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Title: Going It Alone Author: CrimethInc. Date: May 5, 2009 Language: en Topics: Democratic Convention, RNC 2008, action, protest, analysis, history, Rolling Thunder, 2008, St. Paul, reportback Source: Retrieved on 9th November 2020 from https://crimethinc.com/2009/05/05/going-it-alone
For good or for ill, the protests at the 2008 Democratic and Republican
National Conventions constituted the most significant nationwide effort
anarchists have undertaken to organize militant action in the US in
several years. Two weeks later, the global economy collapsed, followed
shortly by anarchist-initiated rioting in Greece dwarfing anything in
Denver or St. Paul. Itâs easy to feel that the DNC and RNC mobilizations
were inconsequential by comparison. But if US anarchists are ever going
to be capable of contributing to insurrections like the ones in Oaxaca
and Greece, we either have to figure out how to improve on the models
applied at the conventions, or else identify their shortcomings
conclusively so as to adopt more effective approaches.
In short, the convention protests were not a stunning victory, but they
set valuable precedents in coordination, strategy, and infrastructure.
Perhaps the greatest danger is that, because they were not an
unqualified success, they will have been forgotten by the time of the
next mass mobilization.
The convention protests had limited effect primarily because of low
attendance, though anarchists made a much better showing than
practically any other demographic and were better prepared than usual.
They provide a classic example of a movement learning from its mistakes
too late: anarchists finally regained the initiative in the antiwar
movement just as that movement breathed its last. But if those who
organize future mobilizations also learn these lessons, this could set
the stage for more significant victories. Ultimately, the importance of
the DNC and RNC mobilizations will be determined in the future,
according to how they inform the next phase of radical organizing.
In terms of specifically anarchist participation, many aspects of the
mobilizations were unprecedented. Nationwide preparations began well
over a year in advance, and the majority of participants showed up in
organized affinity groups. Anarchists took the initiative to determine
and coordinate their own strategies and tactics, and made breakthroughs
in establishing solidarity with other groupsâas exemplified by the
historic St. Paul Principles. They also debuted communications
structures that had not previously been applied at mass mobilizations,
which have since been cited by the US military and utilized during the
riots in Greece. Just as the global indymedia network came out of the
Seattle WTO demonstrations,[1] the DNC/RNC mobilizations produced the
Bash Back! network[2] and plenty of other projects and momentum that
continue to the time of this writing. Proportionate to the number of
participants, the mobilizations were surprisingly successful.
The question, then, is whether they provide a model that can be expanded
on. The conventions revealed the risks of initiating a mobilization so
far in advance: by the time the event finally occurs, the context may
have changed dramatically. Likewise, so much preparation can raise
unrealistic expectations; it also invites serious repression and
intelligence gathering from the authorities. One might ask whether the
US anarchist movement can sustain such costs; on the other hand, one
might also ask whether it can afford to remain a marginal participant in
othersâ campaigns, as it was throughout much of the past decade. This
brings up the most fundamental question: was the explicitly anarchist
character of the mobilization a fatally limiting factor, or a starting
point towards building a bigger and more independent anarchist movement
in the US?
Can we go it alone? Are we better off in the shadows? Or is there
another way?
(This section is revised from a much larger analysis, âWhat to Expect
from the Conventions,â which appeared on this site in May 2008.)
The so-called âanti-globalization movement,â named by corporate media
with a vested interest in obscuring the possibility of modern-day
anticapitalist struggle, emerged as if from nowhere in the late 1990s.
In fact, it was the convergence of a wide variety of smaller social
currents ranging from indigenous liberation struggles to the
do-it-yourself punk scene, all of which had been quietly developing over
the preceding years. Perhaps the most surprising accomplishment of the
movement was to revitalize street-level conflict, which many had deemed
irrelevant in the postmodern era.
The US wing of this movement was not prepared for the sudden changes
wrought by September 11, 2001; although the militant anti-IMF protest
organized for that month became the first antiwar protest, anarchists
swiftly lost the initiative to liberals and communists more familiar
with reactive single-issue organizing. To the glee of authoritarians of
every stripe, between 2001 and 2003 the antiwar movement replaced the
anticapitalist movement in the public eye.
The antiwar movement of the following years failed to stop the war, but
succeeded in taming protest itself. Considered as a whole, the worldwide
demonstrations on February 15, 2003 comprised the most widely attended
protest in human historyâand yet they did nothing to hinder the Bush
administration. One might say it was a triumph of co-optation that so
much outrage and motivation was diverted into ineffectual rituals so
soon after anticapitalists had demonstrated the power of direct action.
To be fair, the effectiveness of the efforts of 1999â2001 did not become
clear until years later when many were no longer paying attention. There
were scattered efforts to apply direct action in antiwar efforts, such
as the targeting of recruitment centers and ports engaged in military
shipping, but these were too little too late. Imagine the effect if a
mere tenth of the participants in the February 15 demonstrations had
blockaded ports or smashed recruitment center windows!
Some have charged that the antiwar movement failed because it was not
empowering for the working class or people of color. This is a
half-truth: the antiwar movement failed because it was not empowering to
anybody. The groups that dominated it did all they could to limit the
tactics and strategies of participants to the lowest common denominator.
Few will stick around in a movement that is not committed to or capable
of accomplishing its professed objectives, and this is doubly true of
people with limited resources who are all too familiar with being
exploited for othersâ gain. There were efforts to recruit laborers and
people of color, but these rarely created mutually beneficial
collaboration and dialogue. It could be charged that organizers sought
to involve a wide range of demographics in order to present the movement
as diverse, while still endeavoring to control its content and
direction. Approaching the antiwar movement as an opportunity to create
a mass under liberal leadership, rather than a means of fighting the war
machine, actually undermined the possibility of it ever adding up to a
durable, empowered mass.
By the middle of Bushâs second term, public sentiment was acknowledged
to be overwhelmingly against the war, and yet the antiwar movement had
effectively collapsed. The tactic of mass mobilization, which liberals
had hijacked from radicals, had accordingly been abandoned; protests
still occurred, but none drew numbers worthy of the word âmassâ.
At the opening of 2008, liberal politics beyond the voting booth had
been completely deflated by the failure of the antiwar movement. Liberal
hopes were once again pinned on electoral politics, and the streets were
as quiet as they had been in the mid-1990s when neoconservatives crowed
that capitalism had triumphed as âthe end of historyâ. This was the
context in which anarchists prepared to go to Denver and St. Paul.
The DNC/RNC mobilizations got started in a relative vacuum. In 2007,
when organizers first decided to focus on them, few nationwide events
were bringing people together for militant struggle or putting anarchism
in the public eye. After the rise and fall of anti-globalization
âsummit-hoppingâ and the resulting backlash, reverting to the mass
mobilization model was something of a failure of imagination. This goes
double for those who had been saying for years that it was time to find
something more effective, without ever presenting a concrete alternative
that could fill the same role.
Itâs important to remember that when the conventions were first chosen
as a target, it was not yet clear that the antiwar movement was on its
last legs. The previous two election years had both included fierce
protests at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, with
plenty of anarchist involvement but little serious advance organizing.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters, including thousands of anarchists,
had participated in the 2004 RNC in New York, though there had been
limited coordination or common strategy for anti-authoritarians. With
this missed opportunity still fresh in peopleâs minds, it was not
unreasonable to expect the upcoming DNC and RNC might offer another
chance in a similar context.
To this end, starting in a couple communities and spreading slowly
across the country, small knots of anarchists began to discuss the
conventions. In the host cities, these coalesced into the RNC Welcoming
Committee and Unconventional Denver; nationwide, a network of ad hoc
collectives emerged under the moniker Unconventional Action. From early
on, most agreed that there should be a generalized strategy for direct
action and an anarchist-organized infrastructure. Some also argued,
drawing on examples from earlier mobilizations, that it was important
for direct action to start on the first day of the conventions and
coincide with other protests, rather than occurring at a separate time.
Overall, the RNC-WCâs early formation, comprehensive membership drives,
strategic partnerships, and flexibility will likely result in a more
robust and balanced effort than in recent conventions. Consequently,
security will likely be more difficult to maintain than in previous
years.
â Department of Homeland Security Report, March 27, 2008
For many, their first exposure to the organizing was a humorous video
short from the RNC Welcoming Committee, depicting masked anarchists
engaging in everyday activities throughout the Twin Cities and ending
with the words âWeâre getting readyâ. Later, humorless state and federal
investigators referenced this video during interrogations and presented
it at felony trials. When it appeared in August 2007, it showed radicals
around the country that organizers in the Twin Cities were already
focusing on the RNC and were resourceful and clever to boot.
Similarly, the first groups that appeared under the Unconventional
Action banner didnât just put out a general call for organizing against
the DNC and RNC, but went ahead and held consultas in their own
communities. Once it was clear that some people were already preparing
for the conventions, it was easier for others to do the same.
Taking a cue from the Dissent network that had organized against the G8
summits in England and Germany, the WC organized a âpRe-NCâ planning
conference exactly a year before the RNC. For many younger anarchists
not yet entirely clear on the distinction between strategy and tactics,
this was itself an educational experience; despite the resultant
challenges, a blockading strategy emerged for the first day of the
convention, relying on a diversity of tactics. Once this element was in
place, the RNC mobilization gathered momentum steadily. Groups around
the country signed on to the call to shut down the convention, and an
Unconventional Action paper circulated advertising the strategies for
both St. Paul and Denver. All this helped build confidence in the
protests.
The DNC mobilization got off to a shakier start. Many Denver radicals
were less enthusiastic about taking on the police state. Recreate 68, a
leftist umbrella group,[3] took the initiative to begin organizing, but
it took longer for explicitly anarchist coordination to pick up steam.
Early gatherings in Denver drew fewer participants than those in St.
Paul, and the goals of the mobilization seemed less clear. As the DNC
drew nearer, a split occurred in R68; meanwhile, Unconventional Denver
gained momentum and local participants, and pulled together a week-long
schedule of themed events. The people who organized in Denver took on
disproportionately more work, with less support than in those in the
Twin Cities; but in fighting this uphill battle, they enabled anarchists
to frame the mobilizations as a rejection of representational politics
itself, rather than just the Republican Party.
Both Unconventional Denver and the Welcoming Committee met regularly,
establishing committees for logistical work and maintaining informative
websites. Members of the WC undertook nationwide speaking tours
encouraging groups to coordinate their own participation, and maintained
interest with a series of witty pranks and press statements along the
lines of their initial video. Like many public organizing bodies, the WC
was beset by painful internal and external ideological conflicts;
despite this, they managed to lay the foundations for coordination among
anarchists and coalition organizing with progressives.
In May, the WC hosted a second pRe-NC, at which organizers from around
the country attempted to flesh out the blockading strategy. The
participants opted against dividing the city into zones according to
level of risk, as had been done in Quebec City and Genoa, on the premise
that organizers could not determine how the police would behave.
Instead, it was agreed that the permitted rally and march would be kept
free of direct action, as per the St. Paul Principles; meanwhile, the
regions surrounding the convention center [map PDF, 197 KB] were divided
into seven sectors, so that different organizing groups could choose in
advance where and with whom they would act. In the final months before
the conventions, direct action trainings took place throughout the
Midwest, while affinity groups from one coast to the other finalized
their plans and organizers in the host cities rented convergence centers
and scrambled to coordinate logistics.
Nothing ever goes as planned, but if you plan and work hard enough,
something will happen. The stated goal of blockading the conventions was
probably unrealistic, but anarchists had set the stage for a
confrontation.
For years leading up to the conventions, mass mobilizations had been
plagued by conflicts between advocates of direct action and other
protesters; in some cases, pacifists and authoritarians had attacked
militants or actively collaborated with the police against them. The RNC
Welcoming Committee took steps to ensure that this would not happen in
St. Paul. In February 2008, the Welcoming Committee and Unconventional
Action Chicago joined a range of other groups, including the Coalition
to March on the RNC and Stop the War and the Anti-War Committee, in
drafting an agreement across ideological and tactical lines:
the plans of other groups.
separation of time or space.
any public or media denunciations of fellow activists and events.
infiltration, disruption and violence. We agree not to assist law
enforcement actions against activists and others.
This agreement helped to legitimize the anarchists in the eyes of other
organizersâwhich in turn saved anarchists needless internal bickering
over whether or not they were ârespecting the local community,â a
frequent stumbling block at mass mobilizations. Even after the RNC,
organizers of many stripes respected the St. Paul principles, refusing
to denounce or inform on militant activists.
After all the promotion, where was everyone? The permitted march at the
RNC was scarcely a tenth the size of the one in New York four years
earlier; there may have been about as many hard-core militants as there
had been at prior conventions, but nothing like the numbers imagined by
those familiar with the high point of the anti-globalization era.
Several factors probably contributed to this. The conventions occurred
away from the coasts, where the majority of radical communities were
located. Some had hoped that the resurrected Students for a Democratic
Society would organize a great deal of youth participation, but this did
not occur on a national level. As anarchists had established their own
social circles over the preceding years, their presence had decreased in
subcultural milieus such as the punk scene, which may have resulted in
lower attendance from those demographics. The high price of gasoline may
have discouraged others.
Though some diehards showed up to play logistical roles, the generation
of anarchists that had been instrumental in the mobilizations from
Seattle to Quebec City largely stayed home. One might hypothesize that
in this regard, the anarchist movement was still paying off bills from
the anti-globalization days: many veterans of that era were still
nursing their bitterness, or else tied down by new responsibilities,
while many younger anarchists who never participated in a mass
mobilization had been turned against them by the lingering backlash. In
the buildup to the conventions, impressive new networks were
established, but the failure to rebuild the old networks proved costly,
as did the general lack of training and experience.
Meanwhile, the NGOs that had been so important in the anti-globalization
movement were nowhere to be seen, and the liberal coalitions that had
provided the bulk of the anti-war movement were drastically eroded. As
mass mobilizations and traditional civil disobedience had produced
diminishing returns, many NGOs had shifted away from them; now, without
the older generation of anarchists involved, many connections with these
groups had been lost.
It wasnât clear until months later just how dramatically the Obama
campaign had affected the context, drawing people away from grassroots
organizing and into voter registration and similar activities. Certain
self-described anarchists who said they envied Obamaâs campaign for its
success in mobilizing the masses failed to point out that it flourished
to the same extent that our fair-weather allies disappeared. Reformist
co-optation is a weapon against popular autonomy and self-determination
no less than the tear gas of riot police. On the other hand, this made
it all the more important that anarchists emphasize possibilities beyond
the voting booth, and in this regard we could have done worse.
All this underscores the generosity of the longtime activists from
outside our immediate milieu, such as those from the Pagan Cluster, who
chose to bring their substantial skills to the mobilizations even as
their compatriots stayed home.
People began to trickle into the convergence center in Denver in
mid-August. Saturday night, August 23, was the first thickly attended
spokescouncil; Unconventional Denver spokespeople appraised a full room
of predominantly young anarchists of the various permitted and
unpermitted events scheduled for the week, noting to applause that all
UD events were unpermitted.
The liberal antiwar march the following day was unexpectedly small. An
energetic anarchist-organized Reclaim the Streets march took off on its
heels, however, crisscrossing downtown for hours and attracting a wide
range of participants. Even after the march reached its destination, at
which a standoff with police ensued, it spontaneously departed again;
police eventually attempted to corral it between intersections, but the
participants escaped through a parking deck. In retrospect, this was
perhaps the only action of the entire DNC/RNC mobilization that was an
uncomplicated success. The organizers had correctly predicted that
police would be hesitant to attack a mixed crowd the day before the
convention, when Code Pink and Iraq Veterans Against the War were also
in the streets; this helped to get the whole mobilization off on the
right foot.
Back at the convergence center that evening, people regrouped to plan an
action targeting party fundraisers the following night. In a typical
example of how large meetings can get stymied in irrelevant
deliberations, it didnât come out until well into the discussion that
practically everyone involved also planned to participate in the black
bloc called for 6 pm Monday. There had been no planning to speak of for
the black bloc, and at that point it was too late.
R68 had reserved Civic Center Park downtown, which hosted ongoing
musical performances and Food Not Bombs servings and generally served as
a convergence area. This was also the starting point for the
aforementioned black bloc, the fate of which is described in the
introduction of Rolling Thunder #6. Suffice it to say the bloc didnât
get far before being surrounded by police, resulting in approximately
100 arrests; more thorough preparation and strategizing might have
produced better results, but at least the attempt produced a situation
of social conflictâalbeit at the expense of the other scheduled action,
which never occurred. That evening, rebellious young people seemed much
more desirous of conflict with the authorities than organized anarchists
seemed prepared to facilitate it.
Tuesday saw anarchists scrambling to do jail support; arresteesâ court
dates were all scheduled for September 2, an obvious attempt to paralyze
those committed to both mobilizations. Wednesday, hundreds participated
in an anticapitalist environmental march; meanwhile, at the convergence
center, at which a police raid had been feared all week, warrantless
police arrested people outside and used a bulldozer to destroy signs and
banners in the parking lot. Later that day, Rage Against the Machine
headlined a show that ended with anarchists supporting Iraq Veterans
Against the War in an unpermitted march to the convention center.
Further confrontations with the police did not occur, though perhaps
this was for the best with the RNC around the corner.
Afterwards, one UD organizer regretted that the mobilization did not
produce common cause with other locals against the inequities of
capitalism and white supremacy; in this regard, it may have been a
missed opportunity to test new strategies for resistance in the Obama
era. Despite fears, however, media coverage did not misrepresent
anarchists as racists, and locals on the streets seemed to be
sympatheticâan important point of reference for future efforts. Whatever
its shortcomings, the mobilization in Denver succeeded in achieving some
visibility and built up momentum for the RNC without inflicting
unsustainable costs. As the week wound to a close, vehicles packed with
anarchists set off for St. Paul.
Like Denver, the Twin Cities had never seen a mobilization of this
scale; it was a new challenge for anarchists and city officials alike.
Although government repression increased to new levels in the months
leading up to the RNC, there were precedents within recent memory
hinting at what to expect. A decade earlier, the Minnehaha Free Stateâa
16-month anti-road occupation in Minneapolisâhad been infiltrated,
harassed, and raided multiple times by hundreds of officers,[4] In July
2000, during protests against the International Society for Animal
Genetics (ISAG),[5] over one hundred people were brutally mass-arrested,
and organizers experienced violent house raids and snatch arrests. It
should not have been a surprise when these tactics reoccurred eight
years later.
After public outcry following the ISAG arrests, the Minneapolis City
Council enacted new laws governing police treatment of protesters, but
these were repealed in advance of the RNC. The cities of Minneapolis and
St. Paul also passed a host of new laws regarding permits and protest,
and broke out one that had never been usedâthe now-infamous âcrimes
committed in furtherance of terrorismâ provision of the Minnesota
PATRIOT Act, which defines terrorism broadly enough to encompass civil
disobedience.
In August 2007, the night before the pRe-NC began, police from several
departments attacked the monthly Critical Mass bicycle ride in downtown
Minneapolis, beating and arresting 19 people and exclaiming âSee you
next year!â The arrestees were bailed out and the conference proceeded
as scheduled, but this was a foreshadowing glimpse of the repression to
come. Though two arrestees pled guilty to minor traffic violations, the
othersâ charges were later dropped; as of this writing, one arrestee is
taking the city government to trial after settlement negotiations
failed.
Over the following year, the government sent multiple undercover police
officers and federal informants to infiltrate the WC. The long buildup
to the convention and the transparency of the WC enabled the state to
gather tremendous quantities of intelligence. In the weeks before the
RNC, police blatantly tailed and photographed organizers, staked out
their houses, and attempted to question them. They also detained and
harassed perceived anarchists, photographing them and searching and
seizing their belongings and vehicles. Some of these photographs were
later used to identify arrestees who would not give their names.
On Friday, August 29, the Ramsey County Sheriffâs Department raided the
WC convergence space. They detained several dozen people, including a
five-year-old child,[6] face down at gunpoint while they searched the
building, taking everything from computers to childrenâs artwork. The
following morning, police raided three houses, arresting four
organizers, handcuffing and questioning dozens more, and seizing a great
deal more material. The seized items were used as props in a press
conference at which Sheriff Bob Fletcher implied that they were
dangerous weapons. Two other houses were raided in the course of the
RNC: in one case, a federal informant entrapped an unfortunate protester
into making Molotov cocktails; the other raid was conducted on a space
occupied by videographers.
Throughout the following days, undercover snatch squads roamed in
unmarked cars, kidnapping organizers wherever they could be found. One
legal worker stepped into a courthouse to support an arrested friend,
only to be detained and interrogated by Bob Fletcher himself. Andrew
Darst, the federal informant who had spent months inside the WC as
âPanda,â invited an organizer to meet him in a public place and
identified him to a snatch squad by embracing himâunwittingly mimicking
Judas, who identified Jesus to the Roman soldiers by kissing him.[7]
Taken as a whole, this was a higher level of repression than had
occurred at a mass mobilization in the US in several years. Convergence
center raids are not uncommon, the total number of arrests had been
higher at the 2004 RNC in New York, and the bail of targeted arrestees
was initially set higher at the 2000 RNC in Philadelphia; the house
raids and snatch squads were more unusual, though precedented by ISAG.
But the felony charges brought against the organizers who became known
as the RNC 8âall of whom were indicted on âconspiracy to commit riot in
furtherance of terrorism,â among other chargesâwere unlike anything
since the 1968 conspiracy trial following the DNC in Chicago.
None of this could derail the momentum of the organizing, however. The
strategy for September 1 had been established far in advance, and scores
of autonomous groups had already prepared. If anything, the raids and
persecution made the public more sympathetic to the anarchists on the
eve of the demonstrations.[8]
Despite the raids and arrests, sleep-deprived organizers eventually
forced the city to reopen the convergence center, and on Saturday night
hundreds of anarchists from around the country gathered for a
spokescouncil. As in Denver, the meeting ended in a tiresome circular
discussion; but in this case, because the strategizing was already
complete and even the start time of the blockading had been set at a
less crowded spokescouncil the previous Wednesday, this focused
harmlesslyâif irrelevantlyâon how the actions of September 1 would
conclude.
Perhaps the most important thing that occurs at gatherings like this is
not the centralized decision-making, but the experience of collective
power and determination. Thereâs nothing like the feeling of being in a
space with hundreds of comrades who have come to risk everything in the
struggle against oppression; it is utterly unlike daily life in the US.
At the beginning of the meeting, as the spokespersons of dozens of
affinity groups introduced themselves and stated their intentions, the
atmosphere was electric. After all the repression of the preceding days,
just being present was an act of courage and defiance. Comrades who
hadnât seen each other for years, perhaps not since they had last fought
side by side, embraced or nodded to one another in passing. Those
moments of connection, and the indomitable will to resist that made them
count, were themselves a sort of victory.
The following day, everything was suddenly up in the air again. As news
came in that another hurricane was headed for New Orleans and rumors
circulated that the RNC might be canceled, preparations ground to a halt
all around the city, as all eyes focused on the convergence center at
which another spokescouncil was taking place. After the Republicans
announced that they would hold only a shorter and less attended
afternoon session, the spokescouncil agreed that the blockades would go
forward, picked a new time for them to occur, and split up so affinity
groups could hastily reorganize their plans. Throughout the Twin Cities,
police cars prowled and sirens wailed, while paranoid activists wondered
whether they would even be able to get downtown the following morning.
The initial law enforcement response downtown was primarily from
individual Patrol Officers, who found themselves outnumbered and facing
hundreds of anarchists. Because of radio communication problems, Mobile
Field Force either did not respond or responded too late to assist the
Patrol Officers.
Between approximately 12:30 p.m. and 3:00 p.m., the anarchists moved
relatively freely through downtown Saint Paul. Loose items, including
planters, refuse containers, newspaper boxes and traffic signs, became
weapons of convenience for anarchists, who also used them to block
streets. During their rampage, the anarchists broke windows on buildings
and police cars, slashed tires on police cars and media vehicles,
blocked streets and attacked individuals, including police officers, RNC
delegates, and bystanders.[9] They also attempted to prevent RNC
delegates and delegate buses from entering the Xcel Energy Center.
Throughout the day, the anarchist groups engaged police in a game of
âwhack-a-moleâ, in which police were always chasing, but never
controlling, the anarchists.
Shortly before 3:00 p.m., MFF units gathered south and east of the
Landmark Center and began moving the anarchists out of downtown. This
led to a large confrontation between anarchists and law enforcement
along Kellogg. During these confrontations, MFF Officers used
less-than-lethal weapons. Facing MFF pressure, the anarchist groups
split at Kellogg and Robert, one group fleeing to the area of 9^(th) and
Temperance, where they were arrested or escaped. The other group fled to
Shepard Road. The anarchists on Shepard Road were driven west to a park
near Chestnut Road. At that location, the anarchists merged with a crowd
of bystanders. The MFF units surrounded and detained the entire crowdâ.
â Report of the RNC Public Safety Planning and Implementation Review
Commission
At 11 a.m., the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War rally
kicked off at the capitol, while three miles away police prevented
Macalester students from leaving to march to the rally site. Meanwhile,
anarchists all over the city were getting into position and some of the
first blockades were going up. By 12:30, the Funk the War march had left
the rally area, encountering a confused police attempt to stop it, and
the first hard blockade was in place on the I-94 off-ramp on the east
side of St. Paul. At 1 p.m., the permitted march departed from the
capitol; at the same time, there were major confrontations between
police and the Funk the War march, the black bloc moving through
northwest downtown, and the Bash Back! blockade. Protestors moved in and
out of intersections evading the police; in the southwest and northeast,
two new hard blockades were in place.
Between 1 and 2:30 p.m., a breakaway march departed from the Funk the
War march, while the black bloc was joined by many from Bash Back! All
over town, windows were smashed, squad car tires were slashed, and
delegate buses were swarmed. Police responded with horse charges, pepper
spray, tear gas, and rubber bullets. By 2:30, the permitted march had
returned to the capitol and the Macalester student march was finally on
its way.
Shortly before 3, the police dispersed the breakaway march, and hundreds
of anarchists headed to the capitol to regroup, quieting the north part
of St. Paul. Meanwhile, near the Xcel center on Kellogg, protestors were
roving from intersection to intersection in increasingly large groups;
many participants in earlier actions joined the Pagan Cluster and Funk
the War there.
After calls for reinforcement went out over the comms system, the
anarchists who had regrouped at the capitol began to march west around
the perimeter fence in the second Anticapitalist Bloc of the day. Within
the hour, the police utilized tear gas, pepper spray, concussion
grenades, and marker rounds to clear the area around the Xcel center,
pushing the Funk the War bloc east and bringing out the National Guard
to hold the ground they had retaken. Around 4 p.m., police illegally
raided the communications office; the arrestees were originally held on
probable cause for felonies, but were released without having been
charged. Meanwhile, the new Funk the War bloc dragged barricades into
the street in the course of its retreat, then split up; some
participants were mass-arrested in northeast downtown, while others
traveled west on Shepard and still others safely dispersed.
Late that afternoon, over 200 people were corralled at the intersection
of Shepard and Ontario, and most were mass-arrested. Most of the
detainees were simply there to attend the âTake Back Labor Dayâ concert
on Harriet Island.
In all, downtown St. Paul witnessed over ten hours of running
confrontations. After the initial blockades and marches were broken up,
protesters repeatedly found new convergence points such as the Funk the
War sound system. That night, at a spokescouncil hastily convened on a
college campus, a few dozen exhausted participants compared notes and
discussed plans for the following days.
The group that had formed to coordinate communications opted to use
Twitter to distribute SMS messages to participants, as the txt.mob
system used at the 2004 RNC had sometimes suffered significant
delays.[10] The comms team established user groups around themes such as
food and police activity, including one for each sector, so people could
sign up to receive information only about subjects that concerned them.
Scouts on the ground reported back to a communications hub at which
reports were verified and sent out.
After the raid on the comms space, the Coldsnap Legal Collectiveâs
Twitter became the de facto comms system, as people called the jail
support hotline to report unfolding events and legal workers passed
these on to the public. On Friday, August 29, only 23 people were
following Coldsnap Legal; a week later, over 1800 depended on it for
news updates.
In some situations, the comms system enabled groups to evade police
attacks and disperse safely. Others users complained that the flow of
information was overwhelming and it was hard to make practical use of it
on the streets, especially after the comms hub was raided and everyone
was depending on Coldsnapâs single feed.
Participants in the comms team have since published an detailed analysis
of their efforts.
As hoped, the events of September 1 set the stage for the rest of the
week, emboldening protesters and causing police to behave irrationally.
On Tuesday, just as the permitted Poor Peopleâs March was concluding,
police shut down an attempted Rage Against the Machine concert nearby.
The two crowds mingled; few avowed anarchists were present, but there
was a rebellious atmosphere, as participants had presumably seen footage
of the previous dayâs events. Police eventually forced the crowd to
disperse by attacking with smoke bombs, tear gas grenades, and marker
rounds. A similar scene played out the following night after the Rage
Against the Machine show in Minneapolis; there was a fair bit of
rebellious energy in the crowd, but no organized initiative to get
things off the ground, and eventually the police attacked, divided, and
dispersed the small march that occurred, arresting 102. Some have
speculated as to what might have occurred at these events had anarchists
been present with a plan; many anarchists were in jail or busy doing
arrestee support, but others did not show up because they had been so
focused on September 1 as to be totally unprepared for the rest of the
week.[11]
On the final day of the RNC, there was a march organized by the Anti-War
Committee, a group open to civil disobedience tactics. Police blocked
all the bridges downtown with snowplows. A reporter who had called
anarchists âhooligansâ three days earlier said, âThis city has never
felt more like a police stateâ. After police canceled the march permit,
over a thousand protesters spent several hours attempting to make their
way out of downtown. Once again, there were few avowed anarchists
present, but the crowd was not exactly docile. As night fell, police
began tear-gassing and pepper-spraying indiscriminately, eventually
forcing approximately 350 peopleâincluding reporters and civiliansâonto
Marion Street bridge and arresting them all. This flagrantly illegal
mass arrest was a public relations disaster for the city.
The blockades failed to prevent delegates from reaching the convention.
This may have been in part because of the last minute change in plans on
the part of the RNC: it must have been easier to get half as many people
into the convention center as originally planned. The small turnout from
outside the anarchist camp was also a contributing factor: had thousands
more protesters showed up, many would surely have reinforced the
blockades.
Ineffective as they were at their stated purpose, the blockades created
an unpredictable situation, stretching and distracting the police. By
forcing the authorities to focus on protecting access to the RNC rather
than controlling protesters, the blockading strategy opened space for
other tactics which might otherwise have been impossible. Had there
simply been a call for confrontational marches, the police might have
been able to surround and neutralize them, as in Denver on August 25.
This illustrates the strategic difference between what one calls for and
what one actually hopes to do.
The strategy also offered a point of entry for everyone who wished to
participate in direct action. It gave anarchists something to plan
around, which helped them feel invested in the mobilization. Without
this, it might have been difficult to get people to come to the RNC in
organized affinity groups, ready to act.
There is a tension in mass action strategizing between concentrating
forces for maximum strength and dispersing them for maximum surprise; if
protesters are too concentrated, they can be trapped, while if they are
spread too thin, they cannot support each other. The Seattle WTO
blockades took place in a space of a few blocks; the blockades at the
2007 G8 in Germany were spread out over many miles. Though some
protesters did spend hours wandering St. Paul looking for the action, by
and large the blockading strategy resulted in an optimal distribution of
forces.
As told to this Commission, the St. Paul Police Departmentâs approach to
anarchistâs [sic] efforts to block a street was: âIf we donât need a
particular intersection, let them have it.â The SPPD believed, through
this approach, they could prevent encounters with anarchists from
escalating, thereby limiting violence and the need for large numbers of
arrests. One consequence of this strategy, however, was a heavy emphasis
on mass crowd control[12] versus using extraction or targeted arrests
when anarchists were conducting violent or unlawful activities.
â Report of the RNC Public Safety Planning and Implementation Review
Commission
The police strategies at the 2004 RNC in New York and at the 2008 RNC in
St. Paul were both typical of those police departments. The NYPD is one
of the worldâs largest standing armies. It is accustomed to crowd
control, and was still benefiting from post-9/11 patriotism in
2004âhence it was easy to line the streets with thousands of police and
make targeted arrests rather than depending on chemical weapons. St.
Paul, on the other hand, is a smaller city unused to large events. The
liberal public was not excited about the RNC occurring there, so the
government hurried to reassure them that there would be no riots,
oppressive policing, or traffic disruptions, promising a surge in
shopping and emphasizing the $50 million security budget provided by the
Republican National Committee.
The Republican National Committee also hit on the innovation of offering
$10 million to cover any lawsuits from police misconductâacknowledging
that, even with the repressive laws on the books, the desired level of
repression would demand massive illegal activity from the forces of law
and order. Thus, while the city was concerned about PR, the police had a
free hand to break their own laws to the tune of $10 million.
In the months leading up to the RNC, a conflict played out between
Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher, on whose shoulders rested the actual
dirty work, and the St. Paul Police Department, which was struggling to
maintain its image. While the SPPD had promised a âSt. Paul modelâ in
contrast to the notoriously brutal âMiami modelâ from the 2003 FTAA
ministerial, Fletcher let it be known that the police would be out to
crack heads, predicting correctly that there would be at least 800
arrests.
Yet despite millions of dollars and months of intensive training, the
police were not prepared to control even a few hundred anarchists
coordinated within a versatile framework. Most of the police had been
positioned along the permitted march route; dispatch tapes reveal that
between noon and 2 p.m. on September 1, a communications breakdown
permitted anarchists to act freely throughout downtown. Fletcher later
said, âWe had 15 officers responsible for the conduct of 500 anarchists.
They were outnumbered 40 to oneâ. This should dispel the myth of an
invincible police state.
With the inflexibility typical of authoritarian institutions, once the
police escalated to more repressive tactics, they found it impossible to
de-escalate even when it was in their interest. Anarchists were not
actively organized after September 1, but that first day was enough;
after that, the police inflicted defeat after defeat upon themselves,
needlessly attacking and radicalizing civilians.
If the RNC had occurred without direct action or police brutality, this
would have signified that the resistance that flared up at the WTO
protests had been definitively quashed during the Bush years, heralding
a return to capitalist consensus. Instead, for the first time in years,
militant confrontations set the tone for the protests and the police
responded with indiscriminate violenceâa major black eye for the
government after all its assurances. Riot police filled the air with
tear gas directly in front of delegate hotels and illegally arrested
prominent journalists and at least one Republican delegate.
The events of September 1 indicate that even against the assembled might
of the state, a small organized group can escalate social conflict and
produce a situation in which others join in. Comparing the RNC to the
DNC, we can see that the authorities wouldnât have responded with such
intense repression if anarchists hadnât done effective organizing.
The Republican National Committee hit on the innovation of offering $10
million to cover any lawsuits from police misconductâacknowledging that,
even with the repressive laws on the books, the desired level of
repression would demand massive illegal activity from the forces of law
and order.
Whatever victories occurred in St. Paul came at a great price, however.
The few felony charges stemming from the RNC in 2000 had been a major
shock to activists; in contrast, 159 people were arrested for supposed
felonies during the 2008 RNC. Though most of those charges were dropped
or lowered, as of this writing 15 face pending felonies, several more
have pled, and new charges may still be filed. Between 2000 and 2008,
anti-anarchist repression had escalated dramatically, as FBI witch hunts
sent environmental activists and animal liberationists to prison for up
to decades. No convictions from mass mobilizations had resulted in
multiple-year prison sentences in the US since the 1990s, but Matthew
DePalma, an inexperienced youth entrapped into making Molotov cocktails
by informant Andrew Darst, was sentenced to 42 months after pleading
guilty. The other two defendants in federal cases, Bradley Crowder and
David McCay, currently await sentencing, and several other RNC
defendants may do time as well.
The RNC 8 case is perhaps the first instance in which public organizers
have been charged with terrorism simply for coordinating the logistics
of a mass mobilization. In this regard, it echoes the SHAC 7 case. Itâs
interesting how the concept of terrorism has evolved over the past
decade; after the September 11 attacks rocketed it into prominence, the
meaning of the term could only expand. At first, terrorism was
associated with Al Qaeda, an exotic, distant enemy almost all America
could agree to hate. Then it expanded to include eco-terrorists and
animal rights extremistsâa demographic somewhat closer to home. By the
time of the 2008 RNC, the sphere designated by the term seemed to be
broadening at an unstoppable pace. As of this writing, the terrorism
charges against the RNC 8 have just been dropped, signifying that the
terrorism bubble has perhaps reached the limits of its expansion;
meanwhile, felony conspiracy charges against the RNC 8 remain, and their
trial promises to be a major event.[13]
If the authorities create a new generation of activists inured to the
threat of prison time and the accusation of terrorism, they may regret
it. On the other hand, the anarchist movement in the US is small and has
very limited resources; there are only so many expensive and exhausting
trials it can afford. Only timeâand the outcomes of the pending
casesâwill tell if the repression resulting from the RNC mobilization is
sustainable.
Some have pointed to this repression and the case of the RNC 8 in
particular as evidence that it is foolish to organize resistance
publicly.[14] This is alarmist and misguided; the authorities would like
nothing better than for anarchists to draw this conclusion and retreat
into the shadows, losing track of one another and forfeiting the ability
to coordinate their own large-scale initiatives. Itâs important not to
be careless, but effective organizing against the government will always
result in repression, whether or not people choose public roles. In this
regard, itâs noteworthy that one of the RNC 8 was not involved in the
Welcoming Committee, but is being accused as an organizer nonetheless.
The more public our efforts are, the more we can build up momentum and
support, and the better equipped we will be to handle repression.
One example bears mentioning here. In the months leading up to the RNC,
the Pittsburgh Organizing Group, which first received national attention
during preparations for the Miami FTAA protests in 2003, publicly
announced that it would coordinate blockades in sector 1 of downtown St.
Paul, going so far as to identify the intersection. This struck
anarchists of a more clandestine bent as insane; some hypothesized that
it must be a red herring to mislead the police. But come September 1,
true to their word, Pittsburgh activists drove a car into the middle of
the intersection at 7^(th) and Wall, disabling it and shutting down the
intersection for some time; all their charges were subsequently dropped.
Let no one say it is impossible to organize resistance publicly.
Debates about public organizing aside, the WCâs approach made it easy to
infiltrate. Some infiltrators were more competent than others;
nevertheless, their appearance and behavior differentiated them from
others in the community, raising suspicions. Realizing this, the FBI
attempted to recruit at least one individual to infiltrate âvegan
potlucks,â convinced he would be trusted as he âlooked the partâ. By and
large, infiltrators seemed uninterested in radical politics and visibly
uncomfortable with the lifestyles of some anarchists, and displayed
classic informant behavior such as asking inappropriate questions while
accusing others of being agents. It is important not to decide who is
trustworthy solely on appearances, but itâs noteworthy that the
infiltrators turned out to be the ones who looked like cops. The WC had
identified most of the infiltrators in its midst long before they were
outed, but did not expel them for fear of defaming innocent people. Good
intentions are admirable, but we must also be able to protect
ourselvesâthe WC might have saved themselves a lot of grief by doing so.
The paranoia that often passed as security culture in convention
organizing offered limited protection. Vouching systems failed to keep
out informants such as Brandon Michael Darby, and taking batteries out
of cell phonesâas Darby did to create trust while wearing a wireâdid not
prevent surveillance. Real security culture depends on deep-rooted
social bonds and shared context, not to mention trusting oneâs
intuition. Anarchistsâ greatest strengths lie in solidarity and
communityâwe can find risk-free ways to cooperate with people who are
new to us, and take risks only with those we know and trust intimately.
People in the targeted communities have since expressed that they find
it difficult to trust anyone; this is exactly what the authorities want.
The RNC protests received nationwide coverage, but not as much as many
had hoped. At this point, anarchists have to accept that the corporate
media is not going to cover every broken window. The setbacks following
September 11, 2001 showed how important it is to be able to maintain
momentum without media attention. Anarchist organizing has to be aimed
at achieving something more lasting than airtime on the evening news.
At the same time, itâs important to see how media strategies affect
police repression and public response. Before the RNC, the police used
corporate media to assure the public of their good intentions and smear
anarchists as violent, waste-throwing invaders. This was essential to
prepare the grounds for repression; police have been using these
propaganda techniques since the Seattle WTO protests, when they learned
to script a strategy beforehand lest the media accidentally focus on
real issues.
Unfortunately, the WCâs approach to the media played into the hands of
the police. The WC experimented with various media strategy, ranging
from complete non-engagement to pre-written statements and theatrical
stunts. However, they did not fully engage with corporate media until
after the raids, when those who had not been arrested appeared unmasked
at the newly re-opened convergence space and took questions under their
real names. This initial reticence allowed the WC to retain its
mystique, but it also permitted the police to gain the upper hand,
leaving the WC constantly on the defensive.
The corporate media is corrupt and vapid, and cannot be trusted to
represent radicalsâor anyoneâfairly. At the same time, itâs important to
see the media as the battlefield on which the police position themselves
to attack. The WC did a brilliant job of using independent media to
build excitement in the radical community; it is unfortunate that it did
not also find ways to exploit the corporate media to outflank the
police.
The very use of the word âviolenceâ to describe the actions of
protesters in the face of the police state we witnessed is ridiculous.
Pepper spraying a girl repeatedly in the face after she attempted to
hand a flower to a police officer is violence. A broken Macyâs window is
not. And even though some activists donât prefer property damage as a
tactic, maintaining some amount of perspective is important. What is a
broken window compared to a million Iraqis killed, or entire cities
destroyed by the U.S. occupation forces? A whole lot of windows get
broken when the U.S. drops bombs. Which is the bigger concern?
â Katrina Plotz, member of the Anti-War Committee and the Coalition to
March on the RNC and Stop the War
By September 3, one could hear all the discussions from 1999 beginning
all over again. Is property destruction violence? Is it strategic? What
tactics can build an effective movement for liberation? To some extent,
itâs good news when we have to start from scratch again about these
issuesâit means new people are involved in the discussion. Too much
agreement on these questions is a sign of stagnation and insularity.
At the same time, intra-movement bickering provides the authorities
valuable opportunities, so it is potentially historic that the St. Paul
Principles served to prevent it. It remains to be seen whether this
agreement was a precedent for future mobilizations or simply an anomaly
produced by a dwindling antiwar movement. Would other protest groups
have sought mutual respect with anarchists if there had been more
influential allies available?
At the Seattle WTO protests, militant anarchists were a minority who
exerted influence by acting outside the central organizing framework. In
St. Paul, they were intimately involved in coordinating that central
framework. Does this indicate that anarchism is shifting from the
margins to become a significant force in political organizing? Or will
the intensity of government repression in St. Paul discourage organizers
from participating in future mobilizations based on diversity of
tactics? Or, for that matter, did anarchists simply inherit the antiwar
movement after everyone else had abandoned it?
After the MTV success of Nirvana and the explosion of âgrungeâ music,
record labels sought for years to find the ânext Seattleâ. Radicals who
grew up on footage of the riots outside the Seattle WTO summit have
engaged in a similar pursuit throughout the past decade. The Seattle WTO
protests have become a common point of reference for both protesters and
police. For the former, they are a sort of creation myth, and a messiah
some believe will come again; but you can never repeat the past, even if
it inspires you to make new history.
Letâs compare the RNC protests in St. Paul with the WTO protests, then,
since it is practically impossible not to. A great deal of the
organizing for Seattle was funded by NGOs, while the DNC and RNC
mobilizations came entirely out of grassroots initiatives. There were
only a few hundred utterly unprepared police in Seattle, while over the
past decade events such as the RNC have come to be defended by literally
military occupations; in that light, it is a miracle any direct action
occurred in St. Paul at all. Some New York anarchists who had
participated in the 2004 RNC reported that they had a much more
fulfilling experience in St. Paul. If it were possible to compose an
equation charting dollars spent on security and policing against numbers
of protesters, minutes of airtime, and degrees of disruption, we might
find that the 2008 RNC scored fairly well compared to the WTO protests.
Yet such an equation would tell us nothing about how effective the RNC
mobilization was at actually bringing us closer to liberation. The
critical difference between Seattle and St. Paul was that the WTO
protests brought tens of thousands of people, including but not limited
to anarchists, together in an unfamiliar and inspiring situation. The
RNC mobilization was a much more limited affair. However successful our
mobilizations are in themselves, they are useless if they do not
ultimately enable us to generalize the struggle against hierarchy.
It remains to be seen how the precedents set at the RNC, during a
comparatively quiet phase of social struggle, will influence events next
time resistance becomes widespread.
Viewed as a means of breaking a few windows or obtaining television
airtime, any multi-year organizing effort is extremely inefficient. But
the year and a half of preparation was valuable in itself as a means of
building networks, visibility, and experience; the same goes for the
legal support phase afterwards. Regardless of whether the RNC was
successfully blockaded, the real significance of the mobilization lies
in the way it raised the bar for what it means to organize as
anarchists. If those who cut their teeth preparing for the convention
continue to mobilize nationwide networks, organized into autonomous
affinity groups within a larger strategic framework, it will have been
worth the trouble. Often it is events like the RNC, or for that matter
the protests against the EU summit in Greece in 2003, that lay the
groundwork for anarchist participation in more spontaneous and
far-reaching uprisings such as the recent ones in Oakland and Greece.
So intensive organizing is valuable in itselfâbut was the RNC the most
sensible target? Probably not. As described, when it was first chosen,
anarchists expected it to attract tens of thousands of protesters from
other demographics. Once upon a time, the Republicans seemed
invincibleâby the time we finally built up the courage to take them on,
they were so weakened that we could not build a long-term organizing
strategy upon opposing them.[15] Between the backlash against Bush, the
hurricane, and the revelation that Palinâs unwed teenage daughter was
pregnant, the RNC would have been a disaster even without anarchist
resistance.
Obamaâs election marked the definitive end of the context that generated
the RNC protests. Now that the Bush years are over, anarchists should
congratulate ourselves on having survived a difficult era with at least
some vestiges of continuity and collective memory intact. The Obama era
poses its own challenges; we have to find new ways to mobilize and reach
out to potential comrades. We must lay down a root system that can
sustain us well into the 21^(st) century, so we can build on experiences
such as the DNC and RNC mobilizations.
As mentioned above, a few self-described anarchists had been horrified
that others were mobilizing militant resistance to both political
parties rather than trying to emulate the Obama campaign.
In November 2008, while many who had participated in the DNC and RNC
mobilizations were busy coordinating legal support, these individuals
resurfaced with a tortuous call to attend Obamaâs inauguration in a
spirit of âpresence rather than protestâ. The idea was to âgather as a
bloc, unmasked and with open arms, respecting the celebratory spirit of
the dayâ and âillustrate the many moments when people on this continent
and across the world aspired to better approximations of freedomâ.
Perhaps because there was nothing else scheduled for the inauguration, a
few respected organizing groups and a fair number of individuals signed
on to the call, but its apparent rejection of militant opposition
provoked vicious controversy. In the end, despite other calls, no other
mobilizations came together for the inauguration, and scant few people
participated in the âCelebrate Peopleâs History & Build Popular Powerâ
bloc.
Itâs hard not to interpret this call an as opportunist attempt to
counteract whatever momentum towards militant organizing had come out of
the convention protests. The originators of the call feared that if
anarchists took a stand against Obama it would guarantee âirrelevance,â
but the outcome showed that however limited the social base for
confrontational direct action might be, the social base for a more
conciliatory anarchism was practically nonexistent. Perhaps, in this era
of reformism and co-optation, resistance will be militant or else will
not be at all.
In the buildup to the DNC and RNC protests, anarchists had emphasized
opposition to all politicians and parties, including Obama. The absence
of any visible protest at the inauguration, despite the precedents from
the two previous inaugurations and the desire to maintain momentum from
the conventions, indicates that the militant wing of the anarchist
movement had exhausted itself. Perhaps if organizers had included plans
to protest at the inauguration in the mobilization against the
conventions, emphasizing that this would occur whoever won the election,
things might have played out differently. There are risks to picking
targets far in advance, but also to not doing so.
This anecdote illustrates how militant victories, however modest, can
provoke internal as well as external backlash. It also shows how
reformist victories can divide and disable anarchist organizing.
Although the inauguration may not have been the most strategic
opportunity to manifest opposition, it is important not to forget how
many other people have a stake in resisting the oppression they
experience daily. Remember the diverse crowd that gathered in outrage in
Denver, when the police mass-arrested the black bloc on August 25. Even
with Obama on the ballot or in the White House, when the lines are
drawn, people know where they stand in relation to authority.
[1] Some critics pose a false dichotomy between building radical
infrastructures and focusing on mass mobilizations; in fact, the latter
often produce the former.
[2] Bash Back! came out of a Midwest anarchist consulta in November
2007, initiated by queer anarchists who felt that there hadnât been
sufficient space for radical queer and trans participants at earlier
demonstrations. Months after the conventions, Bash Back! groups were
making headlines with provocative actions, and the network continued to
spread across the US.
[3] As one cynic quipped, âA lot of different things happened in
1968ânot all of them good!â
[4] The Free State produced an entire generation of Twin Cities
activists, some of whom later helped found the WC.
[5] Comically, these were coordinated by the ISAG Welcoming Committee, a
group promoting âdecentralized actionsâ which foreshadowed the RNC WC by
failing to engage with corporate media while police mobilized a massive
campaign of repression.
[6] One detainee who attempted to sing to the child to keep him calm was
gruffly instructed to âShut the fuck upâ by a gun-waving officer.
[7] Imagine the conscience of a person whose chosen career echoes that
of the most hated traitor in Christian history.
[8] This has continued since the RNC demonstrations. Older Twin Cities
progressives in particular have mobilized around the RNC 8 case.
[9] This is presumably disinformation, though there are reports of a
conflict between anarchists and pro-war demonstrators. Compared to
police officers, anarchists are extremely principled about not attacking
civilians.
[10] There were also security concerns, as txt.mob records had been
subpoenaed in subsequent court cases.
[11] While organizers in Denver risked spreading themselves too thin
between different events, in St. Paul it could have been advantageous to
plan more past September 1; on the other hand, there may simply not have
been enough time and resources for this.
[12] Indeed, at least 600 of the 818 people arrested during the RNC were
captured in mass arrests.
[13] Itâs noteworthy that the conspiracy charges against the RNC 8 were
brought by Ramsey County, not the federal government. Although it seems
strange that a liberal local government would be more eager to press
terrorist conspiracy charges than the federal government under Bush,
this appears to indicate that the RNC 8 case may not be an indication of
federal tactics to come so much as the initiative of overzealous local
authorities.
[14] Those who glorify clandestine action over participatory militant
organizing should ask Daniel McGowan, who participated in several major
Earth Liberation Front actions and went on to play a central role in
organizing the 2004 RNC protests, which he found to be more effective.
His address can be found at supportdaniel.org.
[15] See David Graeberâs âThe Shock of Victory,â available at
infoshop.org.