does her first ever Fox media spot. She tells them the truth—that people were in there watching movies—a documentary about Meridel Le Seuer. Meridel would be proud, and I’m glad she is with us in some form.

One by one, protestor’s trickle out. Now we get more pieces of the story. The cops burst in, with no warning. They pulled drew their guns on everyone—including a five year old child who was there with his mother, forced everyone down on the floor. It was terrifying.

They had a warrant, apparently, from the county, not the city, to search for ‘bomb making materials.’ They were searching everyone in the building, then one by one releasing them as they found nothing.

They continue to find nothing, as we wait through long hours. Meanwhile, more and more media arrives. These cops are not as creative as the DC cops during our first mobilization there against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Those cops confiscated the lunchtime soup—which included onions and chili powder, claiming they were materials for home made pepper spray.

We wait until the last person gets out. He’s a twenty year old who the cops have accused of stealing his own backpack—but apparently they relented.

And now it’s morning. I wake up to the news that cops have been raiding houses where activists are staying, bursting in with the same bogus warrant and arresting people, including a four year old child. They’ve arrested people at the Food Not Bombs house—a group dedicated to feeding protestors and the homeless. They’ve arrested others, presumably just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Poor Peoples’ Campaign, which had set up camp at Harriet Island, a park in the middle of the Mississippi, has also been harassed, its participants ordered to disperse and its organizers arrested.

Let me be perfectly clear here—all of us here are planning nonviolent protests against an administration which is responsible for immense violence, bombs that have destroyed whole countries, and hundreds of thousands of deaths.

This is the America that eight years of the Bush administration have brought us, a place where dissent is no longer tolerated, where pre-emptive strikes have become the strategy of choice for those who hold power, where any group can be accused of ‘bombmaking’ or ‘terrorism’ on no evidence whatsoever in order to deter dissent.

Please stand with us. Because it could be your home they are raiding, next.

Call the Mayors of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Tell them you are outraged by these attacks on dissent. Urge them to let Poor People encamp and to let dissent be heard.

FLOOD THE MAYORS’ OFFICES ASAP

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman
651-266-8510

Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak
(612) 673-2100
(612) 673-3000 outside Minneapolis

Perhaps those same men would have expressed a favorable impression of Katherine Harris.

She is, apparently, very well known via rightwing talk radio to those who listen to it. A frequent guest and very well-thought of by the intellects who host.

Didn’t this type of raid happen at the RNC in NYC? And also before a major march in Washington?

Isn’t this standard practice now for any gathering that might upset the narrative of any Repub show?

Clearly, this will be the argument for picking her.

The obvious choice was Palin, the governor of Alaska, whose guard stands as our last best defense against possible attack by the resurgent Russian menace across the Bering Strait.

She’s been keeping us safe from those pesky Russians.

If the cops had some information (or perhaps disinformation) that there was a group who might be planning violence for the convention, they have the obligation to get a search warrant and check out the allegations…the “drawn guns” thing seems like a huge over reaction- but we don’t know what they were led to expect….I wouldn’t call this a “human rights violation” without more information.

Thanks for Starhawk’s report, selise. It’s good to know experienced wise heads are there to guide and comfort those new to this.

Next step is for someone to get a camera in front of the sherriff and ask him/her why this raid took place.

Forecasters say Gustav could reach Category 5 status, the most dangerous level; it is predicted to strike U.S. Gulf Coast on Tuesday. Full story

MSNBC

McCain remembers when Alaska was Russian.

1. they showed her competently shooting an army issued rifle over and over again.

2. (intuitve WAG) there are women (attractive and otherwise) who give off a certain vibe transcribed in male brain stems as ’strong but non threatening’ – she reeks of it

Much like the ‘ultimate flipflopper’ Benedict Arnold, McTraitor has flipped from maverick fighter of evil Vietcong and lobbys to fight against democracy and free government…freedom, RIP.

As I recall, the population of Alaska is still largely male.

Some Alaskans have said that her victory in the governor’s race was shocking—that she had no agenda- but “people just LIKED her”

Will be interesting to see if that transfers to states with no MOOSES.

Jane,
Did the protesters get their computers and blackberries back? Or are they still being held on spurious pretenses?

Will their computers be data mined for “incriminating” evidence?

Are we getting close to the script of the “Minority Report” movie here?

Bob in HI

Amazing interview. Feisty kids for sure. Taking their laptops and journals … wonder if they will ever get them back … and guys called “TERMINATOR” and “EXECUTIONER” with sub-machine guns, etc. Post-traumatic state would be me, for sure. Handcuffed on the floor for half an hour. Ambush-torture sounds like to me. Don’t wait till they hit the protest area… visit the homes and save time? Geeeeez.

This sort of thing happened in Denver too, however it was under reported or not reported at all. Aside from the ABC producer arrest in front of the Brown Palace, there was this…

I haven’t been able to find video yet, but Wednesday night the cops threatened and backed down many veterans, able-bodied as well as the war maimed. There just wasn’t any media or blogger coverage of it that I have found.

The other interesting half of the question is:

“Why don’t women like her?”

Sarah Palin, boldly fending off Russian aggression since 2006.

-G

You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means. Anymore.

Raids going on now in other locations – check http://theuptake.org/en/ for live coverage – note the National Lawyers Guild attorney being held in handcuffs – and the fact that they are holding a Free Speech TV reporter in the raid as well

Jane, thanks for the video. Poor kids. I’d like to donate to a defense fund for them if there is one, or do something for them. I never thought I’d see this happen in America.

I still don’t know how they’re even going to pull off a convention in light of Gustav.

George Bush, John McCain and Sarah Palin’s America.

This is just what they wanted.

-G

After reading bmaz, I wonder if this is an effort to cause an uprise that allows to call for Marshall Law?

we don’t transcribe with our brain stems *g*

actually – watching her yesterday she gave the “I’m gonna pretend to be your friend until I get what I want ” smile (more intuitive wag with the sound off)

plus, comin straight outta nowhere, standing next to that geezer . . . may have had something to do with it don’t know

but wait unitl women start hearing about her abortion stance, privatizing social security, the whole you’re on your own with a sick kid or parent crap comes out, and although I’m starting to sound like a broken record – wait until someone shows a drowning polar bear or wolf shot from a helicopter and PTA Mom’s everywhere hear little Kaitlin or Tyler ask why it can’t be stopped

Hope the goopers have a nice debate about “creationism”–on of the veep candidate’s fave subjects.

In America?

This happened in America?

Bless your heart, Teddy. It’s the only America I have ever known. And to think WE gave these cops 50 million extra bucks to do this to us.

am so nervous they have something a little more ‘response appropriate’ for that gambit

I’ve noticed over the years that there are certain women who men like and other women immediately dislike—I don’t know if we’ve got one here- but if so, McBush is in a pile of shit.

I thought the same thing. Try to foment violence via repressive measures.

If what McBush hopes to do is to close the gap with Obama on the women’s vote with his veep choice, then surely he checked back to see how she polled with women in her gov. run—right?

Any one know who the sherrif is- or what his/her political connection are?

The bright minds at NRO.

Rammesh Ponnoru:

Wassila turns out to have more people than Delaware—and it has been growing fast. (I can’t get the links to work right now but it’s easy to look up.) 4:00 update: oh how very embarrassing. A typo in the site I was looking at—totally wrong, by a factor of a hundred. Ouch.

-G

Seems like a one-size-fits-all warrant, nearly everybody in the U.S. is going to own items on the list. Must be a pretty crappy judge who authorizes something like that. Has anyone contacted the ACLU? It seems like there ought to be a case here for unlawful search and seizure.

ayfkm ???

“Rammesh” and “totally wrong” in the same NRO post ?!?!? – that’s the Seventh Sign, run for your lives !

Senator Kloubuchar’s been notified.

It looks more and more like the raids were the brainchild of Bob Fletcher, the Sheriff of Ramsey County, which is where Saint Paul is located.

Considering that the majority of the raids have been in Minneapolis (which is in Hennepin County), I can’t wait to hear what the Mayor of Minneapolis, the Police Chief of Minneapolis, and the Sheriff of Hennepin County have to say about Fletcher’s messing with their jurisdictions so blatantly.

Sherriff is apparently a gooper- and a controversial one at that.

“Now in his fourth term, Fletcher has reinvented the Sheriff’s Office, expanding its reach, doubling its budget and polarizing its ranks. His high-profile approach has strayed into empire-building, some believe, and he now faces a rare threat that could make this term his last.

The 17-member Ramsey County Charter Commission, an obscure independent group, is set to vote tonight on a ballot question that would make the sheriff one of only about 10 nationwide to be appointed by county managers rather than elected.

If a majority approves, the question will go to voters in November.

Fletcher’s style is considered a factor in the commission’s decision to vote on the issue now, after years of discussion. Others suggest it’s a DFL-driven act of revenge, since Fletcher, a Republican, beat out former St. Paul Police Chief Bill Finney last fall by just 1,133 votes out of more than “

Star Telegram

This may all be the result of an ego driven sherriff tryin to get his name in the papers- if so- he should certainly be recalled and prosecuted if possible.

McBush is in a pile of shit.

Fixed it for ya

Unless they were planning violent protest, how is what these protesters doing anything but constitutionally protected exercise of free association and free speech?

Pretty mild group compared to the “Chicago 8.” They did a very good job of bullying folks back in the 60s day; the problem was that the Viet Nam war had nearly 20 times the casualties of Iraq, and millions of Viet Namese had died. It had been widely publicized that we were using chemical–napalm–warfare. 1968 Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater had threatened to “bomb Viet Nam back to the Stone Age,” and Lyndon Johnson had turned out to be an avid warmonger.
These young people here are kind of touching, and the police reaction ridiculous, but it clearly demonstrates why there has not been any in the streets protesting of the war to speak of. 9/11 will be a cris du coeur for police state retribution, and even NRA types will applaud infringing upon innocent, already pretty disenfanchised kids’ right to bear pop bottles.

Good work, Jane and Glenn. Goons, I tell you.

It depends on whether the police department has contracts with external departments to assist.

McCain is just showing us a preview of what he promised in Florida.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/…..ity-crime/

The police or County Sheriffs are confiscating computers and personal journals? They are accumulating names. Our terror sensitive law enforcement agencies collect names to make lists that they use to scare the public and lobby for additional resources. Another scam brought to you by 911.

goons or Republicans,is there a difference?

How did they know where these kids are staying?