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Preemptive Strikes Against Protest at RNC |
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(originally published at MWC News)
In the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities. On May 21, the Minneapolis City Pages ran a recruiting story called “Moles Wanted.” Law enforcement sought to preempt lawful protest against the policies of the Bush administration during the convention.
Since Friday, local police and sheriffs, working with the FBI, conducted preemptive searches, seizures and arrests. Glenn Greenwald described the targeting of protestors by “teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets.” Journalists were detained at gunpoint and lawyers representing detainees were handcuffed at the scene.
“I was personally present and saw officers with riot gear and assault rifles, pump action shotguns,” said Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, who is representing several of the protestors. “The neighbor of one of the houses had a gun pointed in her face when she walked out on her back porch to see what was going on. There were children in all of these houses, and children were held at gunpoint.”
The raids targeted members of “Food Not Bombs,” an anti-war, anti-authoritarian protest group that provides free vegetarian meals every week in hundreds of cities all over the world. They served meals to rescue workers at the World Trade Center after 9/11 and to nearly 20 communities in the Gulf region following Hurricane Katrina.
Also targeted were members of I-Witness Video, a media watchdog group that monitors the police to protect civil liberties. The group worked with the National Lawyers Guild to gain the dismissal of charges or acquittals of about 400 of the 1,800 who were arrested during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. Preemptive policing was used at that time as well. Police infiltrated protest groups in advance of the convention.
Nestor said that no violence or illegality has taken place to justify the arrests. “Seizing boxes of political literature shows the motive of these raids was political,” he said.
Further evidence the political nature of the police action was the boarding up of the Convergence Center, where protestors had gathered, for unspecified code violations. St. Paul City Council member David Thune said, “Normally we only board up buildings that are vacant and ramshackle.” Thune and fellow City Council member Elizabeth Glidden decried “actions that appear excessive and create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation for those who wish to exercise their first amendment rights.”
“So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protestors who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do,” Greenwald wrote on Salon.
Preventive detention violates the Fourth Amendment, which requires that warrants be supported by probable cause. Protestors were charged with “conspiracy to commit riot,” a rarely-used statute that is so vague, it is probably unconstitutional. Nestor said it “basically criminalizes political advocacy.”
On Sunday, the National Lawyers Guild and Communities United Against Police Brutality filed an emergency motion requesting an injunction to prevent police from seizing video equipment and cellular phones used to document their conduct.
During Monday’s demonstration, law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force. At least 284 people were arrested, including Amy Goodman, the prominent host of Democracy Now!, as well as the show’s producers, Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. “St. Paul was the most militarized I have ever seen an American city to be,” Greenwald wrote, “with troops of federal, state and local law enforcement agents marching around with riot gear, machine guns, and tear gas cannisters, shouting military chants and marching in military formations.”
Bruce Nestor said the timing of the arrests was intended to stop protest activity, “to make people fearful of the protests, but also to discourage people from protesting,” he told Amy Goodman. Nevertheless, 10,000 people, many opposed to the Iraq war, turned out to demonstrate on Monday. A legal team from the National Lawyers Guild has been working diligently to protect the constitutional rights of protestors.
Marjorie Cohn, MWC News Magazine senior editor, is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. Cohn is the author of, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law
Repeat after me:
Conspiracy to Deprive Constitutional Rights - 18 U.S.C. ? 241
IFATREE is right on track about 18 U.S.C. 241. But, if the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the FBI, and the Civil Rights Division is run by the Bush administration or the Republicans you are guaranteed that DOJ will not enforce the criminal civil rights statute to protect political dissidents or other perceived undesirables, particularly African-Americans. This has been demonstrated in the track record of Jeb Bush and George Bush handpicking former Bay County, Florida, Sheriff Guy Tunnell to be the Commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcment (FDLE) in Florida and the Chairman of the Multistate Antiterrorist Information Exchange (MATRIX) citizen spying program that has since gone defunct due to protests of several state governments in this country. Google “Guy Tunnell” and “racist” and “MATRIX” and “Glenn Hess” and “Sundancer” to research his history of 18 U.S.C. 241 violations that the Bush administration, Jeb and George, and Florida Govrnor Charlie Crist, who voted for Tunnell as Attorney General, have let him get away with, as well as Tunnell’s former attorney, Glenn Hess, when Tunnell was sheriff in Bay County. Also Google “Guy Tunnell” and “Kevin Wood” or “Glenn Hess” and “Kevin Wood” to see my history and position in 18 U.S.C. 241 battles in North Florida and Bay County involving Tunnell and Hess. Currently the U.S. Department of Justice, FBI, and Civil Rights Division (DOJ) are ignoring requests to do an 18 U.S.C. 241 investigation related to Guy Tunnell, Glenn Hess, and remarkably the death of a black teen, Martin Lee Anderson, killed by boot camp guards, and a nurse, in Bay County Florida hired and established by Tunnell. Google “Martin Lee Anderson.” The national press has yet to catch on to the Tunnell, Hess, Anderson 18 U.S.C. problem in North Florida and the coverup by Jeb/George/Charlie Crist/DOJ of these criminal violations. God save America if John McCain is elected President and 18 U.S.C 241/242 violations will escalate geometrically. Tunnell resigned from FDLE and the Bay County state attorney’s office after a history of 18 U.S.C. 241, and 242, violations. Glenn Hess resigned as a circuit judge in Bay County while facing substantiated allegations of 18 U.S.C. 241, 242. Glenn Hess is now running for State Attorney in Bay County for a November 2008 election in Florida. God save Bay County and the 14th Judicial Circuit if HE is elected. The national media, again, needs to step in to help protect the citizens of North Florida and ask why DOJ is not enforcing 18 U.S.C. 241 and 242. I’ve done the best I can do for the last two decades on behalf of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the NAACP, UNITED, and the Northwest Florida Coalition for Human Rights and Dignity. But without a properly functioning Department of Justice, FBI, and Civil Rights Division (DOJ) we are banging our heads against a solid brick wall. The media is our only hope and an army of investigative reporters that understant 18 U.S.C. 241 and 242 may be our only hope. When I was sworn in as an officer of the SCLC by Martin Luther King, III, in Bay County a few years back I had hope. That hope has dwindled, but it hasn’t dissapeared. As a Christian, and a piano player at my church, I pray every week and every day for help from the national media because our local media so connected to our “good ‘ole boys” in Bay County are useless and refuse to address the matter. It is suspected that advertising revenue would suffer if the truth of 18 U.S.C. 241 and 242 violations in Bay County were exposed. We need help. Our country needs help to protect us from continuing 18 U.S.C. 241 and 242 violation.
Kevin Woods,
Not only are you CRAZY, you’re a LIAR as well! I hope and pray that one day, I’ll have the opportunity to address you FACE-TO-FACE!
May God have mercy on your lunatic soul!
Roamin828:
I will pray for your soul. You call me a liar yet you provide no evidence to counter my facts or statements of law in my post.
By calling me a liar you are lying that displeases our God and our Lord Jesus as not only forbidden by the Old Testament, but the New. The New also emphasizes love. Glenn Hess and Guy Tunnell have abandoned the Old and the New. May God forgive them. I do. But Man still has a duty to hold them accountable. Thank God we now have President Obama who will shortly order an investigation into why Hess’s and Tunnell’s 18 U.S.C. 241, 242 etc. criminal civil rights violations have been covered up by Florida Governor Charlie Crist, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, his brother Jeb Bush, and the Department of Justice (FBI, U.S. Attorney, Civil Rights Division).
As to face-to-face with you. Any time in a public place in Panama City, Florida. I’ll bring my evidence. You bring yours. Of course no such meeting will occur because you have no evidence.
The Life Management Center in Panama City offers psychological counseling for folk like you as well as your pastor, if you attend church. I play piano for my church. You are welcome to attend as are Hess and Tunnell.
His brother “GEORGE” Bush, that is.