Censorship and Police Brutality

To the Editor:

I went to the Republican National Convention from September 1 to 4 in St Paul, as a protester.
I bear witness to rubber bullets, pepper spray and concussion grenades.

I have friends who were arrested and charged as domestic terrorists and for conspiracy in furtherance of terrorism.

Many activists came together to protest against the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention, that both took place right at the end of summer; and were of every political persuasion, not just the two.

It’s interesting that not one major medium did much, if any, reporting on what went on.

I don’t recall reading about events in St. Paul locally; Minnesota is a neighboring state, yet we have heard nothing about the police repression.

If we did hear about the conventions, it was from the point of view on what was going on inside the conventions, not what was going on the outside and if we did, it would be from the police department’s point of view.

Many may disagree with me because the police were “doing their job.”

However, I think it’s of public interest to cover the police repression in Minnesota that week, and it was simply for organizing and protesting with a wide variety of tactics (whether that is deemed legal or not).

Please note that diversity of tactics was an agreement that groups signed onto for this event, which was undertaken in solidarity and to not judge each other for different protesting tactics one may use.

People arrested were organizing to fight against all kinds of state oppression.

Regardless of what the tactics were, I think it’s important to bring up the fact that people of all views have been arrested for various things whether that was breaking windows, barricading or leading a permitted march.

A group of people who helped was the Coldsnap Legal Collective. They are an awesome Minnesota Legal Collective that helped out pre-RNC, during RNC and afterwards. They have a donation link and updates: http://coldsnaplegal.wordpress.com and another great website is: http://rnc8.org

This is a great time for solidarity of humanity of all political thought, whether that be Liberal, Anarchist, Conservative, Socialist, Republican, whatever!
We can fight and speak up against state and police repression. People need to know when this happens.

We can stand up for what we believe in, use our own autonomy and make sure we can continue to keep these so-called “rights” that the government says we have.

-Heather Jackson
Grand Forks