September 6th, 2008 Mabel Steam Engine Days

I hit the 56th annual Mabel/Hesper Steam Engine Days.   I am not sure how many times I have hit it before, I missed the last one or maybe two years but, it’s a pretty big event for a small town.  Highlights are the beer tent, food, Steam Engine grounds as well as the big Parade.  I see some relatives that I don’t typically see very often, their kids are like 3 feet taller every year I go and a bunch of people I don’t know walk up to me and talk about something I did like 30 years ago while visiting my grandparents.  I don’t mean to be disrespectful but, I am really bad at names and faces.  In a small town like this someone comes to visit for a few days it’s big news, I might run into a dozen people on one visit 30 years ago and they only have to remember one cute kid.  Anyhow the kids love the parade but, they had parties and such to go to so they didn’t come this year, otherwise they would have had tons of candy thrown at them.  The steam engines line up right next to my grandmothers house with only one prefab preventing chunks of steel from slicing me in half at 2000mph if one should go up resulting in a chain reaction blowing all the others up, that would be quite the explosion(the house next door burnt down, my grandmothers house is about 100 years old and in great shape).  Loud monsters but, very cool.  The parade starts at Noon with the steam engines and then about an hours worth of tractors, lots of old ones.  I think it’s pretty cool how they can keep a tractor from 1916 running year after year and looking really nice.  An hours worth of tractors from manufacturer’s that have come and gone.  This is followed by a huge parade starting with an honor guard, marching band’s, Miss Mabel 2008, etc, tons of businesses with signs on their cars, floats, scouts of all kinds, various people running for office of some type.

After this we typically hit the Lions Club for Chicken, it varies year to year but, my Mom tends to make enough food to feed a town with a huge selection of food, if we were an army we had enough food to march and take over Spring Grove.

We hit the beer tent where the Cannon Old West Society (Old West re-enactors were putting on a show), while waiting I had to decide between Busch, Bud, or Bud Light, I went with Busch as they had a huge Semi with a bunch of deer heads mounted in it for a quick walk thru, I guess, if you drink Busch you kill big deer or something.  It was pretty cool, I missed the staged bank robbery at 11am, I guess they vary the caper depending on time of day and location but, the guns sound pretty real whenever they shot the shotgun I could have sworn I heard pellets landing on some roof.  But, in this one the guy with the money bags was leaving the Saloon with the money bags from the last caper (the bank heist) kind of wobbly, when 6-7 guys were demanding the money which resulted in a shoot out, the wobbly older gentleman managed to take them all out but, the ladies hit him over the head with a bottle and ran away with the money….

We walked through town, some shops change hands year to year, others decade to decade, so it’s always fun to walk down mainstreet and see some place that you went shopping at 30 years ago.  We made it to the Steam Engine Grounds where their were rides, food, threshing and such going on as well as an R/C demo, I guess they have quite the Radio Control club in Mabel, I never would have guessed.  After that we headed home, typically we will hit the bars up-town briefly and walk through each one, briefly, but, pretty much stayed at my grand mothers and ate food all night.  I left the following morning at 11am after breakfast but, before the next days steemies festivities on a little detour through bluff country.  I did not take a DSLR, just the SD1000, traveling light.

12►

no comments yet.

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.

12►

Route

no comments yet.

September 3rd, 2008 RNC Rice Park

It was a pretty tame night with not much scheduled or going on.  Very few people were in the ‘restriction zone’ and public viewing area’s so I spent about the evening at Rice Park where MSNBC was broadcasting live, quite a large media and delegate presence along with Ron Paul supporters, and some other strange entertainment going on.

MSNBC Broadcasting live in Rice Park during RNC

no comments yet.

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.

Video Vimeo -

1 comment.

September 1st, 2008 RNC Protest Staging – State Capital

I walked around and shot photos of alot of the props, people, signs, banners.  I was not really sure which group I was going to ‘march’ or photograph with.  I figured if I started at the front I could drop back and photograph the whole protest (which I did), plus the immigration folks had a live band.  This was during the staging & ralley going on at the time.

Video Vimeo Video YouTube

12►

no comments yet.