FBI informant guilty

The Star Tribune:

Andrew Darst, 30, who is said to have played an important role in an undercover investigation of anarchist protesters at the Republican National Convention, was found guilty of third-degree damage to property, a gross misdemeanor, and two counts of assault in the fifth degree, which are misdemeanors. He was found not guilty of two counts of first- and second-degree burglary, both felonies.

You don't hear very often that FBI informants are being tried for the same activities they're informing the FBI about. What's interesting also is the case Darst's defense attorneys came up with to prevent Mr. Darst from going to jail like many of the protesters he and the institution he worked for incarcerated.

Michael Colich, a prominent Minneapolis criminal defense attorney, said Darst would be labeled a "snitch" if he goes to jail and might be potentially at risk, so his attorney will likely strongly argue for an alternative to jail such as home detention and community service.

Notes on the undercovers

They look like your mom. They look like your older brother. They even cry when you doubt that they're really friends with you, and say they'll stick up for you.

Who are they? The undercover fuzz.

The Campus Anti-War Network has just exposed an informant named Jason Mumford who was informing the FBI about numerous individuals involved in the Wild Rose Rebellion group and University Of Iowa Anti-War Committee. (I would tell you that this information came from a facebook message but then I'd have to kill you, you see.)

Here's a video of him infiltrating his own rally:

Sometimes I wonder just how many people actually work for the FBI. It looks like in 2004 the FBI had 28,576 total employees, which was before a 2004 executive order created even more employment for the FBI and doubled the number of CIA employees. Needless to say, the number of FBI or CIA employees does not include the number of informants. You can be an informant who does not actually work for the FBI or CIA, and can still be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to ruin other peoples' lives.

I think this confirms that during the RNC the FBI was using technology that "would allow them to locate an individual through their cell phone." The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is one of the organizations mentioned in previous link, which means police had been using satellite photos to track people during and probably before the convention. NORTHCOM, a domestic military chain-of-command created after September 11th for Homeland Security, was involved in the security planning and operations as well. Originally NORTHCOM was given a limited role in civilian law enforcement after 9/11 - limited, that is, by posse comitatus. Now as you probably know, they're set to patrol the streets and aid local law enforcements.

An article titled 'Anarchist looked like someone's mom' in the Minneapolis Star Tribune is worth reading. It's about FBI informants who cry, pout, turn on each other, look like moms and nieces, show up for more potlucks than you do, and then eventually, rat you out without any evidence. Here is an excerpt.

Nathanael Secor, one of the RNC Eight, said "a level of comradeship" developed between activists and the operatives and it was disappointing to learn they were spies. Still, he says, "We had the feeling we were under surveillance from the beginning. It did not come as a complete shock."

...

At one meeting of various groups, "somebody made a joke that based on looks, he's the one who looks like a cop," Plotz said. "He kind of smiled and didn't say anything."

At a meeting where Hedstrom was the facilitator, a kind of chairperson, an anarchist expressed concern that he was a cop, a report said. Dugger "became emotional and told them how bad he felt, he wiped his eyes and blew his nose." He denied he was an informer.

The memo said two anarchists told him they "don't think he is a cop. They said a cop would have just walked away and never returned and wouldn't cry."

Dugger even got into the act. By August he was urging an anarchist to suspect another anarchist of being an informer.

In the reports, the anarchists talk with bravado, with occasional references to breaking windows and damaging vehicles. They told each other it was not violence, since they had no plans to injure people.

Many meetings involved no talk of property damage, or even protests. They dealt with tasks like finding places to stay. The local anarchist core was small, and the reports offer a glimpse into strains --and even gripes -- among them.

Notes on a Police Riot

Police ultimately arrested 106 very "scary-looking" anarchists after this. Click here to see the mug shot slideshow that Rocky Mountain News felt so obliged to post. But according to a use-of-force police report obtained by the ACLU of Colorado, undercover Denver detectives staged this stand-off between protesters and police.

After the struggle between a police commander and and unknown number of undercovers, the riot police unleashed their power onto the protesters who stood there penned in by six times as many riot police. The commander knew some of the anarchists were working undercover, and the plan was to pull them out of the crowd and pretend they were under arrest so protesters would be none the wiser.

The report says that the commander and an undercover detective were sprayed, but it does not indicate how many others were affected. (Oh, other people?) The report also doesn't say whether the pepper spray used on the undercover police was the first deployment of chemicals that night or whether the police riot was already underway. Then again, with a situation like this, the police riot is a dialectical necessity. It had to happen no matter what anybody did to stop it.

Protesters, witnesses, and media that I spoke to myself that night agreed that the police first agitated non-violent crowds of people in Civic Center Park by standing extremely close to the protesters in battalion-like formations, wielding their riot weapons, and walking through lines of people waiting for food and pushing them out of the way. The entire park was swarming with police and nothing had even happened, just talking and eating - you know, stuff people normally do in parks!

When a group of about 50 anti-capitalists started jumping up-and-down and chanting, "a-anti-anti-capitalista!", this aggravated the riot police for some reason, and they crashed into nearby people to get a closer look. The anti-capitalist group then locked arms and somehow marched about a block-and-a-half down the street before they were surrounded and peppersprayed as you saw in the video above. The police then severely beat and hospitalized several protesters and arrested over a hundred.

The ACLU contends videos show that protesters, as well as otherwise uninvolved onlookers, were never ordered or given a chance to disperse before they were surrounded and detained by police.

This was our report from Day 1 of occupied Denver.

The charges, some of them as silly as Noah Jacobs on behalf of Rogue Valley IMC pointed out, were either dropped later or plead to right away. If the protesters accepted their riot charges they would be fined a certain amount but let out of jail within the following days. Most protesters, still wanting to have an influence on the Democrats, the delegates, and the convention atmosphere, accepted the plea bargains and the charges. The ACLU's letter was received by the Denver Police Chief, but he refused to give a comment or return any calls.

From the Perspective of the Broken Window

After watching some video of the DNC/RNC protests, the ACLU of Washington members decided on Wednesday that "punk kids" were simply way too violent to have any effect or value in American society. The punk kids were "out of control", they smashed windows, slashed tires, stopped traffic, and who knows, maybe even threw a little urine. "Would you look at the violence of the protesters? I think they are way out of hand. You need some explaining to do," they told me. Every face in the room had a worried expression. Grumbles all around.

I was invited to speak at this ACLU meeting about my two arrests over the summer and to talk about the protests I was documenting. But instead I was harangued for not denouncing the political violence that took place in St. Paul. In fact, it seemed, I was standing up for political violence at the Republican National Convention when the protesters took to the streets, sometimes in a rowdy or boisterous fashion, to draw the world's attention to crimes committed by the Republican Party. Indeed, I was standing up for that.

There used to be, and I think still is, a term for those who feel it is legitimate and maybe necessary for people, say, in colonies and occupied territories like Iraq or Palestine and elsewhere in the Third and Fourth Worlds to fight back and even die in the struggle against international imperialism, while intellectually exempting themselves from incurring the same risks or obligations at home in the imperialist-aggressor nation. Even while your nation may be plundering nations abroad and gradually installing a police state at home, if you break one bank window, it's all over for you. I believe that word was, or maybe still is, "hypocrisy".

Comparative Rioting

• PHILLY: This week Philadelphia baseball fans broke bank windows, flipped over cars, started numerous fires in the streets, tipped over lamp posts, took over fire trucks, and defied police orders. Police respond by arresting 76 fans.
• ST. PAUL: In September, protesters in St. Paul broke bank windows, slashed tires, blocked traffic, and defied police orders. Police respond by charging protesters with "terrorism" under the Minnesota version of the Patriot Act. The police, FBI and Homeland Security also pre-emptively raid numerous homes, arrest journalists, and used heavy-handed techniques to physical hurt demonstrators. Over 700 are arrested.
  

• PHILLY: In Philadelphia, the riot happened after a street party at the end of the World Series baseball games.
  
• ST. PAUL: If these were "riots" that occurred, they are more aptly related to protesting. and civil disobedience. Beside the first day when protesters damaged property, the rioting was initiated by police unleashing tear gas, pepperspray and violence on crowds of people standing up to the Republican Party.

• PHILLY: Philly fans are not described as "violent" and some reporters have even denied the event was in fact a "riot".
  
• ST. PAUL: RNC protesters are indiscriminately described as "scary" or "violent anarchists", "nut-cases", and the incidents were categorically labeled "riots".

• PHILLY: there was not an articulated message defending the disruption other than to celebrate a baseball team's winning performance. However, Sports columnists willingly come to their aid.
  
• ST. PAUL: The thoughtful analysis of political culture and political issues is articulated and presented well ahead of time, but the analysis is completely avoided by mainstream observers.

Philadelphia

St. Paul

One of the things that Hyperborea loves doing more than anything else is critiquing the spectacle. The critique of the spectacle has already replaced the critique of reality.

Ground Noise and Static

Our goal at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions was to cover what was happening in the streets. This included a 10 to 15 minute daily video dispatch as well as blogs from each convention. (Click here to see all of that). The daily video dispatches are viewable online and were also aired on television via Free Speech TV.

This film certainly has its weaknesses since it was a edited in a week. I suggest checking out the rest of the DNC/RNC blogs and videos to see what we were up to during the summer of '08.

Example of Cops Hating Freedom

This is a t-shirt that was created by the Denver Police Protective Association, the Denver police union. The grinning pig on the shirt is wearing a hat with a crossed-out number "68," a reference to one of the Denver-based activist organizations - called Recreate 68 - which had planned demonstrations for an entire year and had several public battles over free speech and zoning issues. Glen Spagnulo from Recreate 68 said the following about the Denver security apparatus.

"The people of Denver were assured by the city that it would respect First Amendment rights during the DNC, and that that police officers were being trained to do so. The actions of police during the DNC, which involved numerous violations of people's right to freedom of speech and assembly, put the lie to those promises."

The "detective" who created these tasteless shirts, named Nick Rogers, said he hasn't received any complaints about the t-shirt, which were given to the police for free and thousands more are being sold to supporters who love to spread fascist propaganda. He said police often issue T-shirts to commemorate big events. Watch this video that shows Miami police shooting protesters in the face and then laughing maniacally and congratulating each other about it afterwards.

Why would you trust police to serve your neighborhoods, or prowl your schools, or invade your communities? What about testifying in court against minorities, leftists, or undesirables? Why would you trust them with a monopoly on assault weapons and state-legitimized use of force?


They haven't heard any complaints yet.

Police Headquarters
1331 Cherokee St.
Denver, CO 80204
720-913-2000

Nobody '08, Smash the State!

Not that I advocate spectacular politics, but you can listen to the Republican-Democrat debates tonight on NPR's live audio stream, or you can watch it on CNN's live video stream.

NPR also has a nice section that is already attempting to 'fact check' the remarks of senators McCain and Obama. The story of tonight's debate can be summarized in the following way.

What they're doing:



And what we're doing:

Professionals Say We're Propagandists

Thank you SubMedia for posting this video - and thank you GlassBead for rolling your tapes. Watch the video where the Society of Professional Journalists (website) dissect DNC/RNC videos put out by SubMedia and PepperSpray asking the audience, "Are they really journalists?"

After slight heckling from audience members, he turns to the panel of professional journalists and says,

"Show them your press pass."

What a joke. From my perspective a press pass is only supposed to send the signal that you take what you do seriously, and you are committed to your role as a journalist as opposed to any other role - organizer, medic, jail supporter, lawyer, police officer, delegate etc.

So, what do we think - are Lambert, me and the Stimulator journalists? Do we fulfill a journalistic niche where corporate and mainstream media have failed us? Do we show original content and represent underrepresented viewpoints that add to public debate and help create a fuller, more diverse democracy? Etc. Etc.?

Event: Ground Noise and Static

If you live in the Seattle-Tacoma area, we'd like to invite you to a community report-back from the RNC in St. Paul this summer. Meet us at Central Cinema on Sunday Oct. 5th 4-6 pm. Pepperspray Productions and Submedia will be showing a 30 minute documentary about the resistance at the DNC and RNC conventions.

***************** FILM & PANEL *****************

October 5th 4-6 PM: Reportback on protests, coalition building, and police supression

WHERE: Central Cinema (20th and Union)

• Featuring on-the-Scene video coverage of protests and arrests from PepperSpray Productions (Seattle) and Submedia (Vancouver)
• Critical discussion with Reclaim the Media, the ACLU-WA, the National Lawyers Guild and of course PepperSpray and SubMedia.
  

***************** AFTERPARTY *****************

October 5th 7:00 - till whenever PM or AM: afterparty to benefit independent media.


WHERE: Metal Arts Collective (4710 Ballard Avenue)

• $3-$10 sliding scale donation
• Ariel Wetzel's photography from DNC/RNC on display
• Live music by STAXX BROTHERS (funk / soul / hip hop / reggae fusion)
• DJ set and video mix by FRANK LOPEZ aka STIMULATOR
• ART: create banners, signs, and t-shirts with other people.
  

Journalism is not a crime, they say

Now more than ever, camera-wielding communists are a threat!

My co-conspirator, Lambert Rochfort, is featured on this episode of Media Minutes.





Media Minutes is the longest-running syndicated radio program of its kind focused on media policy and reform.

The Right to Assemble, ACLU on RNC "Federalization"

Civil Libertarian Chuck Samuelson, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, talks about the history and causes of Republican and Democrat convention "federalization". The UPTAKE is an independent media laboratory, and one of the places where myself and others had used for creating our own content.

Needs More Extras

This evening I was explaining to Randy Rowland, founder of PepperSpray Productions, what being a part of the resistance in Denver and St. Paul was like this summer.

Working with so many underground media activists in both cities this summer was an amazing experience. The spaces (about 4 or 5 of them in each city) sprang up spontaneously as the alternative media crews rose to the occasion. Denver was shocked to see independent media work so well like this.

Here is an anecdote:

Senior students at the Colorado Film School felt that they needed to capture this "indymedia scene" while it was still hot. One day at the Denver Open Media space they filmed Flux, the Stimulator, me, and Joan Sekel's team editing and talking about our videos. I have no idea what the students are doing with all that footage, but hopefully something useful, and something we can eventually see.

But the students came back the next day and decided they were going to make a short film reenacting what had just taken place the day before. They told us to continue our work and added, "feel free to look up here every once in a while", just to show that we were paying attention to whatever it was they were doing. This part shocked me.

As they acted out the scene, it was obvious that they took the script straight from our mouths and began acting it out right in front of us using their own actors! They told us that this was "a short film about indymedia", and that we would be included in it as "extras". Can you believe that? Indymedia as "extras" in a fictionalized film based on true events about Indymedia.

10 Films that Define False Consciousness

A film of mine was jury voted to the top 10, winning me a ticket to Denver's Cinemocracy film festival last month. The festival was supposed to be online user voted, but anyone who knows anything knows it was a setup.

At any rate, I was more than happy to show my film at Denver's Red Rocks Amphitheater. A reporter from the Denver Post gave me a good review (see "10 Films that Define Democracy") and said the following about my video,

Joseph L[a] Sac's formally impressive "Democracy Is a Spectacle" would make a fine, if very brief, double bill with the winner for best international submission, Charlie Timms' "Everyday Democracy."

If L[a] Sac's film seems mildly grim in its theorizing about democracy and manipulation, it's because Situationist Guy Debord's "Society of the Spectacle" provides the narration.

I know I sound very bitter about "winning" this film festival, but the festival really wasn't run very democratically in the first place. Although the context of the festival was based entirely around principles of democracy and fairness, the fact that it wasn't either of those ruined it for me.

Nearly all of the other films projected the idea that democracy is about voting and keeping yourself at the feet of the ruling class, and the viewers were mostly looking forward to campy and boring humor to be entertained by. I enjoyed myself in spite of that bullshit. Before the show started I was asked by PBS, CNN for Kids, etc. to explain what "The Spectacle" means. I met eager actresses and young film students who seemed to think all the directors were "famous"; I told them I was only interested in making militant films and they laughed. (I was only telling the truth!) Plus I drank free beer and schmoozed with backstage VIPs as we watched the DNC live on television.

Once Behind Bars, Now Behind the Lens, With His Freedom At Risk

New York Post photographer Jason Nicholas snapped a photo of me just before his own camera was blown apart by a police riot weapon and then was himself arrested and taken into police custody on Labor Day 2008.

I'm still waiting to receive the picture he has of me laying on the ground face down after getting baton-ed and slammed by Minneapolis police, but in the meantime I found an New York Times article about the man. In 1990 he was charged with manslaughter for shooting somebody in the South Bronx. After serving 13 years in prison he then got a bachelor's degree and has gotten into photojournalism. But he doesn't shoot shotguns anymore, just pictures.

Still, he is constantly getting flak from the authorities in his city of New York, just like the rest of us.

...Three days after the arrest in Chelsea, Mr. Nicholas was arrested for trespassing and given a desk appearance ticket after being on the roof of a building in the Bronx where he was photographing officers responding to an episode in which plainclothes transit officers shot and killed a man who had attacked them on a subway platform at 176th Street.

When I spoke with Jason in one of the makeshift IMC apartment lofts in St. Paul, MN his attention to detail and insight drew me into his work. I watched as he used lighting techniques to draw out the sharpness of his photos. He had hundreds of them from that day. He told me that if you ask a riot cop if you can stand next to them it decreases your chances of being arrested in sticky situations. Well, even with that tactic he was eventually thrown down and lumped in right next to me. But he has wiser words:

“It is a privilege to photograph this city,” he told the New York Times reporter. “If Homer were alive today recording the deeds of men, he’d be a photojournalist.”

What Freedom of the Press?

Without the support of possibly hundreds of community members and others from Minneapolis, St. Paul, Tacoma (and elsewhere) behind me, the police would not have paid any attention to the "journalists" in their jail cells this week. Society and especially the authoritarian organizations such as the police do not recognize non-corporate reporters with independent agendas as worthwhile members of an already established media elite. Therefore, there is no "freedom of the press" for us.

Without a loud voice from our viewers, supporters, and our friends, the message would not have gotten through to the authorities in St. Paul. Thank you.

I was released and my "rioting" charge, a felony crime, dropped. (Though they can re-charge me later.) The welts on my leg from the police baton are gone by now. I was hit and thrown violently onto the ground before being detained, and I am finally getting over the laryngitis-like sickness after running through tear gas and pepperspray and then sharing blankets with other inmates while in our street clothes. Whatever - we don't call ourselves the Pepperspray film collective for nothing.

But several other independent journalists are still being charged with crimes!

Lambert Rochfort, my fellow Indymedia Presents producer and filmmaker with the Pepperspray collective, is being charged with "throwing feces", "unlawful assembly" and possibly two other misdemeanors. For those who might not have noticed, Democracy Now! mentioned Lambert and I several times this week since Amy Goodman herself was detained by the St. Paul police, and because they had been using bits and pieces of our footage lately. Goodman's Democracy Now! journalists and producers are still being charged with felony rioting. And there are others.

Amnesty International has heeded to our call. They released a press statement calling for these "crimes" and the police misconduct to be impartially investigated. The United Nations human rights codes, AI alleges, has been breached by the heavy policing of the protest.

Throughout this week, the independent media teams have been kept pre-occupied with the confiscating of our equipment for the entire convention, by beating us and keeping us in their jails, such that we have neglected our original interest - to cover the protests and the issues the protesters raise. That has all been thrown out the window now by this serious impingement on our freedoms.

The I-Witness video team was accused of holding delegates hostage in their home just hours after I was released from jail. So the police came by again to raid their building. My own building was buzzing with the threat of police raids, as cops found their way into the basement and were snooping around. Riot police took pictures from the outside, and military police spied through our windows with binoculars for several hours. Similar scenes were reported at the other independent media locations, all within the same time-frame early Wednesday afternoon.

The heavy intimidation, the clamp down on journalists who are specifically known to have anti-authoritarian coverage of protests, and the searching and stowing away of our equipment is an outright attack on the freedom of the press.

Protester Beaten and Gagged Like Guantanamo Inmate

I would like to tell a story about someone I met in the Ramsey County Jail this week, whom later I found out was tortured by police in the Ramsey County Jail.

Myself, along with eleven others detained at the RNC were sitting in a holding cell, waiting to be dressed in orange jumpsuits and sent to the 'general population' of inmates. The police outside were well prepared to control crowds with the weapons they were afforded by the US Federal Government. But inside the jail the resources were fairly low. We had to share blankets, we were not allowed showers, and many of us had to wait until the pepperspray and effects of other weapons wore off (or we were released from the jail) before feeling better.

The protester, Elliot Hughes, was brought into our holding cell and sat on the floor like the rest of us. We exchanged stories and he told us he was being charged with assaulting an officer. I witnessed his arrest, and like many others, the story behind it was fabricated. One police officers ran his bicycle into a curb, with no protesters around, and he fell onto the ground. The other police used this as a pretext to arrest and spray the people in the area.

Since the jail was filling up, and many sections on "lockdown", including my own, Elliot was removed from a solitary confinement cell and placed with us. He wasn't allowed to interact with other people up until then because he was considered a violent anarchist. When Elliot came to our cell his cheerfulness and humor made us all feel better about the situation. Apparently he is only 19 years old. As we continued to play ad hoc games and entertain ourselves with other ideas, I would have to say personally that Elliot cheered more people in that cell than any other person.

Around noon Elliot was pulled from our cell and brought somewhere else. Of course, we couldn't see and didn't know where, and we did not think to ask since people were constantly coming and going.

After I was released I learned that he was beaten, tasered, and left in a pool of blood.

According to Kirk James Murphy, M.D., reported by other inmates, "Elliot was making noises to protest not receiving any food for more than twelve hours. Twelve officers entered his cell. Screams were heard for over five minutes. He was tasered three times, maced, and beaten, then removed and the men were told he was being taken to a restraint chair."

He appears on Wednesday's Submedia dispatch, speaking about the incident (although Elliot was not an RNC Welcoming Committee member as it says in the video). According to Kirk James Murphy, inside the jail, the correctional officers have been doing the following to inmates there:

• torture with electroshock weapons (Tasers)
• torture with chemical weapons
• stomp on a young man's chest
• cruelly (perhaps fatally) deny medical care to a victim spitting up blood (the fancy medical name is hemoptysis) from thoracic trauma
• respond to calls for food with torture by beating, Taser, and chemical weapons: the same chemical weapons known to cause respiratory arrest and death in victims with pulmonary disease. "Spitting up blood" is a symptom of pulmonary disease so severe as to require emergency medical evaluation.
• then tie up the victim in "restraint chairs" known to exacerbate pre-existing breathing difficulties in some victims of thoracic trauma.

Inmates at this jail, who more than likely were picked up on false accusations and misinformation, are being treated just as this government treats those who are deemed terrorists and domestic enemies of the United States. It is very clear that the Ramsey County Jail is our Gauntanamo Bay, Cuba.

To many of you this may be shocking. But perhaps it shouldn't be. Are we really surprised that our government and those acting on its behalf would do such a thing to a cheerful nineteen year-old who disagrees with this governments' policies and wanted to assemble with others who felt the same way?

I can write more about these conventions when I am back at home. But I leave St. Paul, MN for Tacoma, WA today even more disgusted with what I have seen here than before I came.

Final Dispatch from the RNC

1. Kissinger is mute
2. Lambert is Free
3. Wendy is Free
4. I-Witness is Raided Again
5. Torturing the "Terrorists"
6. Champions
7. Final thoughts

Police News Management

What I have experienced in St. Paul demonstrates the desire and ability of the police to suppress, intimidate, and ultimately control the news.

We have footage of Fox News being allowed to embed themselves with the riot police lines. The police had formed a bubble of protection and allowed them to travel with them. Fox News also arrived at the I-Witness Video house about the same time that the riot police had, giving the impression that Fox had been given insider tips.

Independent journalists were arrested throughout the week and detained much longer than mainstream journalists. While I was being detained this week at the Ramsey County Jail, I was interrogated by an investigative police officer who suggested that my productions encourage rioting. I was being held at their jail on probable cause rioting charges, and eventually released due to pressure. She suggested that the way I film situations distorts the truth, and that the way I present it incites rioting.

I said that the police in St. Paul do not understand Freedom of the Press and that they wouldn't get away with what they've done. The investigative officer replied that they were just enforcing the law.

They are holding all of the detained independent journalists' equipment until after the convention, inhibiting our ability to report on the events at the convention. This, along with the raids and the scare tactics, spying and rushing upon us in the streets to search our baggage (which happened to me today), etc., is a serious impediment to everything we are doing.

Rage Against the Republicans

The Stimulator, host of the "It's the End of the World as We Know It", gave me his Rage Against the Machine concert ticket last night, feeling bad that I was arrested on Monday. The concert was amazing. Before the show began, lights above the concert stage read "RNC FUCK YOU". The crowd cheered. The four band members began the first song dressed in orange jump suits with black hoods on their heads. Tom Morello mentioned at one point that the US Federal Government has broken two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, based on lies and misinformation. They tell us now that some broken windows in downtown St. Paul will constitute "conspiracy to riot in the furtherance of terrorism", a charge being pushed against the RNC Welcoming Committee, which is an anarchist and anti-authoritarian group who invited activists to shut down the city of St. Paul during the convention.

Rage encouraged the group after at the end of the concert to be "peaceful but not passive". After their concert last night, the crowd poured out onto the streets just like any other concert, only this time to be met with hundreds of riot cops flexing their muscles and pulling random people behind their riot lines for detainment. A stand-off ensued for over an hour, as police blocked roadways and sidewalks. Apparently 30 - 70 people were arrested.

If the police were not outside this building, and in such large numbers, there would be no confrontations possible. The police were looking for action, the police were looking for confrontation, and the police were the ones who obstructed the streets and sidewalks after the concert.