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Saturday, August 30, 2008 12:00 AM

Massive police raids on suspected protesters in Minneapolis

Several "hippie homes" are raided this morning by semi-automatic-weapon-wielding police squads.

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  • Saturday, August 30, 2008 07:33 PM

    The point of these raids

    is to conduct them.

    The desired effect is to intimidate the DFHs, to make it difficult or impossible for them to organize their demonstrations, to make it difficult for them to communicate with one another and with the public, and to demonstrate to everyone that the Authorities know who you are, know where you are, and know what you are doing, DFH or not, and to let everyone know that if they choose to, they're gonna fuck your shit up. And they want you to think there is nothing you can do about it.

    In the course of the raids, there's not a lot nonviolent protesters can do except passive resistance. For whatever reason, the targets of these raids chose to submit to the police without any known resistance. Of course the heavy armament carried by the Authorities may have had something to do with their decision. What anyone does in a situation such as they faced is a matter for individuals to sort out, but training in passive resistance can be useful.

    It appears that a blanket warrant was issued, or rather a single warrant was written and applied to a multitude of addresses.

    While the targets of the raids cannot do a whole lot to stop them while the raids are happening, stopping these raids and ensuring there are no more of them should be the immediate objective of the Opposition, as it were. Signs are that these raids were authorized and conducted lawlessly and that arrests were made lawlessly as well. Actions should have been taken immdediately (ie: last night and into this morning) to have the raids called off through injunction, through action by civic bodies such as city councils and county commissioners, and through direct contact with law enforcement agencies. Assuming all these efforts would prove unsuccessful, immediate civil disobedience actions, such as surrounding houses where raids were being conducted, defying street closures to mount protests, etc. were indicated. Simultaneously, an extensive public education campaign is needed to inform people how these lawless actions by the Authorities can affect ordinary people and calling for the immediate cessation of these raids and prohibition of further raids on innocent, patriotic Americans.

    Bruce Nestor might become a hero, but he is not one yet. At this point he seems stunned (which I can certainly understand) and not at all prepared to take action to stop these raids and sanction their perpetrators. It appears he will post bail for and defend those who were arrested, and perhaps he will file civil suit on behalf of others. But that doesn't stop the raids. In effect, it feeds them by accepting the premises of the raids as valid, even though he disagrees with them and the twisted application of "law." But his disagreement now and action in the future is not enough to stop the lawlessness of the Authorities in the present.

    This is what the Congressional Democrats have been doing for years, and it is what has enabled the Busheviks to transform the government and the very idea of "law" in this country during their time in office. It's simply not enough to disagree now, and to think about or even to promise possible future action to correct these matters. Actions to correct should have been happening all along, but they were absent. And now in Minneapolis and St. Paul, we see they may be absent in the case of the lawless raids on citizens.

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