[CitizensTruth] Federal government involved in raids on protesters

[Daniel Stafford]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/31/raids/index.html


  Glenn Greenwald <http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/>

Sunday Aug. 31, 2008 11:46 EDT


    Federal government involved in raids on protesters

*(update below)*

As the police attacks on protesters in Minnesota continue -- see this 
video <http://qik.com/video/250215> of the police swarming a bus 
transporting members of Earth Justice, seizing the bus and leaving the 
group members stranded on the side of the highway -- it appears 
increasingly clear that it is the Federal Government that is directing 
this intimidation campaign. Minnesota Public Radio reported 
<http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/08/30/more_raids/?refid=0> 
yesterday that "the searches were led by the Ramsey County Sheriff's 
office. Deputies coordinated searches with the Minneapolis and St. Paul 
police departments *and the Federal Bureau of Investigation*."

Today's /Star Tribune/ 
<http://www.startribune.com/local/27703754.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUX> 
added that the raids were specifically "aided by informants planted in 
protest groups." Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted 
<http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/05/21/in-minneapolis-vegan-terrorist/> 
that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force -- an inter-agency group 
of federal, state and local law enforcement led by the FBI -- was 
actively recruiting Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to 
infiltrate "vegan groups" and other left-wing activist groups and report 
back to the Task Force about what they were doing. There seems to be 
little doubt that it was this domestic spying by the Federal Government 
that led to the excessive and truly despicable home assaults 
<http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/30/police_raids/index.html> 
by the police yesterday.

So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law 
enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protesters who have 
committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by 
months-long espionage efforts to track what they do. And as 
extraordinary as that conduct is, more extraordinary is the fact that 
they have received virtually no attention from the national media and 
little outcry from anyone. And it's not difficult to see why. As the 
recent "overhaul" of the 30-year-old FISA law illustrated -- preceded by 
the endless expansion of surveillance state powers, justified first by 
the War on Drugs and then the War on Terror -- we've essentially decided 
that we want our Government to spy on us without limits. There is 
literally no police power that the state can exercise that will cause 
much protest from the political and media class and, therefore, from the 
citizenry.

Beyond that, there is a widespread sense that the targets of these raids 
deserve what they get, even if nothing they've done is remotely illegal. 
We love to proclaim how much we cherish our "freedoms" in the abstract, 
but we despise those who actually exercise them. The Constitution, right 
in the very First Amendment, protects free speech and free assembly 
precisely because those liberties are central to a healthy republic -- 
but we've decided that anyone who would actually express truly dissident 
views or do anything other than sit meekly and quietly in their homes 
are dirty trouble-makers up to no good, and it's therefore probably for 
the best if our Government keeps them in check, spies on them, even gets 
a little rough with them.

After all, if you don't want the FBI spying on you, or the Police 
surrounding and then invading your home with rifles and seizing your 
computers, there's a very simple solution: don't protest the Government. 
Just sit quietly in your house and mind your own business. That way, the 
Government will have no reason to monitor what you say and feel the need 
to intimidate you by invading your home. Anyone who decides to protest 
-- especially with something as unruly and disrespectful as an 
*unauthorized* street march -- gets what they deserve.

Isn't it that mentality which very clearly is the cause of virtually 
everyone turning away as these police raids escalate against citizens -- 
including lawyers, journalists and activists -- who have broken no laws 
and whose only crime is that they intend vocally to protest what the 
Government is doing? Add to that the fact that many good establishment 
liberals are embarrassed by leftist protesters of this sort and wish 
that they would remain invisible, and there arises a widespread 
consensus that these Government attacks are perfectly tolerable if not 
desirable.

During the Olympics just weeks ago, there was endless hand-wringing over 
the efforts by the Chinese Government to squelch dissent and incarcerate 
protesters. On August 21, /The Washington Post/ fretted 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/08/21/ST2008082100740.html>:

    Six Americans detained by police this week could be held for 10
    days, according to Chinese authorities, who appear to be
    intensifying their efforts to shut down any public demonstrations
    during the final days of the Olympic Games. . . .

    Chinese Olympic officials announced last month that Beijing would
    set up zones where people could protest during the Games, as long as
    they had received permission. None of the 77 applications submitted
    was approved, however, and several other would-be protesters were
    stopped from even applying.

On August 2, /The Post/ gravely warned 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR2008080103717_pf.html>: 


    Behind the gray walls and barbed wire of the prison here, eight
    Chinese farmers with a grievance against the government have been
    consigned to Olympic limbo.

    Their indefinite detainment, relatives and neighbors said, is *the
    price they are paying for stirring up trouble* as China prepares to
    host the Beijing Games. *Trouble, the Communist Party has made
    clear, will not be permitted*.

Would /The Washington Post/ ever use such dark and accusatory tones to 
describe what the U.S. Government does? Of course it wouldn't. Yet how 
is our own Government's behavior in Minnesota any different than what 
the Chinese did to its protesters during the Olympics (other than the 
fact that we actually have a Constitution that prohibits such behavior)? 
And where are all the self-righteous Freedom Crusaders in our nation's 
establishment organs who were so flamboyantly criticizing the actions of 
a Government on the other side of the globe as our own Government 
engages in the same tyrannical, protest-squelching conduct with exactly 
the same motives?

Just review what happened yesterday and today. Homes of college-aid 
protesters were raided by rifle-wielding police forces. Journalists were 
forcibly detained at gun point. Lawyers on the scene to represent the 
detainees were handcuffed. Computers, laptops, journals, diaries, and 
political pamphlets were seized from people's homes. And all of this 
occurred against U.S. citizens, without a single act of violence having 
taken place, and nothing more serious than traffic blockage even alleged 
by authorities to have been planned.

A man whose sister was one of those arrested at one of the raided houses 
in Minneapolis yesterday emailed me a photograph of her and her friend 
who was also arrested -- Monica Bicking (r.) and Eryn Trimme -- and he 
wrote this:

    They are still in custody. I've been told that the police have 36
    hours to charge her, and that 36 hours starts after the labor day
    holiday, so they only have to charge her sometime Wednesday. It
    seems unlikely that they'd do anything to expedite her or Eryn's
    release.

    They were then planning to actually board up her house for
    unspecified "code violations", but apparently her neighbors were
    very vocal, and the police ended up agreeing not to do anything so
    long as the front door was fixed by 6pm (the front door they'd
    busted in).

Heres is the extraordinary blog item 
<http://iwitnessvideo.info/blog/index.html> I linked to yesterday from 
Eileen Clancy, one of the founders of I-Witness Video -- a NYC-based 
video collective which is in St. Paul to document the policing of the 
protests around this week's Republican National Convention, just as they 
did at the 2004 GOP Convention in New York. Clancy wrote this as a plea 
for help, as the Police surrounded her house and (before they had a 
search warrant) told everyone inside that they'd be arrested if they 
exited the home:

    This is Eileen Clancy . . . The house where I-Witness Video is
    staying in St. Paul has been surrounded by police. We have locked
    all the doors. We have been told that if we leave we will be
    detained. One of our people who was caught outside is being detained
    in handcuffs in front of the house. The police say that they are
    waiting to get a search warrant. More than a dozen police are
    wielding firearms, including one St. Paul officer with a long gun,
    which someone told me is an M-16.

    We are suffering a preemptive video arrest. For those that don't
    know, I-Witness Video was remarkably successful in exposing police
    misconduct and outright perjury by police during the 2004 RNC. Out
    of 1800 arrests, at least 400 were overturned based solely on video
    evidence which contradicted sworn statements which were fabricated
    by police officers. It seems that the house arrest we are now under
    and the possible threat of the seizure of our computers and video
    cameras is a result of the 2004 success.

    We are asking the public to contact the office of St. Paul Mayor
    Chris Coleman at 651-266-8510 to stop this house arrest, this gross
    intimidation by police officers, and the detention of media
    activists and reporters.

That sounds like what it was: a cry for help from a hostage. Hours 
later, the Police finally obtained a search warrant -- for the wrong 
house, one adjacent to the house where they were being detained -- and 
nonetheless broke in, pointing guns, forced them to lay on the floor and 
handcuffed everyone inside (and handcuffed a National Lawyers Guild 
attorney outside). They searched the house, arrested nobody, and then left.

Any rational person planning to protest the GOP Convention would, in 
light of this Government spying and these police raids, think twice -- 
at least -- about whether to do so. That is the point of the raids -- to 
announce to citizens that they best stay in their homes and be good, 
quiet, meek, compliant people unless they want their homes to be 
invaded, their property seized, and have rifles pointed at them, too. 
The fact that this behavior is producing so little outcry only ensures, 
for obvious reasons, that it will continue in the future. We love our 
Surveillance State for keeping us safe and maintaining nice, quiet order.

*__*

And Feministing has the video -- here 
<http://www.feministing.com/archives/010742.html> -- of the scene 
yesterday where journalists were detained, along with an interview with 
the homeowner whose house was raided.

-- Glenn Greenwald

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