What is At Stake Here At the RNC (Or What Was At Stake Here)

The rally had attracted around 1,000 protesters/activists and the police were surrounding the area but were not intruding on the rally yet.

All of a sudden two dozen bicycle cops swooped in to arrest a man and a woman lounging in the grass watching the rally. I will use the Minnesota Independent report to communicate exactly what I witnessed (and I have video which I would post but this video by WCCO captures the incident better than I did):

At 4:00 with music playing at the rally at the Capitol a team of one to two dozen bike-mounted police officers swept in from clear across the capitol lawn directly up to two young people, a man and a woman, who were lounging in the grass, formed a circle around them and arrested them. According to Sgt. John Lazoya of the St. Paul Police Department, the young man was a suspect in the shattering of the Macy’s store window. Lazoya said police officers had been given information with details about the young man on fliers before the concert. When they circled the suspects, the crowd gathered to hear the music surrounded the officers chanting “Let them go” and, as the pair were taken away in plastic handcuffs, “This is what a police state looks like.”

Lazoya said he didn’t have information on the woman who was with the man.

I was able to get low to the ground and videotape the arrest from beneath a swarm of press. I came inches away from being trapped in a circle of riot police that ran up to the bicycle cops to help them get the two arrestees out of the crowd of press and people. And I was a foot away from being trampled by a contingent of police on horseback that came in off of Cedar St. to also help bicycle police get the two arrestees out of the crowd.

The riot police used their batons to usher people out of the way while the horses, who were scared, pissed and shit all over the place.

The whole rally had become overshadowed by an imperial police presence. People were focused on police and had left the stage area.

Those running the rally, however, took a stand and spoke to the people explaining how the police intended to take away from our message and we should not allow our attention to be diverted.

Somebody suggested to me that the arrest was part of a police exercise to see how fast the police could secure the area if a “crowd control situation” had happened. The police on horseback, the riot police, and the bicycle police along with a few National Guard did make their way into the rally to trap protesters and disperse them in about 4 minutes.

What’s interesting is that the Minnesota Independent reports that further arrests happened after the arrest described above:

About ten minutes later, there was another situation behind the stage near the capitol building. One person, dressed as an activist medics — the informal medics who tend to protesters who are injured — were dragged away. Witnesses said two of the medics gave themselves up, and rumors were circulating that both were undercover police. When asked about this, Lazoya said it was the first he heard of the arrest, even though they happened a mere five minutes earlier nearby. [MPR reports the same.]

The Anti-War Committee was not deterred and rallied protesters/activists to march with them in an unpermitted march to the Xcel Energy Center.

Lazoya came up to the rally right before 5 pm and announced to everybody, according to the Minnesota Independent, “Your parade permit will expire at 5 pm… If you continue with your parade, you will be in violation of city ordinance CH366A.” It is unclear if everybody heard him, but there were Minnesota Peace Team members walking around to those in front of the capitol explaining that the action at 5 pm would be a situation where arrests were highly likely and so was the deployment of chemical agents to disperse people.

The march took off in the face of the trap police had setup for the protesters/activists.

Leaders chose to take the march through the capitol lawn, a brilliant move that momentarily created confusion within the police who were unsure of how to head the march off and secure it.

The march took a detour off of the lawn and onto a street that ran into John Ireland Blvd and then turned onto the bridge where the standoff between police and protesters occurred.

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