‘RNC Welcoming Committee’ promises no warm welcome for GOP convention
Article Last Updated: 08/27/2007 12:58:14 PM CDT
The RNC Welcoming Committee doesn’t really want to welcome the Republican National Convention to the Twin Cities.
And they’re organizing this weekend - a year before the Republican heavyweights arrive - to make their un-welcome heard.
A few hundred “anarchists and anti-authoritarians” will gather for a pre-convention convention this Saturday and Sunday, to give shape and strategy to their 2008 RNC convention plans, according to a woman who identified herself as Bea Bridges. Bridges read a statement at a news conference this morning about this weekend’s gathering but did not take any questions from invited reporters.
In her statement, she said the group doesn’t plan any mayhem for this weekend. But she didn’t preclude alternative, illegal action when the Republicans come to down.
“Some among us may choose to resist state violence using pacifist tactics, while others use whatever methods they deem necessary and appropriate,” she said in a brief appearance at the run-down Jack Pine Community Center in Minneapolis.
The anarchist group is just one of a host of groups getting ready to voice their protest during the convention next year.
A group of DFL activists plan to mount Jumbotron screens in downtown St. Paul near the Xcel Energy Center to share their opinions.
“We just think shouting obscenities at the police in the street is so 20th Century,” Martha Ballou, an attorney and organizer behind the Jumbotron effort, said earlier this year.
Another group, calling itself Unconventional Action, is already recruiting for volunteers to act as everything from street medics to intelligence gatherers during the Republican convention in the Twin Cities and the Democratic Convention in Denver.
Chuck Samuelson, of the Minnesota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, believes that about 100,000 protesters will demonstrate in one way or another during the early September 2008 convention. That’s about 400,000 fewer protesters than showed up during the Republican convention in New York in 2004.
“That’s because of our location, geographically, and there is basically no place for these guys to stay,” said Samuelson.
His group is working with the Twin Cities governments and law enforcement to assure that demonstrators can have their say while the convention is in town. Already, the MCLU has recruited litigators from the top law firms in Minnesota to make sure the cities are prepared to let that happen.
During the convention, he hopes to have an on-call cohort of about 300 lawyers ready to help defend people who are arrested.
“In the best of all possible worlds no one who doesn’t want to be arrested is going to be arrested,” he said.
Rachel E. Stassen-Berger can be reached at rstassen-berger@pioneerpress.com.
