Coldsnap legal collective

We haven't quite been at our radical legal support thing for a year and a half yet, but we've done some pretty cool things nonetheless. With all your help, we were able to provide a lot of legal support before, during, and after the RNC...from Know Your Rights trainings to running the jail support hotline to the jail vigil to helping get CRASS (Community RNC Arrestee Support Structure) up and running, we were there with you in the streets, courts, and radical meeting spaces.

To recap what we've been up to, we put together this nifty newsletter. Check it out!

Coldsnap Legal Collective Year 1.5 in Review Newsletter

Thirty to forty brightly-costumed people marched from the State Capitol to the Ramsey County Courthouse on Tuesday, accompanied by Mardi Gras music, kazoos and whistles, and over 60 notice of claim forms with which to put the state on notice of possible civil suits. The Pioneer Press reported that the monetary damages potentially sought by the claims - not including other claims that may be filed, particularly from out-of-town residents, before the deadlines this week - would total $22,542,100.16, well above the city's $10 million RNC insurance policy.

UPDATE: 2/27 12:30 AM: Several actual lawsuits are already in the works - including some announced by St. Paul attorney Ted Dooley at a press conference at 3:00 Thursday at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul. (See media advisory with VIDEO.) Portland Indymedia journalists Wendy Binion and Alex Lilly appeared at the press conference to announce their suits, and another suit will be filed by members of the New York City-based Glass Bead Collective, which helped produce the film Terrorizing Dissent (along with TC-IMC) despite having thousands of dollars of video equipment confiscated (later to be returned) upon arrival in Minneapolis last August. [More coverage: MNDaily: Suits filed | TC Daily Planet | Strib: Seven RNC lawsuits filed]

Below, see photos from the CRASS-organized march Tuesday.

September 2, 2008

North Star Health Collective

Word up smart alec. Here's updates from the hottest RNC street medic collective in Minnesota! YEY!

What we know:

CONCERNS ABOUT HEALTH CARE IN JAIL

This afternoon (Sept 2nd) our amazing M.D. talked to the nurse at the Ramsey County Jail. North Star was concerned after hearing that some dozen or so folks didn’t receive appropriate health care while in jail. The conversation seemed rather productive and reassuring. At this point we think that repeatedly calling the nurse at the jail is not useful.

As of 10:30pm today, the arrest tally from Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office was: 284 total; 130 felonies; 51 gross misdemeanors; 103 misdemeanors. The jail is seemingly severely backed up and not everyone has been booked or processed, so these numbers clearly don’t represent the total arrestee count for the day. These numbers also do not necessarily include the numbers of arrestees whose identifications have not been verified.