bits forgotten in the rumble

[solarbird]

Both before and during the Republican National Convention, there were many pre-emptive police raids (includes links to video) against various groups planning to film or protest the RNC. This is an example of one of the pre-emptive raids, this one against a group planning to video protests. (Followup here and here.) The Federal government spent a lot of time engaged in massive domestic spying beforehand, planting agents in various protest groups, before detaining dozens of potential protestors before the convention. Various journalists were also arrested and charged with "conspiracy to commit riot" (includes video), including several people including Nichole Salazar and Amy Goodman at Democracy Now, an Associated Press photographer, and reporting intern for Utne Reader. For fun, you can also watch this protestor standing on a street with a flower getting teargassed right in the face.

Meanwhile, on the way out, the Bush administration is continuing to work to institutionalise its theories about unlimited executive power, most significantly, its ability to detain anyone indefinitely, more domestic spying powers such as that used against protest groups above, and so on.

Separately, and in case you missed it, the US launched a military attack into Pakistani territory back on the 2nd.

Comments

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

*Deep Sigh*

There were some abuses with the Dems, too (though many of those can be laid on the local governments) but this...

This is like a return to the bad old days. The _really_ bad old days.

Even when Nixon was their boy, things weren't quite this bad.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

I don't know. This treatment of protesters go back at least as far as the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999. In that case the preemptive arrests weren't as thorough and so the protests were more effective. Immediately after that the exact same tactics you saw in St. Paul were rolled out against anti-globalization activists throughout the world. Then, in 2004, tactics similar to this were used at both political conventions. The scope of the "preventive" arrests is getting bigger but in quality this is nothing new.

What's interesting is that this didn't really play out in Denver. I'm not sure what that says about the relationship between police and activists in that city, police and the Democratic Party, or the party and the activists, but there's definitely a different dynamic. My guess is that this is where your Nixon analogy plays a role. The GOP pulled whatever influence it needed to get the protesters the kind of treatment usually reserved for big global meetings, whereas in Denver they didn't and the result was a more typical (though still exaggerated) law enforcement response.