RNC Welcoming Committee willing to call off 2008 protest for $5.9 million
I knew that would draw you in. Don’t worry, pay off for the headline is buried deep. This is an analytical feature, so you’ll have to work for it. You had Labor Day off after all.
First: This post is not about the arrests during the Critical Mass bike ride on August 31st. Currently, that event is being adequately covered by eyewitness Steve Marsh, Aaron Landry and the always solid Andy Birkey at the Minnesota Monitor. The only thing that will provide info on that event is more verifiable eyewitness reports – something I’m working on.
Exculpations or convictions should be held off until then.
In the meantime, I felt it was important to clarify an emerging mainstream media meme regarding the RNC Welcoming Committee’s (RWC) plans to protest the RNC Convention. This post is not to render judgment either way but to present the details in context which has always been a core mission of Blanked Out.
On the morning of 8/27, RWC proxy Bea Bridges presented this statement and this video. Star Tribune staffer Randy Furst posted a news story that afternoon along with Rachel E. Stassen-Berger of the Pioneer Press. Two days later, activist-columnist Katherine Kersten posted an editorial regarding the legal preparations for the RNC convention.
Let’s see how the story developed on two key points: (emphasis added)
Point 1:
Original Source - Bridges/RWC:
“The State asks that we only resist in ways it finds convenient and easy to contain, promising repression of those who act outside the parameters it sets. This is a threat- a violent threat with which the State hopes to terrorize us into submission.
Therefore, there exists no “peaceful” option.
Some among us may choose to resist State violence using pacifist tactics, while others use whatever methods they deem necessary and appropriate. But, no matter how we respond to it, violence is already present at the protests through no fault of our own.”
Furst/Star Tribune:
In discussing future tactics, [Bridges] said, “Some may choose to resist state violence using pacifist tactics, while others use whatever methods they deem necessary and appropriate.”
Stassen-Berger/Pioneer Press:
“Some among us may choose to resist state violence using pacifist tactics, while others use whatever methods they deem necessary and appropriate,” [Bridges] said in a brief appearance at the run-down Jack Pine Community Center in Minneapolis.
Kersten/Star Tribune:
“There exists no ‘peaceful’ option,” [the RWC] said in a news release.
Feedback!
Furst
Used clip from the original statement that encompasses the RWC’s theory of originating state violence to provide useful context to other protest options.
Stassen-Berger
…ditto
Kersten
Managed to edit out all the context of the news release and actually change the meaning of the original statement. Bridges was arguing that since the State is already engaged in political violence there cannot be a peaceful option – only a spectrum between pacifist and militant resistance.
Point 2:
Original Source - RWC:
I highly suggest watching the video in its entirety in order to judge my assessment. Here are some screencaps and descriptions:
The video is a tongue-in-cheek “day in the life” of an anarchist. It opens the common morning routine – alarm, shower, breakfast, light reading, newspaper delivery, morning job, molotov cocktail…wait, molotov cocktail?!?
Oh, our anarchist protagonist is just assisting her neighbor in lighting his grill. The video continues with several satirical scenes: wire cutters turn into hedge trimmers, anarchists remind SWAT stand-ins that safety comes first and foreshadowing that a bowling ball is about to be thrown into a US Navy recruiting office is merely used for some impromptu sporting. The only scene played straight is when the heroine delivers a lunch labeled “Food (Not Bombs)” to an anarchist office worker.
Overall, the video deftly spoofs post-Seattle/WTO expectations for political violence.
As for the MSM crowd…
Furst/Star Tribune:
“[The RWC] showed a video that hinted at confrontational tactics…”
Stassen-Berger
(not applicable) No mention of the video in this story.
Kersten
“At a news conference on Monday, the group showed a video featuring masked figures and hinting at violence.”
Did Kersten even watch the video? Or did she rely upon the equivalent of a newsroom game of telephone? Furst’s contention that the video hinted an confrontational tactics is only slightly inaccurate. Kersten’s diction is deceptive and bombastic. On the face of it, none of the three reporters did any research at all or they would have found the RWC’s history of satire and spoofing the media and state agencies.
On 7/2/2007, the RWC put out a press release:
…offering negotiations with federal agents and local law enforcement. The RWC proposes an Arms Reduction Treaty with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, in which the group will not bring armaments of a greater destructive capacity than the ones brought by law enforcement. Spokesperson for the clearinghouse group, Robyn B. is quoted as saying, ‘We will agree to not bring our UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter with a single rotor Sikorsky S-70 and twin-General Electric T700-GE-701 free-turbine turboshaft engines, if law enforcement agree not to bring theirs.’
Lastly, in light of the Host Committee’s goal of raising $59 million for the Republican National Convention, the RNC Welcoming Committee has extended an offer. For a mere $5.9 million, anarchists are willing to call off all plans to protest the GOP convention from September 1st through September 4th of 2008.
Robyn B. noted that the so-called Host Committee is struggling to meet their fundraising goals, and that “the Welcoming Committee’s offer may well be one that they cannot afford to refuse.”
At this time, the RNC Welcoming Committee is not releasing any other details of their plans. Robyn B. said, “We aren’t saying anything,”… possibly a reference to Chuck Samuelson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union-MN, who had earlier stated, “Frankly, the ones to worry about are the ones that aren’t saying anything.”
On 9/3/2007, Labor Day:
[The RWC] declare our first victory, having achieved a complete shutdown of government services citywide. This we have accomplished whilst wading in the dark tide of the State and their attempts to crush us on the first eve of our festivities, when the gentle flesh of our comrades was met with hard metal and penetrating volts by members of the self-appointed police force – a foreshadowing glimpse. Yet here we stand, and our chariots ride on. Much as a phoenix rises from its own ashes, we admit that tomorrow the city will function anew. But know this: its hegemony, like all but the truest of loves, is fleeting, ephemeral.
Who’s playing who in the ratcheting of rhetoric pre-Convention?
UPDATE: WCCCO has video of the above statement. Note the spokeswoman losing it and cracking a smile near the end.
MPR now has a story up - no surprise that it is the most authoritative piece by far. They even interview Mitch Berg of Shot in Dark who has his counter-analysis here.
September 4th, 2007 at 9:15 am
Noah,
Good piece. And thanks for your comment on my blog. However, Noah, I have to ask you to hold up a bit right here (from your comment):
this trips me up a little principally due to labeling the RWC as “Nazis”,
I didn’t!
I invoke the Reichstag Fire as a political parallel - a staged (or, in the case of the actual fire, opportunistically-seized-upon) provocation that the perpetrators used to justify their own outrages afterwards. One could say the same thing about, say, the Gulf of Tonkin incident without implying that LBJ was a Nazi, for example. Or at least that’s my theory.
At any rate, until the RWC starts calling for lebensraum and the elimination of any ethnic group, I’d never call ‘em “nazis”.
While I’m aware that making any parallel to anything that happened in Germany between 1929 and 1945 is fraught with rhetorical peril, and believing me, or not is your choice - I was shooting for the political parallel, not the nazi reference.
September 4th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Thanks for the reply Mitch. Personally, as per my comments when Rep. Ellison made a Reichstag allusion, I have no problem with the political illusion. I’m still researching what actually occurred during the Critical Mass ride - I’m mainly focusing on eyewitness reports right now - others are collecting data from the MPD. We’ll see.
September 5th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Just looked back - you did call them Nazis. Your explanation:
Doh. It’s a fair cop. Chalk it up to emotion. Will revise.
And then changed the Nazi references to “facists”.
Again, not saying references to Nazis are off limits, just pointing out the facts.
September 6th, 2007 at 5:04 am
Nazis or no, I think Ellison was much more on point. He was making comparisons between people in power and those who soon gained it by exploiting a major catastrophe. RWC and a few kids on bikes? Get real!