This is over the top stuff right here, kids. My friend, Doug, a former inhabitant of the Twin Cities, sent me a link to Glen Greenwald’s reporting for Salon.com on multiple raids that have happened over the past couple of days of peaceful protesters in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area for the Republican National Convention.
Greenwald’s most excellent (and multiply-updated) Salon piece is HERE. I also highly recommend THIS PAGE from The Uptake, a new independent group that streams live to the web. They interviewed representatives from I-Witness Video that were raided at a house meeting they were having. I-Witness Video records events around the country to make sure police are held accountable. Watch the first 5 minutes of the I-Witness interview, it’s pretty scary what they experienced.
All the videos are all pretty long but they detail SWAT teams barging in, detaining young kids in their 20s for daring to plan demonstrations under the guise of an offense known as “conspiracy to riot”. They showed up in full riot gear and stormed the house with submachine guns and other firearms drawn. In the case of the I-Witness raid, their warrant was actually for the address in the other house in the duplex they were in so they went into one house in the duplex and then entered the other house through the attic with guns drawn. The young people were cuffed and held face down on the floor in many cases for up to an hour. In some cases they were not allowed to see the warrant until just before the police left. They confiscated personal journals, computers and other electronic equipment.
This is crazy, crazy stuff. It’s unAmerican. It’s anti-Free Speech. And it is an attack on the civil liberties of the kids caught up in these raids. I have a feeling this is going to get quite a bit of media play in the coming week. It better.
Stay tuned.
I’m just sayin’…
