Travesty In St. Paul - We Need To Speak Out!
I have gone to the Salon.com website with Glenn Greenwald’s posting where I watched the most disturbing videos of the invasion of so-called “hippy homes” in a St. Paul neighborhood, by the Ramsey County sheriff’s office, early this morning. These police raids can only be described as brutal and unjustified home invasions. They handcuffed innocent young people, average age 20, and took their computers, laptops and personal papers. They carried search warrants so generic they could have barged in to the “Father Knows Best” household. Most unusual is the fact the warrants authorized confiscation of bomb-making materials, glass bottles, incendiary devices, plastic boxes, cardboard, twine– none of which were found…. Do you have any of these things at home? Most likely.
This is not a tiny event. This ought to be a huge national news story, and the Republican National Convention should be called to task for this unprecedented police action. McCain should answer for it! This is worse than the already terrible arrests of journalists covering protest marches.
I’m going to forward this message to as many media folks as I know. You should do the same, or write your own. McCain’s wife said, about Hurricane Gustav, “We need to take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats.” How about we put on our “Safe in Our Homes and Free to peacebly assemble” hats!!!
Accessibly yours,
Paul Berg, Executive Director
Weston Community Media Center, Inc.
Weston, MA
on September 9th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Hey Paul,
Welcome to the new world order in the age of homeland security! This has been brewing for some time, in fact search and seizures as bad as these go back years - it’s just never reported and therefore never happened. One recent twist was the passage of FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) which pretty much legitimizes this kind of legal misconduct. This isn’t a Democratic or Republican issue - both are guilty of willful constitutional neglect in this regard - and both parties should be held accountable.
There’s a PDF copy of the search warrant affidavit used in one St Paul raid on the IMC site:
http://twincities.indymedia.org/2008/sep/copy-affidavit-used-rnc-wc-raids
What’s immediately evident is that the Police (which in this instance would have to include the secret service and FBI) just don’t understand the use of irony by activists and anarchist groups. The seriousness in which they analyze the RNCWC video would be hilarious if not so purposively deceptive. They also exhibit an approach to levying conspiracy charges in a manner that seems . . . well . . . conspiratorial.
This in from iWitness in St Paul:
- Michael Eisenmenger