The "Left" Doesn't Cause All The Problems

For those of you who don't know, Starhawk is a Pagan woman who is politically active - leans toward the left, she does. She's also a peaceful woman, but she's not afraid to get involved. Whether she, and those who support her causes are right or wrong, I don't particularly care.

I'm mainly posting this because it deserves to be known about...and I certainly haven't seen anything in the media about it. This report is from Starhawk - it's not been edited or changed in any way from the way it was sent out to those on her mailing list.

RNC: Raid on the Convergence Center

By Starhawk

It's Friday night. Our Pagan Cluster issitting on the bluff of the
Mississippi having our first real meeting, when Lisa gets a call. The cops
are raiding the Convergence Center, where we'reorganizing meetings and
trainings for the protests against the Republican National Convention. It's
not a role play, the caller says. It's real.

Instantly, we jump up and hurry back the six or eight blocks to the old
theater we are using for meetings, trainings and social gatherings. I've
spent the last two days doing magical activism trainings, teaching people
how to stay calm and grounded in emergency situations and when things get
chaotic. Now it's time to put the traininginto practice. Aaron, a tall,
red-headed young man who could be one of my nephews strides along beside me.
³Are you grounded?² I ask him. He nods, and runs ahead.

Nobody can keep up with Lisa, who speeds ahead like an arrow, walking, not
running, but still covering the ground quickly. Andy and I trail behind.
We're often street buddies, because we're both big, slow, and supremely calm
and stubborn, willing to wade into almost any situation and become the
immovable object.

We're stopped by a line of cops just beforewe reach the building. They
refuse to let us through, or to move their van which is blocking Scarecrow's
car. There's an investigation underway, theysay, and won't say more.

Brush, our dear friend, is inside, having gone to a jail solidarity meeting,
ironically enough. So are two very young people who had just joined our
cluster that night. I try calling Brush'scell phone, but get no reply.

We wait. That's what you do when the copshave guns trained on kids inside
a building. You wait, and witness, and make phone calls, and try to think
of useful things to do.

We call lawyers. We call politicians. We try to call media. We call
friends who might know politicians and media.

Through the kitchen door, we can see young kids sitting on the floor,
handcuffed. We walk across the street, back, made more phone calls. An
ambulance is parked in front, and the paramedics head into the building,
leaving a gurney ready. Susu, from her car around the corner, reports that
the cops have been grabbing pedestrians from the street, forcing them down
to the ground, handcuffing them.

Song, one of the local organizers, calls her City Council member. She wants
to call the Mayor, Chris Coleman, who has promised that St. Paul will be as
welcoming to protestors as to delegates, but no one has his home number.

What I have forgotten to tell people at the training is how much of an
action is just this: tense, boring waiting, with a knot of anxiety in your
stomach and your feet starting to hurt. Song talks to a helpful neighbor,
who's come over to find out what's happening. He knows where the mayor
lives, says it's just a few blocks away, anddraws us a map.

We decide to go and call on the Mayor, who could call off the cops. About
five of us troop down there, through the soft night and a neighborhood of
comfortable homes and wide lawns on the bluffs above the Mississippi. The
Mayor's house is a comfortable DutchColonial, and lights were on inside.
We decide that just a few of us will go to the door, so as not to look
intimidating. Song is a round, soft-bodied middle-aged woman with a sweet
face. Ellen is a tiny brunette with a gap-toothed smile, and Lisa,
formidable organizer though she is, looks slight and unthreatening. The
rest of us hang back. Someone opens the door. Our friends have a
conversation with the mayors' wife, who isnot pleased to be visited by
constituents late at night, and who tells us we should call the office. The
Mayor, she says, is asleep, and she will not wake him up.

We think a mayor who was doing his job would get up and go see what's going
on. Nonetheless, we head back to the convergence space.

A protestor has been released from the building. A small crowd has gathered
across the street, and Fox News has arrived. They interview Song, who does
her first ever Fox media spot. She tells them the truth:that people were in
there watching movies-a documentary aboutMeridel Le Seuer. Meridel would
be proud, and I'm glad she is with us in someform.

One by one, protestor's trickle out. Now weget more pieces of the story.
The cops burst in, with no warning. They pulled drew their guns on
everyone including a five year old child who was there with his mother,
forced everyone down on the floor. It was terrifying.

They had a warrant, apparently, from the county, not the city, to search for
"bomb making materials." They were searching everyone in the building,then
one by one releasing them as they found nothing.

They continue to find nothing, as we wait through long hours. Meanwhile,
more and more media arrives. These cops are not as creative as the DC cops
during our first mobilization there against the International Monetary Fund
and the World Bank. Those cops confiscated the lunchtime soup, which
included onions and chili powder, claiming they were materials for home made
pepper spray.

We wait until the last person gets out. He'sa twenty year old who the cops
have accused of stealing his own backpack, but apparently they relented.

And now it's morning. I wake up to the newsthat cops have been raiding
houses where activists are staying, bursting in with the same bogus warrant
and arresting people, including a four year old child. They've arrested
people at the Food Not Bombs house, a groupdedicated to feeding protestors
and the homeless. They've arrested others,presumably just for being in the
wrong place at the wrong time.

The Poor Peoples' Campaign, which had set upcamp at Harriet Island, a park
in the middle of the Mississippi, has also been harassed, its participants
ordered to disperse and its organizers arrested.

Let me be perfectly clear here: all of ushere are planning nonviolent
protests against an administration which is responsible for immense
violence, bombs that have destroyed whole countries, and hundreds of
thousands of deaths.

This is the America that eight years of the Bush administration have brought
us, a place where dissent is no longer tolerated, where pre-emptive strikes
have become the strategy of choice for those who hold power, where any group
can be accused of bomb-making or terrorismon no evidence whatsoever in
order to deter dissent.

Please stand with us. Because it could be your home they are raiding next.

Call the Mayors of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Tell them you are outraged by
these attacks on dissent. Urge them to let Poor People encamp and to let
dissent be heard.

FLOOD THE MAYORS' OFFICES ASAP

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman

651-266-8510

Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak

(612) 673-2100

(612) 673-3000 outside Minneapolis