Lindsay, you are doing excellent work on this topic. Thanks.

Check this out from MPR — you’d think the reporter (who didn’t have the detailed photographic evidence Lindsay does) and Lindsay were on a different planet last night:

Tuesday’s demonstrations didn’t have the violence that marred the rally on the opening day of the Republican National Convention.

There were only 10 arrests and minimal property damage. But both police and demonstrators brought a new intensity to the streets in downtown St. Paul.

The rally started with speeches and ceremony in Mears Park, where a permitted march by the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign drew about 1,000 people. Aztec drummers and dancers offered a ceremonial blessing to the protest.

But the rally got off to a slow start. A miscommunication about electrical power in the park pavilion delayed the start of the rally. The crowd got restless waiting more than an hour for the march to start. Some pushing and shoving around a squad of mounted police on Wall Street led to two arrests.

Unlike Monday’s rally, black-clad riot police stepped in immediately. Officers on bicycles, who had handled the much of the security for the opening day of the convention, took a secondary role during Tuesday’s protests.

The march eventually left downtown and wound past the county’s jail, where some of the protesters from the previous day’s demonstrations were being held. Marchers demanded health care, an end to poverty and an end to the war in Iraq.

The situation grew more tense at the Capitol, where the Ripple Effect festival was winding down.

Two members of the rap-rock band Rage Against the Machine made a brief impromptu appearance.

After the band was denied an official appearance by security forces, the band rushed the stage, grabbed a bullhorn and performed two songs, including “Bulls on Parade.” The a capella performance seemed to mollify the crowd, which had protested the concert’s abrupt end.

The show, though, ended quickly, and the crowd surged across the Capitol Mall to join the passing march.

The demonstration swelled and grew more militant as it headed downtown toward the Xcel Energy Center, were Republicans were hearing from President George Bush via satellite. Marchers clashed briefly with police at St. Peter Street, then headed for the security perimeter around the Xcel Center.

The crowd surged up against an 8-foot metal fence and taunted rifle-toting police on the other side. But the marchers eventually withdrew and retreated down 7th Street, back in the direction they came.

Authorities briefly closed down much of downtown St. Paul. A line of riot police, with gas masks on and batons drawn, stopped marchers from entering the central business district where demonstrators had smashed windows and punctured tires the day before.

Tuesday’s crowd and police squared off again at St. Peter Street, right in front of the landmark Mickey’s Diner. Police with a loudspeaker declared the chanting and defiant crowd an unlawful assembly and told the gathering to disperse.

Nothing happened.

After waiting a few minutes, police set off a cloud of tear gas and a series of concussion grenades, scattering the crowd and sending hundreds of people running up St. Peter Street. Several laggards appeared to be struck by bean-bag rounds fired by police.

Helicopters hovered over St. Joseph’s Hospital and the north end of downtown for much of the rest of the evening, but by the time Republicans got out of their convention session about 10 p.m., the streets were clear and traffic had returned to normal.

When some anarchist protesters joined the procession, organizers asked them to leave or move to the back. They were concerned that the anarchists might cause trouble or attract unwanted police attention

this is just what we condemn – the exclusion of certain voices because we don’t like their politics or the way the look. if they weren’t violating any law, then there should be no reason to exclude them.

To be fair, some anarchist groups have publicly advocated direct action including vandalism.

I don’t think the PPM-ers were objecting to anarchist philosophy or dismissing anarchist arguments. They just didn’t want their march hijacked by a handful of FBI-infiltrated radicals the way the Labor Day march. Ten thousand people showed up to march for peace and justice–and some subset of a splinter group of 60 got all the news for breaking a couple windows and slamming a dumpster into an empty cop car.

I wasn’t there, so I don’t know how the PPM-ers decided who was an anarchist and who wasn’t. The security director repeatedly expressed solidarity with the anarchists at the press conference. I don’t think he was trying to marginalize them.

I think he just wanted people who intended to do vandalism to move out of the way of his marchers, some of whom were children or seniors. There’s a serious tactical difference between non-destructive civil disobedience vs. property destruction. I’m perfectly fine with saying that if people want to engage in the latter during the march, they’re not welcome at a non-violent event.

The destructive anarchists are hurting everyone and accomplishing nothing. They provide the pretext for the police brutality–so they’re putting everyone at risk. I’ve been getting comments about how the protesters deserved to get gassed because they were violent, with links to coverage of Monday’s march.

I’m so frustrated repeating over and over that the destructive anarchists were a SMALL MINORITY of a SUBSET of a march of 10,000 people. Now, people are lumping the PPM-ers in with the anarchists for no reason. I just want the anarchists to knock off these tactics.

Just to clarify, to the best of my knowledge PPM-ers did not engage in organized civil disobedience, either.

Lindsay: Thank you for your diligence and courage (Jane, too).

well, you have the right to demand people follow the law or be arrested – but you do not have the right to demand people protest in the way you find acceptable. and i will just remind you that nothing you have described comes anywhere close to that founding act of direct action we call the Boston Tea Party.

it is not the fault of anyone except the police, if the police overreact. most anarchists – all the once i have worked with – do not commit acts of vandalism for the fun of it. in fact the only planned act that might be considered vandalism was the intention to pull down a bit of the fence surrounding the ftaa meeting in miami. just as symbolic act to protest that only corporations were permitted at the table – and not labor union, environmentalist or any members of civil society.

now pulling down even a bit of fence is not by thing – but i couldn’t see the big deal either. i did see however see cops dressed as protesters trying to incite fights, etc.

bottom line, please stop associating anarchists with violence. many anarchists are pacifists and/or committed to nonviolence. and quite frankly, i doubt you can tell the difference between an anarchist and a cop if you don’t know the person.

please, i beg you. do not get caught up in making the mistake the cops want you to make.

lindsay – just got starhawk’s latest update via her listserve. it will be posted soon on her webpage so you can read the whole thing. i will include the bit that is about the march. starhawk is a an amazing activist – more experienced than anyone i know of (read her book, webs of power), committed to nonviolence (she been teaching workshops on nonviolence for years) and i’ve worked iwth her and the cluster twice (you can also ask kirk about her). i vouch for her – which may mean nothing to you, since you don’t know me. but i’ve been here for quite some time and others here know me (although they may frequently disagree with me i do not think i have a reputation for being dishonest). there is not time for you to get to know me yourself, so i will break with blogging convention with this (see update).

from starhawk’s update, she writes, in part:

Tuesday afternoon: I leave the conference to go meet our cluster, to walk together in the March for Our Lives organized by the Poor People’s Movement. The March had been permitted originally, has had its permit withdrawn, reissued and changed so many times I’d lost track of whether it was going to be legal or illegal. We gather in a small park, and the organizers ask everyone there to commit to honoring their nonviolent principles. Everyone raises their hand and promises to act nonviolently.

Just after that, there’s a disturbance in one corner of the park. We run over, and someone runs toward us and tells us that Jason and Riyanna, two of our cluster, have been arrested. They were scouting, roaming the edges of the crowd, when an undercover cop grabbed Jason and threw him on the ground. Later we get the full story: he was tasered seven times with several different devices. Barbs from one of the tasers were left in his hip until he reached the jail, much later, and today, a day later, he’s still removing pieces of copper. He has a deep gash on his leg which has only now, after twenty-four hours, stopped bleeding. He was beaten up—we have a cell phone recording of it, and his face is bruised, he has a black eye and his mouth is hurt. Video of his arrest is at:

http://www.kare11.com/video/player.aspx?aid=81605

I’m going to just jump to the jail stuff and just say that the march was lively, completely nonviolent, but for us, tense. Undercover cops were everywhere, and I was especially concerned for Lisa who we know is on their lists. Several of us stuck close to her throughout the march. At the end, near dark, we left while many people went into the caged area near the convention that was designated the Free Speech Zone. Shortly after we left, the police fired flash bombs, pepper spray and tear gas into the crowd which included women and children.

“the State is in essence the result of the successes achieved by a band of brigands who superimpose themselves on small, distinct societies.” Bertrand de Jouvenel