[Peace-discuss] abridging the right of the people peaceably to assemble...

[C. G. Estabrook]

	SUNDAY AUG. 31, 2008 11:46 EDT
	Federal government involved in raids on protesters

As the police attacks on protesters in Minnesota continue -- see this video of 
the police swarming a bus transporting members of Earth Justice, seizing the bus 
and leaving the group members stranded on the side of the highway -- it appears 
increasingly clear that it is the Federal Government that is directing this 
intimidation campaign. Minnesota Public Radio reported yesterday that "the 
searches were led by the Ramsey County Sheriff's office. Deputies coordinated 
searches with the Minneapolis and St. Paul police departments and the Federal 
Bureau of Investigation."

Today's Star Tribune added that the raids were specifically "aided by informants 
planted in protest groups." Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted that 
the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force -- an inter-agency group of federal, 
state and local law enforcement led by the FBI -- was actively recruiting 
Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to infiltrate "vegan groups" and other 
left-wing activist groups and report back to the Task Force about what they were 
doing. There seems to be little doubt that it was this domestic spying by the 
Federal Government that led to the excessive and truly despicable home assaults 
by the police yesterday.

So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement 
agencies on left-wing dissidents and protesters who have committed no acts of 
violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to 
track what they do. And as extraordinary as that conduct is, more extraordinary 
is the fact that they have received virtually no attention from the national 
media and little outcry from anyone. And it's not difficult to see why. As the 
recent "overhaul" of the 30-year-old FISA law illustrated -- preceded by the 
endless expansion of surveillance state powers, justified first by the War on 
Drugs and then the War on Terror -- we've essentially decided that we want our 
Government to spy on us without limits. There is literally no police power that 
the state can exercise that will cause much protest from the political and media 
class and, therefore, from the citizenry.

Beyond that, there is a widespread sense that the targets of these raids deserve 
what they get, even if nothing they've done is remotely illegal. We love to 
proclaim how much we cherish our "freedoms" in the abstract, but we despise 
those who actually exercise them. The Constitution, right in the very First 
Amendment, protects free speech and free assembly precisely because those 
liberties are central to a healthy republic -- but we've decided that anyone who 
would actually express truly dissident views or do anything other than sit 
meekly and quietly in their homes are dirty trouble-makers up to no good, and 
it's therefore probably for the best if our Government keeps them in check, 
spies on them, even gets a little rough with them.

After all, if you don't want the FBI spying on you, or the Police surrounding 
and then invading your home with rifles and seizing your computers, there's a 
very simple solution: don't protest the Government. Just sit quietly in your 
house and mind your own business. That way, the Government will have no reason 
to monitor what you say and feel the need to intimidate you by invading your 
home. Anyone who decides to protest -- especially with something as unruly and 
disrespectful as an unauthorized street march -- gets what they deserve.
Isn't it that mentality which very clearly is the cause of virtually everyone 
turning away as these police raids escalate against citizens -- including 
lawyers, journalists and activists -- who have broken no laws and whose only 
crime is that they intend vocally to protest what the Government is doing? Add 
to that the fact that many good establishment liberals are embarrassed by 
leftist protesters of this sort and wish that they would remain invisible, and 
there arises a widespread consensus that these Government attacks are perfectly 
tolerable if not desirable.

During the Olympics just weeks ago, there was endless hand-wringing over the 
efforts by the Chinese Government to squelch dissent and incarcerate protesters. 
On August 21, The Washington Post fretted:

Six Americans detained by police this week could be held for 10 days, according 
to Chinese authorities, who appear to be intensifying their efforts to shut down 
any public demonstrations during the final days of the Olympic Games. . . .
Chinese Olympic officials announced last month that Beijing would set up zones 
where people could protest during the Games, as long as they had received 
permission. None of the 77 applications submitted was approved, however, and 
several other would-be protesters were stopped from even applying.

On August 2, The Post gravely warned:

Behind the gray walls and barbed wire of the prison here, eight Chinese farmers 
with a grievance against the government have been consigned to Olympic limbo.
Their indefinite detainment, relatives and neighbors said, is the price they are 
paying for stirring up trouble as China prepares to host the Beijing Games. 
Trouble, the Communist Party has made clear, will not be permitted.

Would The Washington Post ever use such dark and accusatory tones to describe 
what the U.S. Government does? Of course it wouldn't. Yet how is our own 
Government's behavior in Minnesota any different than what the Chinese did to 
its protesters during the Olympics (other than the fact that we actually have a 
Constitution that prohibits such behavior)? And where are all the self-righteous 
Freedom Crusaders in our nation's establishment organs who were so flamboyantly 
criticizing the actions of a Government on the other side of the globe as our 
own Government engages in the same tyrannical, protest-squelching conduct with 
exactly the same motives?

Just review what happened yesterday and today. Homes of college-aid protesters 
were raided by rifle-wielding police forces. Journalists were forcibly detained 
at gun point. Lawyers on the scene to represent the detainees were handcuffed. 
Computers, laptops, journals, diaries, and political pamphlets were seized from 
people's homes. And all of this occurred against U.S. citizens, without a single 
act of violence having taken place, and nothing more serious than traffic 
blockage even alleged by authorities to have been planned.

A man whose sister was one of those arrested at one of the raided houses in 
Minneapolis yesterday emailed me a photograph of her and her friend who was also 
arrested -- Monica Bicking (r.) and Eryn Trimme -- and he wrote this:

They are still in custody. I've been told that the police have 36 hours to 
charge her, and that 36 hours starts after the labor day holiday, so they only 
have to charge her sometime Wednesday. It seems unlikely that they'd do anything 
to expedite her or Eryn's release.

They were then planning to actually board up her house for unspecified "code 
violations", but apparently her neighbors were very vocal, and the police ended 
up agreeing not to do anything so long as the front door was fixed by 6pm (the 
front door they'd busted in).

Here is the extraordinary blog item I linked to yesterday from Eileen Clancy, 
one of the founders of I-Witness Video -- a NYC-based video collective which is 
in St. Paul to document the policing of the protests around this week's 
Republican National Convention, just as they did at the 2004 GOP Convention in 
New York. Clancy wrote this as a plea for help, as the Police surrounded her 
house and (before they had a search warrant) told everyone inside that they'd be 
arrested if they exited the home:

This is Eileen Clancy . . . The house where I-Witness Video is staying in St. 
Paul has been surrounded by police. We have locked all the doors. We have been 
told that if we leave we will be detained. One of our people who was caught 
outside is being detained in handcuffs in front of the house. The police say 
that they are waiting to get a search warrant. More than a dozen police are 
wielding firearms, including one St. Paul officer with a long gun, which someone 
told me is an M-16.

We are suffering a preemptive video arrest. For those that don't know, I-Witness 
Video was remarkably successful in exposing police misconduct and outright 
perjury by police during the 2004 RNC. Out of 1800 arrests, at least 400 were 
overturned based solely on video evidence which contradicted sworn statements 
which were fabricated by police officers. It seems that the house arrest we are 
now under and the possible threat of the seizure of our computers and video 
cameras is a result of the 2004 success.

We are asking the public to contact the office of St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman 
at 651-266-8510 to stop this house arrest, this gross intimidation by police 
officers, and the detention of media activists and reporters.

That sounds like what it was: a cry for help from a hostage. Hours later, the 
Police finally obtained a search warrant -- for the wrong house, one adjacent to 
the house where they were being detained -- and nonetheless broke in, pointing 
guns, forced them to lay on the floor and handcuffed everyone inside (and 
handcuffed a National Lawyers Guild attorney outside). They searched the house, 
arrested nobody, and then left.

Any rational person planning to protest the GOP Convention would, in light of 
this Government spying and these police raids, think twice -- at least -- about 
whether to do so. That is the point of the raids -- to announce to citizens that 
they best stay in their homes and be good, quiet, meek, compliant people unless 
they want their homes to be invaded, their property seized, and have rifles 
pointed at them, too. The fact that this behavior is producing so little outcry 
only ensures, for obvious reasons, that it will continue in the future. We love 
our Surveillance State for keeping us safe and maintaining nice, quiet order.

--Glenn Greenwald

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/31/raids/index.html