Justice Served?

Go to this story on Free Press.Net to read about the arrests of journalists at the Republican National Convention which included none other than Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. I guess Free Press.Net is taking a lot of the credit for their bombardment of pressure on the City of Saint Paul so the charges would be dropped against all journalists arrested at the RNC. Let me tell you, there were plenty of St. Paul residents that put pressure on City Hall over their part in handling the chaos of the RNC. It wasn’t just Free Press.Net that made them drop the charges.

The fact remains that the so-called law enfarcement, (I call it enfarcement instead of enforcement),were orchestrated by the Federal Government. It was obvious that the Mayor of St. Paul, its City Council and other Local, State and National level elected officials stayed clear and did not comment or interfere in any way shape or form. Gutless bastards in my book. The “law” succeeded in removing, at least for a few hours and in some cases a day or so, legitimate journalists that would tell the real story about what was happening on the streets of St. Paul. That real story being that police were beating, using pepper spray and rubber bullets on anyone they wanted to with no attempt to assess a situation. You were guilty of no crime but were persecuted for being there and exercising your first amendment right to free speech.

The people who broke windows, tipped over dumpsters and newspaper boxes broke the law. Funny isn’t it, how Faux News had a camera trained on a lone masked protester who broke a window at Macy’s Department Store. The march was going on, with crowds of over 10,000 people, (some say as many as 30,000), and they happen to have a camera on this lone window breaking incident, blocks away from the march itself. Why would any major news outlet be blocks away from the action? How uncanny. The thought that the Fox camera operator and newscaster were right there, at Macy’s window. How convenient. Some journalists, with press pass credentials, who were close to the actual march, were arrested, with some being brutally beaten, like Democracy Now’s Nicole Salazar, while the big news media’s Fox cameras were johnny-on-the-spot with a photo op to show the world how dangerous these protesters are.

In my opinion, it was a set up, pure and simple, and it sucked. It was propaganda that made the old USSR propaganda machine ala Pravda look like a children’s read.

What really gets me is the fact that when the University of Minnesota, a Big Ten conference school, won the NCAA National Hockey crown in 2003, the streets of Minneapolis were burning with cars being tipped over, windows broken, police being attacked by the drunken revelers and no storm troopers with AR 15 assault rifles and gas masks were around to keep the peace and quell the riot. They used regular law enforcement techniques to stop a full scale riot and video cameras to prosecute those that needed it.

But here at the 2008 RNC, they were ready to take anyone off the streets that they might have thought would pose any type of problem and would bring the truth down to the level of the common man about the plain and simple fact that the people were marching and asking for an end to an unfair, immoral and illegal war.

This whole RNC business, and yes, it was a $50,000,000 business deal, was hard to take in St. Paul. I mean why did the Republicans want to come to St. Paul, a small town by standards of the big cities out there. The damn Xcel Energy Center, a great wonderful hockey venue by the way, seats under 20,000 people for a Minnesota Wild game. The Democrats used Pepsi Center in Denver and seated almost 80,000 attendees!

Some say that the Repubs thought Minnesota to be a swing state. Others said it was because of the Norm Coleman Senate seat that might fall to Al Franken. That second scenario could not have been true as Norm, the wife beating Senator, was never seen nor mentioned at the RNC. Even the idea that Minnesota’s Govenor, Tim Pawlenty, would be chosen as Vice President didn’t come to fruition. Nope. There was no reason to come to St. Paul except to showcase their might. They even had a machine gunned equipped Coast Guard boat on the Mississippi River for chrissake!

I believe that parts of the whole affair were orchestrated in an effort to show the peaceful public that anyone who thinks liberally is breaking the law. To instill fear into the minds of everyday people. They tried divide and conquer.

There are more demonstrations scheduled in Minneapolis and St. Paul. I bet you won’t see them on Fox or any other of the major media outlets. They are peaceful events and stay that way until the enfarcement comes around in riot gear.

To make my point perfectly clear, here is a short story about my family’s involvement at the RNC march on September 1, 2008:

We arrived at the Capitol around 10:45 a.m. The announcement flyer said to be there by 11 a.m. We gathered, talked with folks and lined up for the march. I had my wife with me, my oldest daughter and her four children who ranged in age from 1&1/2 to 10 years old. If I had thought there would be violence or danger, I never would ever take a chance that would put those Grandkids in harms way, period.

We marched. I was in front, with the Veterans For Peace who were to lead the march. The VFP relinquished the lead to the Iraq Veterans Against the War just before the start of the march. My family was behind me a few hundred yards. There was a sea of people marching and carrying signs of protest and asking for peace.

When the march was completed, I waited near the Capitol. I called Barb on the cell phone and since we were familiar with the layout of the grounds of the Capitol campus, we met at a place central to where we finished, the Minnesota Law Enforcement Memorial fountain.

It was a hot day. The children were hot and sweaty. They saw the pond at the memorial and proceeded to wade, then immersed into the cool water. I mean, they are kids, and they have common sense and did what should come naturally. They went swimming on a hot day.

Two State police. Capitol guards, in a golf cart, in shirt sleeves who were in the area drove by the memorial and without stopping the cart and getting out of it, directed the adults, in this case my daughter and wife, to get those kids out of the pool as “They can’t swim in there” was proclaimed. They drove off without watching to see their instructions enforced.

This casual reckoning was business as usual, not six blocks from the pepper spray, rubber bullets, swinging billy clubs and show of force to people marching for peace. The local State police guards knew their people, knew we were peaceful, knew we liberals weren’t there to cause trouble. They see us all the time, and the hardest part of their law enforcement job is to shoo four little kids out of the pond at the foot of a granite memorial to “real” cops.

The saddest part for me is that St. Paul will never be the same. And it isn’t one bit strange that none of the journalists detained and arrested were charged. They succeeded to get them off the streets for a time, so Faux News can get their window breaking shots on the six o’clock news.

Peace to All.