My experience with the RNC protests and the Harriet Island concert

[Hurst2112]

Posted this on another forum. Without getting into too much detail, there was a 'Take Back Labor Day' concert across the river in St. Paul yesterday. We decided to go and check out Tom Morello. We had to walk through downtown to get there.

Me and the she went to Harriet island to watch some of the show. We bussed down to St. Paul and walked right through the protests.



Couple thoughts....

Seeing cops in riot gear, on horses, etc was a trip. Very intimidating.

You get a bunch of hippies together in a humid atmosphere and the body odor is almost unbearable. Take a shower. Soap is non-partisan.

F you to all those idiot protesters who attacked delegates, threw trash cans and newspaper dispensers out into the streets. A big F off to the idiots who smashed windows, slashed tires. In the hour I spent watching those fools, I didn't see any police use excessive force. I did see a bunch of morons giving the rest of the peaceful protesters a bad name.

Tom Morello shouldn't sing and play guitar. His messages were great but man, he isn't that good by himself.

Atmosphere was awesome.

Mos Def impressed me.

The crowd at the Hariet Island thing was very cool. Very laid back.

I'm very disgusted hearing that a lot of these punks are 14-17 years old. Burning dumpsters, throwing bent nails into the streets to stop charter buses. I have no sympathy for how these people are being coralled by the police. And by the way, I want to stress that during the time that I watched, the police were very tolerant of the protesters.

[Hurst2112]

Here's a post from a friend of mine:

I'm posting an eye-witness report that I quickly typed up when I got home last night. I was asked by a photographer from the pioneer press on the scene to give a 1st hand statement of the activities I witnessed. My personal feelings about this is, These Anarchist protesters are a bunch of douche bags for destroying and disrupting parts of our city.

At approximately 2pm, I witnessed the Macy's glass being broken by Anarchists using signs, hammers, and pieces of concrete. A police car was getting bricks and signs thrown into it, with a police officer inside the car! These guys were destroying the city of St. Paul down on the corner of 4th and Wabasha. I quickly ran north to Ecolab Plaza to get out of this area to avoid this situation. I did not witness much more than this at this location as I was concerned on getting to a safer location.

At around 3:30pm, I was in the area of Jackson and 7th (right in front of Alary's) when a group of disrespectful "Anarchists" decided to gather and walk against traffic right down the road (on 7th between Robert and Jackson). At this time I witnessed someone driving his car towards this crowd. He honked at the crowd to get out of his way so he could pass through. The crowd did not clear a path for him so he then proceeded to drive right into the crowd of protesters. The protesters started shaking this guy's car and beating it with rocks and whatever else they had. The driver all of a sudden slammed on the gas and started taking protesters for a ride on the hood of his car for about ¼ a block. Some protesters were literally trying to jump on top of this car and some were jumping in the way of this car as he started to take off. The police then quickly moved in on motorcycles, horses, and bikes. My friends and I started to cross the street to get a better view of what was going on, then all of a sudden, the police started launching concussion bombs and gas bombs. Some of these bombs landed within 10 feet of us. We then decided that we should take off as fast as we could and we ran to the north side of the street where officers on bikes told me and one of my friends to get up against the wall and put our hands on our heads. They came up and started questioning us immediately. We told them that we were locals, showed our Ids and told them we were just trying to get out of the area. They immediately let us go. I was told that we were profiled because we were wearing black shirts and we had a backpack on. They told us we blended in with the Anarchists' uniforms. We then quickly moved inside a parking ramp at the corner of Robert and 7th. We watched as one guy get shot in the head with a rubber bullet within a semi-close range. This thoroughly made the group very angry and they started charging towards the officers. The officers then started shooting more gas and rubber bullets in random spots. The National Guard shortly joined the officers and formed a moving wall to push the protesters into a central location.

The crowd then took off in random directions heading west, north and south/ Eventually they all started running towards a parking lot on the north east corner of 7th and Robert. From the 3rd story of the parking ramp my friends and I were at, we saw an estimated 200 officers in riot gear come running in from the south and from the north. Chasing yet more protesters and finally confining them into the aforementioned parking lot. We watched as a pile of protesters and officers jumped on each other and finally yet more tear gas bombs were released. Some officers were displaying a little more force than what I would have liked to have witnessed. There were protesters calmly laying down and putting their hands over their heads as they were instructed to do so. But some officers continued to spray pepper spray into their faces in a little more excessive manner than what needed to be.

Of all the worse things I had witnessed, was an officer using a little excessive force. A bystander who must have been in his 50s (who was clearly a local guy who was wearing a Wild t-shirt and a Twins hat and holding a camera) was crossing the street after the majority of protesters were confined to the parking lot. He was with a younger kid about the age of 10 or so. The officers kept telling spectators to move back and give them some room. So this particular guy and this child decided to get out of the area and go across the street. The bystander stopped for one minute to look back and a riot officer came running into the street and yelled “I SAID FUCKING MOVE!” and shoved the guy to the ground with his bow-staff. When the bystander stood up from the ground, he continued to cross the street. He yelled at the child he was with to run to a traffic cop to get help. The officer again yelled at him to get moving. Then again, shoved the guy and kept pushing him til he got to the other side of the street. The kid did get to the traffic cop and that officer did come over and confront the riot officer using such force. I was about 3 stories up in the parking ramp and had clearly heard what words were being used. They bystander had only told the riot officer to leave him alone and he was trying to clear the area. He did mention that he had a hurt leg and he was trying to move as fast as he can. My perception is that the officer misunderstood what he said. That may have caused the officer to get frustrated and take it out on the bystander. Still, in my personal opinion, that was no excuse for the action of force that I saw.

Overall, the police did do a great job with crowd control and there were a lot of helpful officers. I do give my respect to the majority of them for controlling and containing unlawful acts of protests. They have really followed through with their overall goal and promises of letting legal protests go on without conflict.