By Marjorie Cohn
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 pre-empt lawful protest against the policies
of the Bush administration during the convention.
Since Friday, local police and sheriffs,
working with the FBI, conducted pre-emptive searches, seizures and arrests.
Glenn Greenwald described the targeting of protesters 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.
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 protesters. “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 antiwar, 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. Pre-emptive 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 of the political nature
of the police action was the boarding up of the Convergence Center,
where protesters 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 protesters 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.
protesters 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 protesters.