Very entertaining and informative photo essay, Lindsay. Too bad that it happens to be about such a lousy series of events.

It’s the Bush Doctrine at work.

It’s not a matter of IF the docile members of this apparent terrorist organization (AKA “citizens”), had weapons of mass destruction, but rather what they could do with them if they ever got their hands on them.

Stay safe, Lindsay.

I stress that this wasn’t a loud boisterous march like yesterday’s, it was just a crowd of about 100 people walking calmly down the street.

thanks for your reporting. i just want to stress that loud boisterous crowds are not illegal or even suspicious. we have them all the time at sporting events and the police don’t freak out. this is about the political repression.

p.s. lindsay, i left you a late reply on one of yesterday’s posts.

Thank you for these reports, Lindsay. Please be safe.

I didn’t mean to imply that boisterous crowds deserve to get sprayed. I just meant that the police action was incongruous as well as illegal. There is no way those officers could claim that they felt threatened in any way. The situation was completely under control and they gassed people anyway.

I hope there was a lawyer in the crowd with a really powerful law firm…

i know, but just wanted to make that clear since, for some reason i don’t quite understand, behavior that is considered completely acceptable in other circumstances (for example a sporting event) is, when conducted by people of certain political beliefs, is considered suspicious and dangerous by many police officers.

it’s happened to me – i was with small group standing a silent peace vigil and for that the chief of police, here in blue MA, told the city council that we were a potential threat to society.

If you want to be depressed check out the comments at the so-called libertarian blog, Reason’s Hit & Run. Unlike the post author who is taking the civil liberties implications seriously, the “libertarian” commenters are too busy hating on poor people and liberals to give a damn whether the police are assaulting innocent people.

A country that maintains repressive control over the people by means of police.

But that is the point.

I didn’t’t mean to imply that boisterous crowds deserve to get sprayed. I just meant that the police action was incongruous as well as illegal. There is no way those officers could claim that they felt threatened in any way. The situation was completely under control and they gassed people anyway.

Even docile, peaceful observers need to be made into “rioting protesters” that need dispersal by vicious means. That supports the claims of the oligarchs that the rabble is too mean to govern, so must be suppressed.

They were on foot, not in limos; they had on ordinary clothes, not diner attire; they were from all walks of life, not white rich people. They didn’t belong there, it isn’t a party convention for them.

There are classes in this country, the rulers (inside the RNC convention) and the ruled (the rest of you). A whiff of teargas and perhaps some grapeshot are occasional reminders to you ruffians who dare challenge.

Great reporting Lindsay!

OT I found this one of the best responses to the announcement of the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s 17 year old daughter.

To the Editor:

I love how the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s daughter is, according to John McCain’s campaign, “a private family matter.” This, after the Republican Party has spent 30 years making policy on women’s bodies. Why can’t Republicans recognize that reproductive decisions are private for all American women?

Claire Bushey

Chicago, Sept. 2, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09…..ref=slogin

either you’re with us or against us says Bush
I liv e in blue Ma too
And even here the powers that be go to great lenght to stifle debate
If you dont have an argument to make ,you make detracters shut up!!!

Republican infil’traitors’ will cause problems among the peaceful protesters…you can count on it.

If you want to be depressed check out the comments at the so-called libertarian blog, Reason’s Hit & Run. Unlike the post author who is taking the civil liberties implications seriously, the “libertarian” commenters are too busy hating on poor people and liberals to give a damn whether the police are assaulting innocent people.

This underlines the schizophrenic nature of libertarians and why they are and will remain highly dubious allies on any issue. They are all for keeping government off their backs but they have no problem with that government’s police beating up on those they disagree with.

Thanks Lindsay ,keep up the good work and please, please, be careful !!!

Someone like you might be considered open game up there !!!

This underlines the schizophrenic nature of libertarians and why they are and will remain highly dubious allies on any issue. They are all for keeping government off their backs but they have no problem with that government’s police beating up on those they disagree with.

in my experience that is both inaccurate and unfair. i know libertarians that are described perfectly by your statement. and some who are the exact opposite.

thanks lindsay, this is so sickening.

Libertarians are quinessentially people who want the benefits of government and other people to pay for them.

I would add that while this describes many, especially Republicans, the libertarians have institutionalized it into a philosophy.

If this were a Mastercard spot, it would read as follows:

* Overtime pay for 3,500 St. Paul police officers: $34 million.

* Training 3,500 officers to handle a peace protest: $16 million.

* Responding with excessive force to rowdy peaceniks in the name of “national security”: Priceless.

I love the smell of pepper spray during convention season.

source

We may be running short of safe spots. If we don’t want things to deteriorate into something really nasty, we have to somehow engage the police. I don’t know how this might be done. The one cop I know well enough to discuss these things will unquestionably follow orders. I have no doubt if we faced each other at the line, he’d swing his baton, hopefully not as hard as with a stranger, but he’d swing. Don’t know how to get around the us against them mentality. We are all Americans. It just doesn’t come out that way.

McCain and Palin should be asked by the end of this week what their opinions are concerning the treatment of journalists and nonviolent visitors and demonstrators at the Republican National Convention.

I don’t understand where the Mayor on St. P is on the ongoing repression. Why are people being treated this way in our nation that has 1st Amendment rights? These actions by the police are straight out of the facist playbook. If st. john is elected, it will only get worse. I would hope that Obama would say something about free speech, but he was quiet in Denver and is still quiet.

well that is quite different than your statement that i objected to: “they have no problem with that government’s police beating up on those they disagree with.”

this one i still object to – in my experience it is a gross over generalization. in fact, i think it is more true of democrats than libertarians. at least here in MA. don’t have any data to back this statement up, it is only from personal experience. but since your statement was a generalization, counter examples ought to at least put it in doubt.

Who’s in charge of the people who are suppose to be in charge of those cops? It’s like the Krikkit Wars. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

I only saw coverage of the protesting once last night. It was…sorry, this guy is a huge righty windbag and I think his first name is Kevin or Keith or something – he’s on cable news (ET around 7 or 8 PM). He showed a group breaking glass and being extremely loud and violent-leaning in their demonstration. He said this group was called the RNC Welcoming Committee. As I recall most had their faces covered and the police were NOT being aggressive. Were these paid-for-protests? It’s like someone wants this to be like the 1968 Dem convention. The anger of the police makes absolutely no sense.

But his reply would be obvious – he would laugh.

1.753 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen Lindsay Beyerstein and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:

Bless you for your courage and tenacity. The work you and other journalists and truth chroniclers have done this last week has earned all of our respect and gratitude…and you’ve earned a deep felt “thank you” and a much coveted “Norske Medal of Citizenship” from this old burned out grampa.

I was honored to be part of the march on Monday afternoon. My 20year old daughter and I got to Capitol Hill at 0900 and had 4 hours to let her wander through the ever growing community…by the time the march started, Emmy felt like she had discovered a new country inside the one she’d been livin’ in for 20 years. All during the march I and a couple other older “vets” of previous marches and demonstrations kept reassuring her that she should not fear the police but rather should understand that if there was to be violence it would come from the police and that there was nothing we could do to stop it except take care of each person next to us and in front of us. I think I convinced her that the larger the crowd and the brighter the sunshine the less likely it was that even if provoked there would be any significant attack…it would be more likely after dark and against smaller groups.

We witnessed one small group of kids who breached phalanx and ran down a side street…the Imperial Storm Troopers were quick to respond with a couple canisters of tear gas and a paddy wagon appeared almost instantly at the end of the street blockading the corner. We shouted at the march monitors to get cameras and observers down the street but they assured us that there were people recording the incident and that we must keep moving and close ranks. The rest of the march was not only peaceful, but the closer we got to the Excel Center the more obvious it was that the fascists inside the convention and those that braved the heat to get close to the marchers were scared to death. At that point I knew that not only was the march a success but this election is over…there is no way that a film editor even with the skill of Michael Jackson or Steven Spielberg could parse film of this without exposing that there were more marchers than convention delegates and that the delegates were more afraid of the marchers than the marchers were afraid of the police. Most of us also knew that as soon as the sun went down there would be violence because there would be smaller less organized groups and the police be able to use the cover of darkness to terrorize those in the area. Finally it was clear to many of us in the front of the march that the Storm Troopers in black Kevlar were disciplined, well trained and over equipped and that they were well coordinated with the Minneapolis bike cops riding shotgun on the march.

As a result of my very narrow view of the march on Monday and what little I saw, I have a few questions:
1. What have you been able to find out about the shock troops in black combat gear…the uniforms had no individual or unit identifiers and many in our group speculated that they might indeed be mercenaries, even Blackwater?
2. Has mayor Coleman been asked about the cost to the city for the extra police and in particular the riot troops?
3. Is there any evidence yet as to who is really commanding the forces and what is the relationship of federal folks like the FBI and Homeland Security to the local command folks?

Thank you again for your work I hope that you feel as I do that the march on Monday at least was more than successful in raising awareness of the police state tactics and makin the connection to war and supression at home.

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITOON, THE STRUGGLE WILL NOT BE OVER UNTIL WE RESCUE THE IDEA OF DEMOCRACY!!

The Dem Convention protests in 1968 were by and large peaceful, till a few yippies provoked the cops itching for a rumble. It has naught to do with republican conventions. They’ve always been in a state of siege with the rest of the country who were an abomination in their looney eyes.

What is the most infuriating about this ongoing story of serial police brutality? The complicity of the Lamestream Media. They are either not reporting this at all or they are reporting it with such spin as to make the police action look justified.

“No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we all are his accomplices.“
— Edward R. Murrow

Murrow was obviously referring to the press as ‘we all.’ Lamentably they HAVE become the accomplices of state-sponsored terrorism conducted by the US government against its own citizens.

Those tactics sound just like reports from the RNC in NYC: Cut off the escape routes, cut into the crowd in the middle, force everyone to clear the area with no where to go, unleash the fury.

And the idea that the police might be the agent provocateurs is not without precedent [NYT]

fresh Christy at the mothership

And inappropriate police response (going after persons other than lawbreakers) gives the instigating violent anarchists a partial victory. They hope for overreaction by law enforcement, which they then use as grounds for calling for the overthrow of the governments that sic police on law abiding citizens.

standard operating procedure – however at the RNC in NYC, i think there was more surround and arrest than surround and tear gas.

The police are being put in a novel social environment (suddenly operating in very large groups rather than pairs, an atmosphere of Carnival in the city); they are given the emblems of power and a peck of weaponry, and put in charge of a group of strangers. After a couple of days of testing the limits, they find whatever they’ve done has been given tacit approval by their superiors and by the media.

Escalation is therefore automatic. It doesn’t require any conspiracy, any direction from the top, or any personal nastiness on the part of the cops. Check out the Stanford Prison Experiment.

The Bushies knew about the SPE when they set up conditions for torture in Guantanamo and Baghram and Abu Ghraib. Now they’ve got a chance to set the conditions here at home and let ‘er rip, why wouldn’t they?

The Stanford experiment was shut down after four days, when the naked sexual humiliation games started to get serious. This little experiment will be shut down, counting the preceding weekend, in about six days.

The only mitigating variable, not present at Stanford and Abu Ghraib, is the presence of cameras and outside observers. Lindsay, you’ll probably never know what horrors you and your colleagues have staved off by tamping down the rate of escalation.

So these are true anarchists (I had lots of friends in the 60’s and 70’s who were praticing anarchists) and not paid-for-trouble-makers. Thanks for the reply!

Brother Norske, bravo on a well-executed march.
i think one problem with the police/military/blackwater was that a set amount of money was budgeted ahead of time and therefor all of it was going to be spent one way or another.
Going forward, police should be deployed responsively, reactively, and any costs be submitted for reimbursement at some future, (indefinite) time. might keep all of this down to normal policing.

The protesters need more people on rooftops to spot police and move as a fluid swarm to escape their clutches.

I have a feeling that tactics will become more sophisticated and organized for future protests.

i know anarchists today and i would not discount the possibility that what you are seeing are police posing as protesters. i’ve seen that with my own eyes.

1,753 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen stryx:

“And the idea that the police might be the agent provocateurs is not without precedent (NYT).”

No it certainly isn’t…those tactics have been used for about 100 years by our own military (see the Bonus March and General MacArthur) and they’ve trained the state police and military all over Central and South America. Those tactics were well in evidence in the last demonstration I attended in 1970 on the U of MN campus.

No, there is nuthin new about the tactics used in our police state…jest like 1970-75 the war has come home to the streets that everyone in our communities share…it ain’t jest in the poor folks’ neighborhoods and it ain’t jest against young, dirty rotten hippies – it’s war against everyone now and it will be the end of fascism or the end of America.

good! i hope that rooftop access is not only for police

The protesters need more people on rooftops to spot police….

I’m pretty sure that’s not a good idea, considering the current over-reaction.

Citizen selise:

“I’ve seen that with my own eyes.” So have I , brother, so have I!

I have seen that as well, selise. That is why originally I asked if the RNC Welcoming Committee were paid-for (fake) protesters.

i don’t think so. i also don’t think, but don’t know since i’m not there, that they’ve organized anything violent. could be that the people the police are claiming are the RNC Welcoming Committee have nothing to do with them. i’ll be able to get better info once this is all over and i can email questions to some people who are there now – i’m not going to bother them though until they are back home.

Has Al Franken had anything to say about this? Just curious.

Citizen ptbridgeport:

“It doesn’t require any conspiracy, any direction from the top, or any personal nastiness on the part of the cops.”

Don’t you believe that for a minute Citizen, every single violent response to political demonstrations in the last 100 years has been planned, directed and relied on the fear and “nastiness” of the thugs paid to terrorize the citizenry. In the case now, we are dealing with VERY well trained, disciplined, equipped and commanded shock troops whose training and indoctrination builds upon the cowardly fear in the heart of every single one of the paid thugs.

Lindsay – Brilliant – such great photos and reporting!

Citizen selise:
I think you are absolutely right, the violence will happen when, where and how much those commanding the troops decide. Don’t let’s start blamin’ our brothers and sisters for the violence…that’s the way they killed the people’s movement of the ’70’s. We can’t let ‘em turn us against each other again. Let’s keep our eyes on the target…I have seen the enemy and he AIN’T us!!

American became militarized many decades. After militarism comes a repressive police state.

amen citizen norske. i’ve heard too many lies from the police, and i suspect you have heard a lot more than i have, to ever take their word on anything without independent confirmation.

This is CHICAGO 1968, all over again — but running at the direction of the U.S. Secret Service, this time (instead of the behest of Mayor Richard Daley)!

During the Chicago Democratic Convention, the peaceful protesters (I was among them) walked towards the Convention Center from the park where they had assembled. We were warned that if anyone tried violence we should consider them an agent provacateur.

Police barricaded the side-streets, so only the main road where the peace marchers were moving was accessible, but that road was dead-ended in front of the Convention hotel, by jeeps with barbed-wire-covered bumpers, so there was no place for marchers to move. Then busses of Chicago cops rode into the main road, banging nightsticks on the bus windows, chanting “kill, kill, kill” and waded into the peaceful crowds, banging heads and then arresting people.

My boyfriend yanked me by the arm to the sidewalk, as I was about to sit where I was and cover my head with my hands. We watched the other marchers get bashed and hauled to police busses, as we cried. Some people ran into the underground garage, and my best friend’s dad ran carloads of marchers out of the garage until he found his daughters.

Hubert Humphrey, who did not stop the mayhem, was not elected that year. I refused to vote for him, and wasted my vote on comedian Dick Gregory. Mayor Daley was seen on TV at the Convention, cheering the cops on and cursing the peaceful demonstrators.

Citizen MSSS:

Amen, Citizen, and thank you for your service…I watched on television from a small dispensary in the middle of the desert at White Sands Missle Range as folks including my sister who was a freshman at the University of Chicago got chased to hell and back by the fascist pigs. Nuthin has changed except the level of sophistication and equipment of the terror police.

It seems the policemen are still there to preserve disorder.

The effects of the social environment on police behavior, mentioned by ptbridgeport, which may result in some officers’ behaving in a manner incongruous with standards of conduct that they really believe they have espoused, can’t be dismissed. At the same time, it is apparently part of security planning to be as “gloves-off” as possible without creating major scandals, under the assumptions that fears of terrorism will grant more leeway and that government secrecy protections will minimize sunshine and accountability in the aftermath.

This totally has the feel of a coordinated effort to contrive a Chicago DNC-style atmosphere of anarchy, in clear hopes of causing a consequential backlash at the polls. It’s a kind of GOTV effort aimed at a new Silent Majority. It’s Shock Doctrine in practice.

Except I doubt anyone is buying it.

I was interested to see a Young Republican answer a question about the repression of protesters this morning on C-Span. First, he confessed that he wasn’t in a position to witness anything as he was elsewhere when all of the action occurred, then he sat there and described the police as having acted responsibly! “I don’t know what I’m talking about. Here’s my opinion.”

If the Obama-Biden Campaign has any objections to the cruel and brutal attacks on peaceful demonstrators, they sure had better say so!

we’re still waiting, oh so full of hope!

http://www.constitution.org/uslaw/defunlaw.htm

Your Right of Defense Against Unlawful Arrest

“Citizens may resist unlawful arrest to the point of taking an arresting officer’s life if necessary.” Plummer v. State, 136 Ind. 306. This premise was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case: John Bad Elk v. U.S., 177 U.S. 529. The Court stated: “Where the officer is killed in the course of the disorder which naturally accompanies an attempted arrest that is resisted, the law looks with very different eyes upon the transaction, when the officer had the right to make the arrest, from what it does if the officer had no right. What may be murder in the first case might be nothing more than manslaughter in the other, or the facts might show that no offense had been committed.”

“An arrest made with a defective warrant, or one issued without affidavit, or one that fails to allege a crime is within jurisdiction, and one who is being arrested, may resist arrest and break away. lf the arresting officer is killed by one who is so resisting, the killing will be no more than an involuntary manslaughter.” Housh v. People, 75 111. 491; reaffirmed and quoted in State v. Leach, 7 Conn. 452; State v. Gleason, 32 Kan. 245; Ballard v. State, 43 Ohio 349; State v Rousseau, 241 P. 2d 447; State v. Spaulding, 34 Minn. 3621.

“When a person, being without fault, is in a place where he has a right to be, is violently assaulted, he may, without retreating, repel by force, and if, in the reasonable exercise of his right of self defense, his assailant is killed, he is justified.” Runyan v. State, 57 Ind. 80; Miller v. State, 74 Ind. 1.

“These principles apply as well to an officer attempting to make an arrest, who abuses his authority and transcends the bounds thereof by the use of unnecessary force and violence, as they do to a private individual who unlawfully uses such force and violence.” Jones v. State, 26 Tex. App. I; Beaverts v. State, 4 Tex. App. 1 75; Skidmore v. State, 43 Tex. 93, 903.

“An illegal arrest is an assault and battery. The person so attempted to be restrained of his liberty has the same right to use force in defending himself as he would in repelling any other assault and battery.” (State v. Robinson, 145 ME. 77, 72 ATL. 260).

“Each person has the right to resist an unlawful arrest. In such a case, the person attempting the arrest stands in the position of a wrongdoer and may be resisted by the use of force, as in self- defense.” (State v. Mobley, 240 N.C. 476, 83 S.E. 2d 100).

“One may come to the aid of another being unlawfully arrested, just as he may where one is being assaulted, molested, raped or kidnapped. Thus it is not an offense to liberate one from the unlawful custody of an officer, even though he may have submitted to such custody, without resistance.” (Adams v. State, 121 Ga. 16, 48 S.E. 910).

“Story affirmed the right of self-defense by persons held illegally. In his own writings, he had admitted that ‘a situation could arise in which the checks-and-balances principle ceased to work and the various branches of government concurred in a gross usurpation.’ There would be no usual remedy by changing the law or passing an amendment to the Constitution, should the oppressed party be a minority. Story concluded, ‘If there be any remedy at all … it is a remedy never provided for by human institutions.’ That was the ‘ultimate right of all human beings in extreme cases to resist oppression, and to apply force against ruinous injustice.’” (From Mutiny on the Amistad by Howard Jones, Oxford University Press, 1987, an account of the reading of the decision in the case by Justice Joseph Story of the Supreme Court.

As for grounds for arrest: “The carrying of arms in a quiet, peaceable, and orderly manner, concealed on or about the person, is not a breach of the peace. Nor does such an act of itself, lead to a breach of the peace.” (Wharton’s Criminal and Civil Procedure, 12th Ed., Vol.2: Judy v. Lashley, 5 W. Va. 628, 41 S.E. 197)

We’ve got some compelling video of the tear gas being used on the protesters (and us) — http://gnooze.com/archives/235

Please check it out and spread the word. People need to know that this was a peaceful protest, not riot.

Umm, whatever the law books may say, physically resisting attempted arrest by even attempting to take an officer’s life is agreat way to get one’s self and those around one killed.

Carrying weapons openly in a non-violent demo destrpys the whole purpose of the demo: and invites massive police violence.

The legal citations/obsrvations in comment 60 reflect the chasm between theory and practice.

Attempting to implement those citations/observations could be an effective means of “suicide by cop”, however.