BradSpangler.com

I am blogging now from what can only be called “The Occupied Twin Cities”. As the Minnesota National Guard marches through the streets of downtown St. Paul tonight in a display reminiscent of the old Soviet May Day parades, those who made it past the mass arrests of the day try to find a place to rest their weary heads and scrub the pepper spray off. Some of these, possibly last remaining, American heroes released a statement today before setting out to impede and resist, as best they could, that which is monstrous — the parasitic political class and the state that serves it.

“Fellow Americans & Freedom Fighters, Every attendee of the Republican National Convention, from politicians to their cheerleaders, are actively complicit in the violence of state power… Those planning civil disobedience to impede the warmongers descending upon our city are acting in self-defense to re-secure the liberties of all Americans.”

The events of their day today are told on Twitter posts and elsewhere by those who were there, trying to make a stand for what is right. At an undisclosed location, I spoke with some of them.

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The young man we’ll call Rocko said his group of around 8 activists started looking for a way to the area they had chosen to do civil disobedience work in at around 10 AM this morning. They decided to follow the SDS march from Macalester College at first along that groups route before then heading off on their own toward their objective. They then realized two bicycle police were following them. Those then became two bike police plus three or four police minivans full of riot police following them on the ground and a police helicopter following them in the sky above.

This went on for about an hour and a half as they walked from Macalester to the MN state capitol. There, they thought they were not being pursued any more and stopped to rest, drink water and discuss the route to their objective. They decided to get back into the SDS march, which they understood was now heading to (roughly) their area anyway. According to Rocko, they kept marching with SDS for a while with their banners as more and more kids joined them.

Eventually, Rocko said, 10 or 15 minutes into the March a line of about 10 police tried to block the marchers path. Police started a shoving match that escalated into a massive, prolonged use of pepper spray. The confusion in this small scene would later, according to Rocko’s description of events, be absorbed into the wider conflict associated with the police attack on the Funk the War march.

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The fellow who wants to be known as “Redcloud” left Macalester with the SDS march when he and another broke off on their own down Shepard Road and joined others setting up a blockade done with lockboxes. The lockbox devices commonly used in civil disobedience actions usually involve some large PVC and other parts put together to lock people’s arms to each other, making them more difficult to be moved. For a while they shut down Shepard Road completely — a major artery and important approach route for RNC delegates going to the convention center.

When word was received that another area needed reinforcements for their section of the blockade, Redcloud and others not needed to hold the Shepard Road intersection then started heading out to where they were needed. Redcloud bicycled ahead down Shepard to Jackson, acting as a scout for his group. He found several people were in street at Sibley blocking bus traffic to the convention center and joined them, linking arms in the middle of the street.

There, things then quickly became brutal. According to Redcloud, police at Sibley were indiscriminately pepper spraying everyone, with amounts of pepper spray comparable to the water that a garden hose left on at full blast would spray. As that battle was slowly being lost, he left in search of a place to be more useful.

Getting word that mounted police on Wabasha Street were “running over kids” using their horses, Redcloud headed there. When he arrived, he said he found (in addition to police) about 200 National Guard troops in riot gear. They seemed pretty nervous by his estimate. Others present nodded and said you could tell “by the looks on their faces”. At that point, the National Guard were staying behind police lines at that location. Sensing there was little he could do there, he continued down Kellogg from Wabasha where he found the (blackish) “ad hoc bloc” remnants of the Funk the War march.

While some had been dispersed by this point, the remainder held on, retreating with vinegar soaked bandanas over their faces to protect them from the mix of both tear gas and pepper spray they had to deal with while being shot with rubber bullets. Linking arms, they backed up under the relentless police assault. At one point, police threw a flash-bang grenade. Desperately searching for anything in the area to use as obstacles to protect themselves from the police, people pulled stuff into the street including newspaper boxes and road construction barricades.

He said the group backed up all the way down Kellogg, retreating to Mears Park before heading north with police lines still advancing on them. At the park, things changed from a retreat into a walking rout. When they reached 8th or 9th Street, police had them cornered on three sides, leaving only a westward route open. They headed west, still throwing whatever they could find up as obstacles as they went. After about about three more blocks, Redcloud said, police were beginning to box them in again on two sides. Knowing that getting fully surrounded was to risk serious injury, the group split in half and he went with the half that peeled off and dispersed. He knows nothing of those who stayed behind.

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More blogging tomorrow, possibly.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 10:49 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.