--- Neal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > There were no riots during ISAG, as at the debacle > in Seattle. No > widespread property damage, either. And the Critical > Mass folks were > prevented from annoying those nice, taxpaying, > suburbanite commuters. :-)
I know I witnessed some neighborhood residents being gassed when they were doing nothing more than trying to ask what was going on-including an elderly woman. I guess I also have a different take on Seattle. Whatever alleged intelligence was used to surmise that ISAG protests could turn into anything resembling Seattle was driven by a paranoia of a clinical magnitude. Sen. Paul Wellstone spoke and addressed the protests in Seattle. People came from all over the world to participate in the protests in Seattle just as they have at similiar protests of the SAME issues in Barcelona, Spain and Genoa, Italy(remember the controversial death of a young protestor there?) this last year. I had the pleasure of speaking at a conference in Chicago this summer where I was roomed with another speaker and friend named Medea Benjamin who was one of the key activists on fair trade issues who organized the protests in Seattle. There is no way anyone with a modicum of common sense and any level of awareness of what was behind and driving these very different protest actions(ISAG /WTO) who would have had any expectation that Minneapolis was facing the magnitude of threat our police leadership tried to lead the community to believe. I think a simple conversation with local Dr. Don Wildmon who travels around the world teaching within a reconstructivist wiccan tradition that posits political action and protest as ritual and who is popular among members of the anarchist community including the much maligned Black Bloc to which much of the alleged violence in Seattle was attributed(members of these communities claim the more violent actions to be attributable to police plants and agent provacateurs-same as ISAG protestors did here actually identifying and isolating police plants as was relative easy due to their comparatively small number) could have let the police and the community know that the same elements would not be found in the protest here. If the police had come out with similiar force and spent a million dollars to prevent rioting after the recent hockey victory at the U(a situation likely containing more or at least as much potential for violence), I don't think people would be as reticent in their complaints about the excess cost, let alone excessive show of force, excercised here in Loring Park neighborhood to keep a few hundred people(just how many were there? I never saw even that many) from expressing their dissent and disagreement with the lack of excercising the precautionary principal when it comes to issues around putting genetic modified organisms onto our plates and/or into our ecosystems. Most of the activists I ran into in the neighborhood during the protest where polite and handing out fliers and simply wanting to inform people of their concerns. The much ballyhooed nonsense of an unknown chemical substance being found in the McDonald's on Nicollet and attributed to participants in the protests with animal liberation leanings, speculation that made it into the local media, turned out to be nothing but cider vinegar, a common treatment used by activists to alleviate the symptoms brought on by tear gas. Also, anyone who saw the pictures of the headquarter's of Sister Camelot's (the nonprofit involved in distributing organic produce to the poor that is excess or deemed too unattractive to sell to customers but perfectly edible by and from area coops, restaurants, etc.) after the police raided their headquarters to disrupt and require information on their plans for the protest knows that these actions were highly suspect under the guarantees to free speech, freedom of association, and freedom of assembly afforded by our constitution. The pictures of the young activist known as "Tumbleweed" who was reportedly beaten by the police in this raid were also truly troubling. I know that these events caused me to wonder where the meltdown was at city hall that lead to this absurd situation of my being kept awake all night by the helicopters whirling overhead. The noise, the inconvenience, the expense, the fearmongering, the harrassment of nonprotesting residents along with protestors, these things I think point to soom critical judgement issues in our so-called "public safety" department. Certainly there could have been a more measured response to this event. My thoughts on this particular part of the puzzle, from Loring Park, David Strand __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Games - play chess, backgammon, pool and more http://games.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
