1st Year Annivesary of RNC and Police State, Repression and Procecution of Dissent

[annm4peace]

One Year Later - Call-in to Susan Gaertner September 1st
651-266-3222 | Fax: [phone] | [e-mail]
*****

On September 1, 2008, thousands took to the streets of St. Paul to challenge the Republican National Convention. One year later, the RNC 8 are still facing serious legal repercussions because of their organizing. Authorities typically charge a few activists who take to the streets - this time, they went after the people who fed and housed protesters in the days before.

We are asking people across the country to take a few minutes on Tuesday, September 1 - the one-year anniversary of the RNC resistance - to contact Ramsey County Attorney (and aspiring Democratic candidate for Governor) Susan Gaertner and tell her to DROP THE CHARGES! It’s been a full year of dragging community members through the mud, wasted taxpayer dollars, and embarrassment for Susan’s campaign. Enough is enough!

Tuesday Sept. 1 2009
Contact Susan Gaertner:
County Attorney’s Office: 651-266-3222 | Fax: [phone] | [e-mail]
Campaign Office: 651-645-2010 | [e-mail]
Let us know if you made a call or email by contacting us at [e-mail]

on the interwebz:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=15561103028 | http://www.facebook.com/susangaertner
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/susangaertner2010
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/SusanGaertner
Were you at the RNC? Wondering WTF this is still going on? Make a call. Last year Sheriff Bob Fletcher had Susan’s phone ringing off the hook… now it’s our turn.



http://twincities.indymedia.org/2009/aug/stats-upcoming-events-and-updates-crass-rnc-1st-anniversary


"The one year anniversary of the Republican National Convention is quickly approaching. Despite having faded from the national headlines, the RNC and its’ aftermath still define much of daily life for the radical community here in the Twin Cities. The people who have been targeted by state repression and prosecution, along with their supporters, carry on the fight that was sparked by riot police last August.

If you have not gone online and downloaded the Video "Terrorizing Dissent" I suggest you do it this weekend.. so you can see what we experienced.

http://www.terrorizingdissent.org/

Hopefully it will motivate you to call the Democratic elected Ramsey County Attorney
Susan Gaetner to drop all charges on those related to the RNC.



(when you see these charges/and plea deals.. remember how much each person had to pay.. 200-500 for misdemeanor, 300-1000 for felony.. many had to quit jobs to stay here till their trial started, or had to pay for flights out for their hearings.. another way to squash dissent)

Our Courtwatch Working Group has been hard at work attending court appearances and keeping track of everything that happening to our comrades within the courthouses. Here's the latest from their meticulous notes and records:

Total Arrests:

818 people were arrested during the RNC protests in St. Paul. Many of these people were not protesters. They were journalists, medics, legal observers, bystanders, concert-goers, picnic-ers and people going to their cars. One was an RNC delegate.

16 people were arrested before the convention:

* 8 were Vets for Peace protesters who went under the fence at the Xcel Center.
* 8 were members of the RNC Welcoming Committee, now known as the RNC 8.



134 people were arrested in Minneapolis following the Rage Against the Machine Concert.

In addition, hundreds of citations were handed out. Citations are like traffic tickets.

Rage Against the Machine Arrests:

29 people had court dates. 27 of those cases are closed and 2 are unaccounted for. CRASS does not know of any Rage Against the Machine cases that are still pending.

Of the known cases that went to court:

* 7 didn't show up and were issued bench warrants. Nothing further is known about them.
* 2 took guilty pleas. These are individuals who didn't show up for arraignment. Bench warrants were issued for them. They were caught, spent the weekend in jail, took guilty pleas, and paid fines or did community service.
* 8 were C-WOPs (Continued Without a Plea). They paid a fine, but admitted no guilt. The record will disappear from their files within a year.
* 10 fought the charges and had their cases dismissed.

Everyone who fought their charges had their cases dismissed because there was no evidence against them. None. It was a mass arrest, plain and simple. Everyone who was called into court had a driver's license saying that they were from outside the Twin Cities. No one who was registered as a resident of Minneapolis or St. Paul was charged. This is bare-faced selective prosecution.

Ramsey County Cases:

* 743 names in the database: 609 were arrested in Ramsey County; 3 of them were transferred to Federal Custody.
* 180 closed cases in the database; 153 of them were in Ramsey County
* 10 Bench Warrants outstanding
* 37 Guilty pleas (Felonies and Misdemeanors together): 6 Felonies & 31 Misdemeanors
* 14 Continued for Dismissal (Misdemeanors only)
* 81 Dismissed by Prosecutor (before trial): 2 felonies and 79 Misdemeanors.
* 3 Acquitted by a Jury (Medics) (Misdemeanors)
* 2 Convicted by a Jury; Sentencing and Appeal pending (Felony)

Again, the vast majority of prosecutions are of people who live outside the Twin Cities. It is expensive and time consuming for them to return to St. Paul again and again to fight their charges. The prosecutors wear them down until poverty and exhaustion force them to take a plea deal. Most of the people who took plea deals were guilty of nothing whatever, they simply couldn't continue to fight the legal system. Most of the people who fought their charges won.

Federal Cases:

There were 3 federal cases. All three involved the construction of Molotov cocktails, FBI informants and probable entrapment. All three took guilty pleas, in one case under suspicious circumstances.

The three Federal defendants were:

* Matt DePalma
* David McKay
* Bradley Crowder

Bradley Crowder is now being held by Ramsey County at the LEC and is being charged by the Ramsey County Attorney with Felony Assault in the 2nd Degree -- dangerous weapon (the traffic sign mentioned above).

Bradley Crowder has been at the LEC since June 11th. He has not been seen or heard from by anyone in CRASS, nor by anyone that we know of, except his lawyer. He now has a private attorney, Robert Sicoli, rather than a public defender, so we suspect he is getting support from someone. He has a pre-trial hearing at 9 AM on July 31st at the Ramsey County Courthouse. Since he is in custody, no one will be permitted to talk to him except his lawyer and the judge. There is, however, the possibility of speaking with his lawyer.

Cases Still Pending:

* Keith Smith: juvenile misdemeanor; civil suit for brutality an absolute certainty. This case is being pursued solely to keep Keith's mother from filing suit.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNRgFl2DYpE)
* Vets for Peace: misdemeanor trespassing, political trial -- on their side. (The prosecutor would be perfectly happy to dismiss these conjoined cases.) Trial: Sept. 14
* Karen Meissner & Christina Vana - conjoined cases, felony charge of throwing a traffic sign over a bridge -- currently set to go to trial on August 31.
* Bradley Crowder - related to the Meissner & Vana cases, same sign - being handled separately. Pre-trial hearing was on July 31. Trial is in August.
* The RNC 8 -- 2 felony charges, each. Expected to go to trial in the fall.


New Charges:

The City of St. Paul has filed charges in four new cases. Some of these charges appear to be in response to notice of claims forms filed by the defendants against the City for police brutality. As such, they are probably completely bogus and an example of prosecutorial misconduct. The four will be arraigned on August 25th unless John Choi caves from shame first. The four defendants are:

* Elliot Hughes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1EcFgWqcss&NR=1)
* Jason Falk
* John Slavin
* Matthew Connell
*************************************************************************************************

[annm4peace]

1. Please write a letter to the editors of our local papers.

it would be great if people from around the country wrote a letter to our local papers.
Maybe seeing that people from other cities/states would shame our local officials to drop the charges and also to condemn what happened.


Write letters to the editors
Minneapolis's StarTribune: email: [e-mail] (no attachments) or fax [phone].


St. Paul's Pioneer Press: email: [e-mail] or fax [phone].

[JHB]

2. Always bring this up when wingnuts whine about how their dissent is being "repressed"

How many teabaggers are having their houses raided by the local police, guns drawn?

How many of them are being arrested, much less been a bystander swept up in a mass arrest?

[Downtown Hound]

3. Keep up the fight annm4peace

Don't stop until this repression of dissent is brought out in the open for everybody to see.

[Doctor_J]

4. They should have brought assault weapons to protest

that would have gotten them interviews on hate radio and hate tv, instead of arrested.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

5. Secret meetings authorized excessive use of force.

We know the stories of police abuse, mass arrests, targeting journalists, street medics, use of rubber bullets, plastic bullets, wooden baton rounds, mace, tear gas, tasering and other differently lethal methods of crowd control in St Paul and Minneapolis this week. What is not known is how the local Democratic Party and other so called progressive elected officials collaborated with authorities in the past weeks and months before the RNC Convention in St Paul, giving them legal authority for their excesses and abuses of power.

...

This story is not about that. It is instead about how the local government knowingly collaborated with them, with no input from citizens and finally passed a Resolution granting them legal authority to use rubber and plastic bullets, wooden baton rounds, tasers and chemical weapons that were deployed against peaceful protesters, journalists and street medics treating the victims of their brutality in a secret meeting with no public allowed.

...

However, local activists immediately developed some serious concerns. We found out that the Free Speech Committee did not allow any members of the public to add our input. Only City Council members on the committee and lawyers were allowed to speak. There was no free speech allowed at the misnamed Free Speech Committee. Nonetheless, activists followed the Committee's actions closely and were present during each meeting. The City Council of Minneapolis is almost 100% Democratic. In fact the only real opposition in Minneapolis is the Green Party which currently has one Green on the City Council, Cam Gordon, who was a small light in a very dark room. But, we were to discover, even that light was to be extinguished.

...

The Minneapolis Police were given "legal" authority to shut down any protest or group of 25 people or greater. They were also authorized to use rubber bullets, mace and the other array of non-lethal weapons on innocent, peaceful demonstrators, practicing our First Amendment Rights. Also violated repeatedly was the Fourth Amendment Right protecting us citizens against illegal search and seizure. Police violated the laws of assault and battery and destruction of evidence of their crimes, as evidenced by their targeting journalists. All talk of the Washington Model was removed.

...

All Minneapolis City Councils are taped and shown on local Public Access TV - all except for this one, which has never seen the light of day. Clearly, the "progressive" City Council had something to hide.

...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Explosive-News-Democrats-C-by-Michael-Cavlan-080910-808.html

[create.peace]

6. Terrorizing Dissent -p1- Fall in St Paul

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNDQmm_TEMw&annotation_id=annotation_176420&feature=iv

[dgibby]

7. I believe I read somewhere that DHS was invited to run this show.

I can't remember where I read that, but IIRC, the local police gave DHS authority to conduct this as they saw fit, with help from the locals. Is that right?

Another question: Is Amy Goodman still working with you on this? I hope so.

Keep up the good work. This is very chilling, and goes to show just how close we came to losing our country. We have a long way to go to walk back from this. I would hope the DOJ could and would step in and correct this miscarriage of justice.

[annm4peace]

8. DHS and Secret Service

and we also think NorthCOM.

I don't know what Amy Goodman is doing with it anymore. She is probably going to the G20 Summit in Pittsburg.. she probably has to move to the next story that need to be told.

I took the week off and was at all the marches except the last one as I was helping with Peace Island Picnic that was across the river and we could watch the helicopters, teargas, and hear the constant sirens.

I saw police patches from all over the country, sheriff's, National Guard, ATF, DEA, Secret Service, Undercover Infiltrators, and Blackened Vans/SUV's with men uniformed in Khakis like Blackwater.

It made me want to puke..

To read more and see more pictures/video.. check out
http://rnc08report.org/

[Downtown Hound]

9. A kick-because it's important