At 9:15 Friday night, the St. Paul Police entered all doors of the RNC Convergence Space in St. Paul MN with guns drawn. The Space serves as a community center and organizing space for the upcoming protests against the Republican National Convention and for the RNC Welcoming Committee. At the time of the raid people were “sitting down to dinner and watching a movie” The police did not present a warrant at the time of the raid, but claimed that they had a warrant to search the building for “bomb-making” materials. There were no “bomb-making” materials found in the building after the raid. The police barked orders at everyone including children to get on the floor with their faces on the ground. Everyone inside the building was then put into handcuffs. The police then photographed everyone inside the space and recorded information from each person's Identification cards. The police also took all personal laptops and hard drives. Even more disturbingly “One female activist was sexually harassed by a cop who groped her crotch.” The police are now claiming that the space must be closed down due to “fire-code” violations, but according to City Council member Dave Thune, the police do not have the authority to enforce fire code. The only ones who have the power to issue “fire-code” violations are the Fire Department. Regardless the RNC Welcoming Committee says that this action will “not deter us from our plans to protest the RNC on September 1st. We want to invite all people who oppose this police oppression to join us on September 1st. See you in the streets.”
This shows yet another situation in which our government abuses power and violates our rights to silence the people. It shows how the right to freedom of speech, the right to organize and speak out against the government have been decaying for the past few years. The police simply exploited the fact that the RNC Welcoming Committee is Anarchist and used that to their advantage to accuse the organization of being violent (and of having bombs). It is outrageous that we are living in a Police State, what happened to the land of the free? And the Constitution, oh that's right I forgot that we disposed of that years ago. Even the Constitution is being torn down and ignored by our government. Even though everyone in America should be protected by the Constitution, we keep witnessing the fact that this is not true anymore. We keep seeing our government turn more fascist as the years go by and the people becoming increasingly apathetic on the situation.
Works Cited:
http://twincities.indymedia.org/2008/aug/illegal-police-raid-anti-rnc-convergence-space-st-paul
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