September 4th, 2008 RNC Protest State Capital

Thursday being the last day of the RNC I think most speculated it was going to be a big day, John McCain was about to be nominated on the Republican ticket, and they had released quite a few people the previous evening that had been swept up prior to the RNC as well as the Mon/Tues/Wed arrests. I tried to make it downtown before the student march left the capital grounds(11am-4pm) but, missed them by 20 minutes or so. Ben Huset has a collection of photos from that march, I hear it was fairly peaceful. I had seen flier’s for this March 4-7pm event for several weeks. I was told this was going to be a big one in advance that they had planned for an un-authorized march the previous weekend. I checked the permits on the City of St. Paul website and while the banner said 4-7pm, they only had a permit from 4-5pm(fully disclosed @ the rally). Multiple St. Paul businesses and City offices closed early in anticipation for trouble and difficulties leaving the city. Quite a few of the bridges were closed down between the Capital and the Downtown (crossing downtown from the Capital over I-94). I grabbed some food (food vendors on-site) and waited. A band started playing around 4pm, I would put attendance at that time at 250 people although I am no good at estimating crowd size, the crowd grew considerably I would say by the time of the march they had 600+ and continued to grow. I had seen Law Enforcement staging in the transportation building parking lot across the street, as well as John Ireland Blvd but, I was sure at that time that they were staging in all directions. About 20 minutes into the event a bicycle patrol came speeding through the center of the Capital Grounds where people were. While I saw the bikes sweep in I didn’t catch what exactly happened as the next site was a crowd of 200 people surrounding the 16-20 Bike patrol members. The first hand account I got was that someone had ‘inadvertently’ stuck an umbrella or something into one of the officers front tire and it stopped abruptly and in a spectacular fashion. I had heard an hour later on the radio that a patrol went into a crowd after identifying two suspects they wanted to arrest, I am not sure if it was the same event or not I did not hear the full story. In any event two people were arrested. Once the bicycle patrol was surrounded by 200 people (instantly, I think they were mostly photographers). Riot police came out of every direction along with 10 or so mounted patrol officers. It’s amazing to watch a horse clear a crowd. The band kept playing but, the lyrics changed to ‘let them go, let them go, let them go’, for some reason I thought they were talking about the bike patrol. Within 3 minutes or so 10 or so mounted police and 50+ officers in riot gear were in positions of the bicycle patrol who had formed a circle and were using their bicycles to hold the people back up to that point, and they just kept coming.  Eventually the organizer was on the microphone asking everyone to assemble back on the stage(doing a great job by the way).  While everyone rushed the patrol to take photos of the arrest I went up the capital steps to get a birds eye view but, took a couple minutes to find and mount a small portable tripod so in the video clip below it’s pretty shaky while I am digging through my bag for it and mounting it while all this is going down, I wanted to keep the sound and action contiguous so I never edited this sequence in the video below into clips thus their is a 5 or so minute clip about 20-30 seconds into the video.  The crowd eventually returns to the stage and the riot police take up positions behind the stage.  When the center group put on their gas masks I took out my contacts putting my glasses on and tied my bandanna around my backpack for quick access along with a water bottle but, continued taking video, and photos.  About 10 minutes before the permit expires the attendee’s are told the permit to protest expires and a few people are permitted to speak briefly while people were already starting down 12th Street to Cedar avenue.  I stepped off the capital grounds 3 minutes before the permit expired and watched law enforcement redeploy.  I started back towards Sears where I had parked my car, cutting through the transportation building where a rapid response team was assembled.  My intent was to lawfully drive around the capital to get a view of Ceder from up the hill then make my way downtown further along the march route but, I had noticed that somehow the march was spread out from Cedar & 12th to John Ireland & 94, so I just walked up to John Ireland and began taping the standoff that would continue for about 2 hours.  The Satellite trucks from the local stations appeared within about 15 minutes parking at the Kelly Inn next to Sears.  Another team was assembling behind the Kelly in Rice Street was closed down to Southbound traffic to John Ireland.  The bridges had large trucks on them with law enforcement in riot gear and non-lethal weapons standing on them at various times pointing them at people.  I was told tear gas deployment was authorized at 6pm but, I never saw them all place their masks on so I suspect it was bad information.  Two busloads of riot police from Minneapolis arrived at the Kelly Inn and assembled along the NW corner of Rice & John Ireland, I suspect the blockades were up elsewhere to Cedar & 12th.  Eventually people began moving towards Cedar and 12th, I hopped in my car and the best I could get was two blocks East of Cedar & 12th.  I saw the crowd moving West again, so I drove back into the Cedar parking lot they were moving around sears to get to the Marion Street Bridge, people falling behind were driven with tear gas and flashbangs.  Those who eventually crossed onto the bridge were cutoff on both ends, and 200 or so people were arrested.  I was watching them launch tear gas down Marion from near University & Rice which is about as close as I could get (in a parking lot just NE of University & Rice adjacent to a parking lot right on University & Rice which was filled with law enforcement).  After that I headed home.  I heard from a guy who lives about 10+ blocks NW of the capital that a group of 50 or so were walking down his street and heard gunshots (I suspect it was a splinter group walking home and they were non-lethal rounds or tear gas).  Halfway through the John Ireland standoff I ran into Bill Doms who got some great video footage for KMSP as well as David Druffke a professional photographer who I am sure captured some great stills.  Both of them made it back home being just outside of the police line where everyone was arrested inside of it.  I attempted to stay outside of police lines as best I could, however they were very dynamic and moved constantly, also attempting to anticipate where the next one would form and when (most often poorly).  I believe the strategy was to break them into smaller groups by herding them place to place.

Packing list: maps, cell phone/smartphone, GPS Logger, Canon SD1000, Canon 300D(I took the oldest DSLR I had), Sigma 24-70 f2.8(and the cheapest lens), Panasonic SD 3CCD Videocam, 6 tapes, extra batteries, extra t-shirt in a large plastic bag, reasonable amount of water, bandanna, a few other odds and ends into a backpack, giving a quick check to make sure I had no items I could not take onto an airplane (like a pocket knife, etc, as the area was designated a National Security Event area so many Federal Laws are also in play in these situations where you can be charged with a number of federal crimes in addition to State & Local laws that would not typically come into play).

Anyhow, this wrapped up one of the most exciting national events the Twin Cities has hosted in quite a while, it’s not something I would travel out of State to do.  Lot’s of third party volunteers were present, the National Lawyers Guild Legal Observer’s, Safety People(I forget their group), street medics, even the ACLU was handing out know your right’s, what to do if your arrested booklets during the event.  An amazing number of camera’s present.

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