September 1st, 2008 RNC Protest

Since my RNC Press Pass did not come in the mail….I decided the best place to get RNC shots was from on the ground within the protest.  You typically won’t find any politics here but, the RNC in town is big news, I have never covered or seen a large protest of this scale before, and I did’nt have anything else better to do today (except for the 5% tornado risk in NE ND).  Because it’s related to the RNC & a protest it’s political in nature, I can’t do much about that, otherwise once the RNC is over no more politics.

A few highlights were;

- Entering the ‘caged’ area their were a bunch of anti-protester ’support our troops’ protesters & delegates. I happened to be with the ’support our troops - stop the war’ group at the time so one side would chant ’support our troops, the other would chant ’support our troops’, in a bit of an odd standoff.
- A delegate (nice suit but, very hot) exited through the gates, his credentials allow him to pass through the barricade along the march near the energy center but, not a couple blocks away and got caught up with the March or became disoriented and failed to find his way back to the RNC entrance, a few blocks up he identified and showed credentials to the riot police instructed to let no one pass the reaction of the riot officer he was identifying himself to was to pull down his face shield and hold his 4 foot wood pole with both hands in front giving it a bit of a smack in the other hand, the delegate proceeded to complete the protest march.
- I was a bit concerned around the caged area near the RNC where you could not exit or escape and narrow at various points, at the entrance were the anti-protesters along with riot police with tear gas launchers and fire extinguisher sized military grade pepper spray. Once you entered the caged area if something had gone down we would have been sprayed and mass confusion, panic, and trampling would have occurred.
- I was all setup to shoot(photographically speaking) a riot police officer shaking the hands of little kids as they passed, one out of a long line with protesters walking by, would have been a great shot but, just too many people in the way and was unable to get close enough without violating the personal space of the riot police, I only got some partial shots.
- Quite a few of the protesters were thanking the LEO’s along the way for protection.
- Lot’s of parents with kids (dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb), Children’s Museum was closed(see below), including infants in strollers.  It was a peaceful march but, things could have turned nasty fast.
- I saw tens of millions of dollars worth of photo gear on ever spot of the walk, I have not had a chance to look through some of the photos published yet but, I bet their are some impressive shots. I still have allot of stills/video to compile.
- I saw two 18 year-old jump the line (into the protesters) they were shirtless, they probably had to de-mace at some point, I notified a protester Marshall and he just gave them a dirty look and radioed it in and verbally communicated something to a couple other people.
- I signed up for the twitter updates of what was going down where, I received 150+ or so over the course of 8 hours.

After what seemed like 12 miles of walking about 8 hours from when I arrived, I sat down for a while in the lot across the St. Paul Cathedral that overlooks downtown St. Paul and Excel Energy Center with Riot Police below blocking a couple of streets.  Busloads of delegates were arriving along with media.  Mitch Epstein and his assistant were taking large format (8×10) photos of the riot police below for an upcoming project ‘American Power’.  I ran into Ben Huset or rather he ran into me, we sat and talked for a half hour before the final 1.2 mile walk back to my car.

**Still work in progress** Also, see the other September 1st posts.

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September 3rd, 2008 RNC Rice Park »« September 1st, 2008 RNC Protest Staging - State Capital