[Peace-discuss] another account of suppressing dissent at the RNC

[Stuart Levy]

Though this man was one of those released without charge --
after two days' jail time -- it sounds as though the
suppression was effective:

   "The city did everything they said they weren't going to do," Tracy
   says. "They said people could peacefully protest without arrest and
   that if you weren't causing trouble you wouldn't be in trouble. But I
   didn't want to argue. I never want to go back to jail."


[from an article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune]
   The full Article, with any associated images and links can be viewed here:

	http://www.startribune.com/local/stpaul/30663609.html

   In the Great St. Paul Lock-'em-up Spree, 10 feet made the difference
   NICK COLEMAN, Star Tribune

   Mark Tracy was indisposed. He was supposed to be climbing the 151
   steps of the Highland Park Water Tower with his family to experience
   the most beautiful view you can get of St. Paul. Instead, he was
   looking at the county jail.

   From the inside.

   Tracy, 27, is a soft-spoken follower of Gandhi and Martin Luther King
   who is employed as a community faculty member at Metro State
   University, where he teaches an online course in "Anthropology in the
   Global Age." From a longtime St. Paul family, and a 1999 alum of
   Cretin-Derham Hall High School, Tracy is as solid a citizen as they
   come. Only Bob Fletcher would be alarmed by him.

   Fletcher is the excitable sheriff who claims St. Paul would be nothing
   more than a smoking heap of overturned urine buckets if 800 people
   hadn't been arrested during the Republican National Convention. Some
   of the arrested deserved to be locked up for bad behavior. The problem
   is that the undeclared state of martial law imposed by the city during
   the convention resulted in many citizens who were exercising their
   free speech rights to be arrested for nothing more than breathing in
   St. Paul.

   It happened to Tracy on the first day. He and his wife, Sarah, and
   some friends had produced 10,000 copies of a free pamphlet called "My
   Peace City" that they planned to distribute during the convention.

   On Sept. 1, he and his friend, Michael Birchard, distributed pamphlets
   until late afternoon, when they decided to knock off and head home for
   dinner. They were riding their bicycles past a line of cops, who
   didn't seem to notice or care, until they got to the very last one.
   That officer watched as Birchard pedaled by, then stepped up and
   stopped Tracy, who was trailing his friend by about 10 feet.

   "Get off your bike and sit down," the cop told Tracy.

   "But I'm not part of that [the protesters]," Tracy replied. "Do you
   see? I'm going home."

   Tracy says the officer was friendly, and seemed as if he would agree
   to let him go.

   "Sit down and we'll figure it out," the officer said.

   But police began arresting protesters nearby and a melee ensued. Tracy
   was still sitting on the street, waiting, but the cop's tone suddenly
   changed.

   "Remember," Tracy said. "I wasn't part of that. Can I go?"

   "Yes, you were a part of those [blankety-blanks]," the cop barked.
   "Shut up and sit."

   Tracy was handcuffed, booked on a charge of felony riot. His bicycle,
   a gray hybrid with saddle bags full of "Peace City" pamphlets,
   disappeared. But if he had pedaled it 10 feet faster, he would have
   been at home, helping Sarah feed Ava, 5, and Oliver, 10 weeks.

   Instead, he was taken to the jail.

   "It looked like Guantanamo in St. Paul," says Tracy's father, Mark E.
   Tracy, a longtime St. Paul attorney who came to the jail to try to
   find out what happened. "I had assumed he'd be given a ticket and
   released. There was no cause to arrest him, other than the fact he was
   caught up in the rush to arrest these other folks. They overdid it."

   Prisoner No. 0502 -- the pacifist pamphlet-passing professor -- was
   patted down, given his rights and put in a cell with 10 other men.

   Tracy lived on soda crackers and water for two days. Being in jail
   ruined his appetite.

   Tracy was later placed in a cell with another inmate who had been
   drenched in pepper spray. The lingering fumes were so acrid that
   Tracy, in the upper bunk, covered his head with a sheet. He fell
   asleep but was awakened at 4 a.m. to be strip-searched.

   Tracy got an orange jumpsuit and a new cell. He fell asleep again. He
   wasn't able to call his wife until 3 p.m. Tuesday, 22 hours after his
   arrest. Sarah had been trying to explain to Ava that sometimes good
   people go to jail. Mark said he'd be out soon.

   But he wouldn't. He would spend another night in jail.

   "It's not my nature to be taken over by anger," he says. "I meditated
   about how to fit my philosophy of nonviolence into what happened. I
   don't blame police. We all have the same desires, so I tried to think
   about why people do things to other people. People are the same, but
   they can be conditioned to oppress and treat people wrongly,
   especially people they fear. How should I deal with that? I'm still
   trying to answer that question."

   The Highland Water Tower was open the Tuesday and Wednesday of the
   convention so visitors could see the city without tear gas. I am the
   one who got the Tracys interested in the tower; I had the pleasure of
   making their acquaintance at the Highland Pool in August, while our
   kids were taking swimming lessons. I told the Tracys that you haven't
   seen St. Paul until you see it from the tower.

   Sarah took the kids. From the tower, they could see the cathedral and
   the airport and the High Bridge and the fairgrounds and the churches
   and the colleges, and they could almost see Daddy.

   Mark got out of jail at 3 p.m Wednesday, 46 hours after being
   arrested. The charge of felony riot against him had been dropped. He
   was a free man, exactly as if he had done nothing wrong. He hadn't.

   "The city did everything they said they weren't going to do," Tracy
   says. "They said people could peacefully protest without arrest and
   that if you weren't causing trouble you wouldn't be in trouble. But I
   didn't want to argue. I never want to go back to jail."

   The Highland tower is open again this Saturday and Sunday, from 8 a.m.
   to 5 p.m.

   St. Paul is still here, undestroyed, spread below the highest spot in
   the city, lovely, fragile and still clinging to the curve of the
   Mississippi.

   I hope Mark Tracy can see it.

   [3]ncoleman at startribune.com o 612-673-4400

References

   1. http://www.startribune.com/
   2. http://www.startribune.com/local/stpaul/30663609.html
   3. mailto:ncoleman at startribune.com