webstes down ...infiltration continues despite grassroots legal, media and community outrage

Although the RNC Welcoming Committee had an uplifting meeting today in Powderhorn Park with hundred of supporters, ready to regroup and continue action after yesterday's raids, more signs of further conflict with the military state are surfacing.

It appears that the sheriff, twin city Police departments (interchanging jurisdiction in either city), and the larger private and federal agencies with whom they are working closely, are also revamping their tactics in this great pre-emptive strike. They won't be deterred by yesterday's glaring civil right abuses and embarrassingly demoralising failure to disrupt political dissent by peace-loving Americans. Apparently, calling protesters "self-subscribed anarchist criminal organisations" doesn't suffice.

Plan B is working... for now. Websites are down, text and phone communication between RNC Welcoming Committee and outside links and supporters have been compromised (lost, redirected or intercepted). This could be the direct result of data and property confiscation (including laptops, maps cameras, cell phones and literature) and privates homes still being raided, despite ACLU intervention to highlight legal limitations in search warrants that local authorities and corrections were overstepping: without warning, armed police forcefully burst into to the Convergence Center, ordering all 50 inhabitants to the floor and detaining most of them (see the video by Michelle Gross, Communities United Against Police Brutality). Violence directed at young and old alike, when the Sheriff's department was supposedly only looking for two individuals (neither of whom were in the targeted houses), jars, paint and feces with riot gear and drug lab trucks is out of control. All but four of the detainees were released, but not their personal equipment (two days earlier, two aides to the sheriff's department were convicted of theft and conspiracy). As far as the house's 'condition' is concerned: this was probably yet another fabricated pretext for mandatory evacuation of centers and meeting places. The Ramsey County Sheriff's office closed the building citing a fire code violation, and planned to do the same with the other four raided centers, but when members and residents inquired into the legality and role, the director of the local department of safety and inspections, came to the site and naturally determined that there were no violations. Right-minded citizens, angry at the inner-workings of their fine city being usurped by fascists. They know as well as we do that the goal is to detain and get information on as many people as possible--because whether or not spying is still illegal in this country, the idea is to track us better next time. From New York to Boston to Denver to Minneapolis, from the Gulf Coast to the Mississippi floods, from the prison pipeline to the ICE raids, the constant surveillance of American citizens is becoming a reality.

In the spirit of Shock and Awe, state-run oppressors aim to keep the protesters and residents from regaining footing and contact. The pre-emptive plan is threefold: eliminating sanctuary (widespread raiding of random private homes, churches and organisation headquarters of Minneapolis hosts for out-of-town media, medics and lawyers), transportation (the holdup of the IWW bus and the 12 squad cars confiscating on the green horticulture bus and personal data inside, rendering the 20 passengers homeless) and communication infrastructure (confiscating vital and 5th amendment protected data and blocking internet connections).

These are our children, friends, neighbours, co-workers--outstanding citizens. As Janet Ryan, St. Paul Public Schools Librarian, so strongly put it in a letter to Mayor Coleman: "I understand your children also attend Central. So, how would you like it if they had been present at a political action organizing office working on RNC related protest activities, and the authorities storm trooped their way into YOUR attic." We should all join her to "quickly condemn these anti-American actions by federal and local law enforcement authorities to suppress constitutionally protected political dissent."

We are ordinary citizens being treated like criminals, no matter what city we're in: be it Denver, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New Orleans, or even Portland, where Black Hawk helicopters have been carrying out a week-long urban "anti-terrorist" drill with an agreement through the Navy/Army, DoD, Portland Police Bureau and Blackwater. The hierarchy was clearly set at Denver: the elitist lobbyists and delegates get to attend the private mile-hight AT&T dinner on the first night and are 'protected' from the media's prying eyes by secret security; the established media, lucky enough to get a press kit compressed into a handy Convention tote bag with an AT&T logo, get to talk to a Congressman and former civil rights leader until private security interrupt the interview; and finally, the quaint little voter, who, if they're registered with the Big Party, get to appear with 80,000 others in a stadium to see the tiny speck of a future AT&T-friendly President.

We need to make sure the fervor, strength and truth stay with us in Minneapolis this week, despite the organised postponement of the Convention (resulting in many volunteers changing their plans and returning home to work), the shake-up of activist networks and the distraction of outside forces (the onslaught of Gustav and the Reserves, more threatening than ever). There is already widespread coverage of how the motley conglomerate of enforcement agencies are harassing Quakers, Amy Goodman and a 5-year old. They want to disperse those of us in the foundation before there's even more attention around McKinney, Shehan, Rage Against the Machine and the IVAW and the rest of America wakes up to the fascist takeover.