Coverage from the Poor People's March and the Police Attack afterwards
videos by Nick (nickcooper at indymedia dot org)
After the Poor People's March tonight in St. Paul, protesters stuck around too long for the police's patience. After firing all sorts of things at them, the protesters tried to leave and were sprayed from lines of cops on both sides of the street.
http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2008/09/02/policeattack1.mpg
http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2008/09/02/policeattack2.mpg
photos:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/09/02/18532281.php
Speech:
http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2008/09/02/speech.mpg
cops dressing:
http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2008/09/02/copsdress.mpg
undercover cops?:
http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2008/09/02/undercover1.mpg
http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2008/09/02/undercover2.mpg
marching:
http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2008/09/02/march1.mpg
cops on horizon:
http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2008/09/02/copsonhoritzon.mpg
in the underpass:
http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2008/09/02/underpass.mpg
church lady claps:
http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2008/09/02/churchladyclaps.mpg
just before the attacks:
http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2008/09/02/justbeforeattackbycops.mpg
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Comments
Funny
No audio or video of the cops repeatedly asking people to disperse and not congregate in the streets. Why won't you show us that part of the story? The repeated attempts that were ignored.
comply, for what
whining that people won't comply. there isn't law and order. snatch and grabs, preemptive arrests, oh wait, detainments, we can keep people from the streets. calling the black blocker's pussies? come on, why the preemptive raids, fair play by doing that? whatever, these cops are the pussies. straight up pussies. they hide behind their riot gear, guns, ar16s, blah blah blah. the pigs have more toys than a feces bomb. oh i'm so scared of the black bloc with the feces bombs. get real your cop suckers.
What?
What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
wow, you seriously used a
wow, you seriously used a line from a terrible adam sandler movie and didn't even bother to note it as being from a terrible adam sandler movie and instead passed it off as your own?
thumbs DOWN.
Funny the 3 little pigs in
Funny the 3 little pigs in this thread pretend they are not 3 little pigs.
True the video is edited and does not show what happens before. It'd be nice if it did.
Also a dispersal order does not justify tear gas and concussion granades.
Original
Again, the old trick, pigs, trolls, freepers. Wrong and not unexpected. Anything negative must be attributed to the cops because they are the enemy. Just like anything that goes wrong anywhere in the world is due to Bush's antics. Come on, can't you come up with anything else are you only capable of the same old rhetoric? Maybe one dispersal order doesn't warrant action (it actually does) but repeated warnings with no movement does.
Repeated warnings w/ no movement
Does the refusal by a group of peaceful political demonstrators to cave to repeated threats amid a gratuitous display of force really merit violence on the part of public officials? Seems to me the violence is a much graver offence than blocking an intersection (especially as the police have themselves already blocked off many other intersections).
In a putatively free society, why do so many seem to subscribe to the idea that public assemblies calling attention to serious grievances should be met with violence rather than patience? Those self-described champions of freedom who respect it only for themselves seem unaware of the impression of insanity such bald hypocrisy makes upon their opponents.
Or how about showing the
Or how about showing the black block pussies who have to hide behind masks, etc, throwing urine and fece bombs. Yeah, you guys are real peaceful.....BS. Oh, by the way the cops did not attack. They used smoke to disperse the crowd and then crowd movement techniques to clear the area. If the cops attacked there would've been a shitload more arrests.
o rly?
how many actually throw urine and feces? you guys like to hype this up a lot but i've yet to see it personally.
forgot...
not to mention the fact that all the stormtroopers, errr, riot police aren't wearing badge numbers or anything identifiable to hold them accountable for any illegal actions they partake in.
why bother blockading the roads downtown after the march is over? what if we lived in the area? parked somewhere near by? have to catch the bus?
where do all these blanket statements come from that anarchists are all rabble-rousers from out of town hell bent on throwing feces? [cough]strib[/cough]
Forgot
Oh, you don't like when they aren't wearing easily identifiable clothing when "committing illegal acts"? Sound familiar at all? The answer to why all anarchists are being painted as "rabble-rousers" is found on the rnc welcoming committee website, which expresses the plan for solidarity:
The principles are:
1. Our solidarity will be based on respect for a diversity of tactics and the plans of other groups.
2. The actions and tactics used will be organized to maintain a separation of time or space.
3. Any debates or criticisms will stay internal to the movement, avoiding any public or media denunciations of fellow activists and events.
4. We oppose any state repression of dissent, including surveillance, infiltration, disruption and violence. We agree not to assist law enforcement actions against activists and others.
The RNC Welcoming Committee, The Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War, The Anti-war Committee, SDS-U of MN, Communities United Against Police Brutality, The Welfare Rights Committee, and Unconventional Action – Chicago were among the first to sign on to these principles. As other groups sign on to these principles, a unified, effective, and radical front will form.
So, you can't complain about being painted with the same brush when you state that you respect the tactics of other groups and will not criticize these tactics on anything but an internal basis. I think much more respect would be gained by standing up and stating what you believe is wrong (besides Bush, Capitalists, blah, blah, blah) but I'm sure I'd be called a cop, troll, freeper, blah, blah, blah.
forgot...
not to mention the fact that all the stormtroopers, errr, riot police aren't wearing badge numbers or anything identifiable to hold them accountable for any illegal actions they partake in.
why bother blockading the roads downtown after the march is over? what if we lived in the area? parked somewhere near by? have to catch the bus?
where do all these blanket statements come from that anarchists are all rabble-rousers from out of town hell bent on throwing feces? [cough]strib[/cough]
I breathed some of that "smoke"
The demonstrators in the Poor Peoples' march were peaceful. All violence I saw was committed by the police. Your claims about urine and feces are probably just government propaganda; certainly, the Sherriffs' claim that the RNCWC was planning to throw urine on people has fizzled under scrutiny by the NLG, and I've seen nothing of the kind, nor any reports of anyone doing that, let alone feces. The vandalism committed by a very small handful out of more than ten thousand demonstrators over the past couple of days hardly justifies the claim that we're violent. And history tells me that the reports of an assault on an elderly delegate will likely prove later to be either wholly fabricated or else committed by agents provocateurs.
In fact, I witnessed a few hundred peaceful, unarmed young demonstrators standing and calling out dozens of well-armed and armored riot police on their outrageous threat to gas, and the yet more outrageous fulfilment of the threat. It was not smoke, but tear gas which, hours later, led my gal (absent from the demo) to start coughing as it reeked from my clothing, although I'd actually walked through only a small amount of it. I saw people with injuries, including one fellow being treated by a field medic for a head wound that left him staggering with the help of a friend.
Since when are police justified in violently assaulting a crowd when the only threat apart from the police themselves is the possibility that they might be inspired by the demonstrators and get a clue?
Great Stuff
I hope there's some freedom-loving country elsewhere on earth that can liberate North America from the neocon war criminals, and their paid SPPD thugs.
Sweden would be nice... Hey
Sweden would be nice...
Hey guys, please invade the US. Thanx.
Clever editing ignores what happened before the "attack"
Interesting that you didn't post what happened before the flash-bombs; you know when the police warned "please do not congregate at this intersection." You wanted to be attacked, and congratulations--you got your wish. Just like when banners were rammed into the cops at 7th and Minnesota yesterday as the Funk the War / Students for Democratic Society obstructed Minnesota St. The cops asked to you to turn right onto 7th. You attacked them by slamming into them as you tried to go straight. You wanted to get pepper sprayed there, and you got your wish (they showed good restraint by waiting about 20 seconds between when they were first attacked--when they used their bikes as shields--and when they finally made you run away scared).
Your attacks on the RNC have failed (your only success was getting bleach on the face of an 80-year-old woman; you must be so proud). Since you can't get into the RNC perimeter you are trying to harass and disrupt the lives of regular people that live in the neighborhoods near, but outside, of the perimeter. These are not your streets. They are everyone's streets, including people who don't protest, and including us "sheeple" (the ad hominem attack used for those who choose not to break things) . I'm sorry you don't know how to share. By dispersing the crowd, the police ensured that the streets could be given back to THE PEOPLE, even as you tried to take them away from us.
The police allow me to walk wherever I want in my neighborhood. The so-called "anarchists" are trying to prevent me from doing that. While it has been fun to watch you run away when the big bad cops* come after you, I won't miss you when you're gone.
--From a hard-core anti-republican (like the vast majority those who live in the NEIGHBORHOODS you're attacking here in St. Paul since you can't get Republicans), who just wants his home to not be destroyed.
(*who obviously will not use any REAL brutality against you--if for no other reason because of the cameras--which is what gives you the "courage" to face up to them. If you really thought they'd use deadly force or injure you more than squeezing your arm or getting some pepper spray/tear gas in your face, I'm guessing not many of you would be so "tough.")
Kudos for your protest efforts
I'm a 4th generation resident here in St. Paul, and I FULLY support all those protesting here this week. Has the police presence been an inconvenience to me? Sure. But given the fascist path the Republicans have taken the nation down during the past 8 years, the police should be arresting Bush and Cheney at the RNC. That would bring peace to the streets faster than the chemical weapons they're using right now.
They never show the crap
They never show the crap they pull, only what the police do. We're not stupid, we know the truth. You instigate until the cops take action and then you whine. Leave our city - your presence is pointless and disruptive to the citizens.
Clever censorship ignores the attacks on my country
If the peeple suffuring in my country had the sort of news coverge these protests have, maybe the war would be over. Downtown Baghdad looks like his every day. At least now I know there are sum Americans who don't support Bush and his murderers.
not editing, but good point
I did not imply nor did I mean to fool anyone that a warning wasn't issued before the police attacked. I think I might have heard the warning twice in fact. It was not clever editing, or any other sort of editing, as these video clips went directly from my camera into these computer files without me first editing them. However, I was pushing the record and pause buttons while shooting as my battery was low at the time, and I also made an editorial choice as to where I started and stopped the clips I uploaded. Even if I had been recording when the warnings were issued, I don't think they would be very audible on my videos because I wasn't standing too close to the cop with the bullhorn. But I definitely heard them myself.
Thanks
Thanks for the clarification. I believe it's important to note that there were warnings and it wasn't an "unprovoked attack" as we keep hearing.
Warnings and Provocation
If I warn you that I'm about to crack your skull unless you give me your seat on a bus, does your refusal to yield it constitute a provocation that justifies my use of force?
Our government, in the hands of the party occupying the Xcel Center, has been committing major, world-historical war crimes for several years, killing more than a million innocent people. It blatantly violates many of our most fundamental laws. It neglects essential infrastructure and cynically uses consequent flooding as a pretext to ethnically purge a major city to its political advantage. It rigs national elections, subverting democracy and the primary remedy for our complaints against it. This same party's control over the media enables the government it occupies to ignore these complaints.
Under circumstances that very nearly warrant armed insurrection, the public assembles peacefully to demand government attention to these grave issues. Rather than respond to the complaint, as is the duty of all democratic governments, officials respond with threats and violence.
Corrupt government is testing the public's patience, not vice versa.
Not Quite
Well, in your own writing, you say that "the protesters stuck around too long for the police's patience". It had nothing to do with patience, in fact they showed considerable restraint. It had to do with the fact that they didn't heed the warnings. Trying to paint it in a different light, though clever, assigns blame to the police and not where it belongs. This, combined with the lack of video showing the beginning of the conflict, tells the wrong story.
patience vs. restraint
> Well, in your own writing, you say that "the protesters stuck around too long for the police's patience".
I stand by that.
> It had nothing to do with patience
The fact that police even issued a warning in the first place, showed that they were impatient with people being in a certain area, in which the people had every right to be.
> in fact they showed considerable restraint.
This is silly, when the police were pepper spraying from both sides of the street simultaneously the folks who were trying to flee with concussion grenade things, not only was it unrestrained, it was punitive and served no peace-keeping function.
> It had to do with the fact that they didn't heed the warnings.
Had they left earlier, I agree that particular incident wouldn't have occurred. However, some of those there would have been snatched off the street later by a snatch-squad, and others swept up in illegal house raids the next morning. The fact that people stood there together refusing to leave immediately showed to me the fact that people found together a momentary strength to respond to the illegal force that has been used all week. When the police raid houses and snatch people off the street, people feel isolated, but there, for a moment, they had coverage, lots of cameras were rolling.
> Trying to paint it in a different light, though clever, assigns blame to the police and not where it belongs.
I am ok with us disagreeing, but your assumptions about what I am trying to do are going to be quite difficult for you to show. How about this -- you give your opinions and I'll give mine and we won't pretend we know what each other are trying to do or assign motives.
> This, combined with the lack of video showing the beginning of the conflict, tells the wrong story.
There is alot of video I wish I had to better tell the story. I don't think it is real clear from my video that police were indiscriminately shooting tear gas from both sides of the street at the same time at people trying to flee, because unfortunately I was a bit distracted for a moment.
Agree to Disagree
1. The protesters stuck around too long, disobeying the cop's orders.
B. The fact that police issued the order in the first place does not indicate impatience. In your post, you said that everything happened after the march. The march was over. Disperse. There was no right to congregate in the streets.
C. Thanks for agreeing that had they left earlier, it wouldn't have happened.
4. I don't know your motives. Agreed.
You Said It
You said it yourself. The cameras were rolling. That has been the motivation. Paint yourself as martyrs. You just feed into it with your "unprovoked attacks" and "illegal force". Of course you have an agenda, don't pretend you don't.
Orange Revolution Needed In the U.S.A.
These Gestapo-like police tactics have predictable outcomes. If covered, they distract from more potent news or embarrassing disclosures. Targeted activists pay a price for defending their civil rights. Others are deterred from defending or asserting them or even voting. Some activists will be outraged, their behavior may become more extreme. They may step outside protected speech into more assertive acts of civil disobedience, “justifying” the Right’s exercise of Pre-Crime jurisdiction.
All of that is predictable, worth a junior Rovite’s time, but not their bosses’, not that of the Great Karl himself. So what else is being tested? To measure the public’s willingness to pay attention, to respond with disdain and outrage? To verify who’s “the enemy”? An old Stalinist trick is to encourage or incite civil protest in order to identify, isolate and take out its leaders.
Is it to desensitize the public, to train them to passively accept these abuses? Just as the public has learned to take off its shoes, turn on its laptops (or relinquish them at borders so that Big Brother can copy their drives), and remain calm during full body cavity searches and the extraction of “dangerous” nipple rings before boarding aircraft. Whatever its goals, when it comes to holding onto power, today’s neocon Republican Party carefully plans its moves.
Big Noise Coverage of Poor People's March
There is coverage from this protest on Big Noise Films here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF8mydrl6Xw
The Rake Reports on Poor People's March Attack
http://www.rakemag.com/mayhem-mickeys-diner
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