Letters to the Editor

Letters posted here are associated with the following article:
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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  • If one is a Bush voter who posts at Salon, that one hates freedom.

    Bush, who was elected by Bush voters, told us that freedom is on the march. Therefore, if freedom is on the march in Iraq and a Bush voter isn't there, that Bush voter hates freedom.

    Get thee to Iraq, Bush voters! Seriously. Pay for your sins with your eyes and arms and lives. Elephantman, you can drive a Hummer. You can bleed for your beliefs. Don't ask others to suffer for your sins.

    But you stay and post at Salon.

    Coward.

    Monster.

  • Copy of Search Warrant

    This is a PDF file. I hope it will download here from the link.

    http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site569/2008/0830/20080830_031532_Warrant.pdf

  • @Jebbie

    "The first lesson in activism is that the person that offers to get the dynamite is always the FBI agent."

    Judi Bari

  • Glenn, Are RNC Welcoming Committee members really anarchists?

    This group call themselves anarchists. Are they truly dangerous anarchists? This is what they said in February of 2007 in their first call to action.

    Every four years, in two very lucky cities, big money gets thrown around while look-alikes from opposite ends of a closed circle step up to their podiums and spout nonsense. RNC. DNC. Whatever. The point is that once the conventions are over, once November is come and gone, once the inauguration is only an unpleasant memory, people across this stolen land find themselves in pretty much the same place as before: a bad one.

    And we’d like to offer up a movement- some real, tangible change. Unfortunately, the reality is that we’re rundown at best, hopeless at worst, and though we see liberation shining off in the distance, we don’t know how to get there.

    That sounds like something I can read every day on UT. They list 40 fellow anarchist groups. This is what their site says about their strategy:

    How we get there (the strategy):

    1. Start Strong – Throw all of our energy into the first day. We’ll kick this off right and stretch the militarized police state out so far that it can no longer contain and suppress our voices and desires.

    2. Transportation Troubles – This includes blockades downtown (at key intersections), on bridges (10 bridges over the Mississippi River in the metro area), and other sporadic and strategic targets (busses, hotel and airport shuttles etc).

    3. Respect, defend, and be prepared for autonomous self-sustaining alternatives – Lasting projects and spaces will be born out of our actions and will need to be protected. We also won’t knowingly bring the hammer down on existing long-term community projects. It doesn’t matter if we win the RNC battle, if the war for our lives is lost.

    4. Be inclusive of local communities and respect alliances – We are all on the same side of the barricades and are trying to build lasting bonds for future mutual aid. We may not agree with each other on all of our tactics, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t venues for us to work together and build on the trust and community that already exists.

    That doesn’t sound like dangerous people to me. I realize that the Transportation Troubles they are proposing could result in criminal actions. If they are willing to risk arrest and conviction for the terrible crime of causing delay and inconvenience, does that make them dangerous and subject to preventative arrests just like the Busheviks used the disgusting excuse of employing overwhelming force because we needed a preventative war.

    I also realize that many of the people they detained in handcuffs, including journalists, were not part of the RNCWC. To me using the word anarchist doesn’t mean they are actually anarchists. It sounds to me that they are disgusted with both major political parties and the authoritarians that run our governments and enforcement agencies, just as so many of us are. Are all of us anarchists?

  • omooex:

    Yes, I know its wrong. But its sad to me that it always seems to be these denials of civil liberties that get the most attention, while they daily grind based on skin color, ethnicity and income goes on unnoticed and unreported. I'm not saying not to report this, Glenn Greenwald. Thanks, you're doing your job. But I'm tired. I'm jaded. Hate me.

    How do you know the economic status of the people who were detained and arrested? I saw how many of them lived -- did you? Also, were they all white?

    I always find it amazing people are able to divine these facts. How did you learn them?

  • adnoto

    Why because you don't like me?

    It's because you're one of the most brazen and despicable hypocrites ever. It's hard to describe what a ridiculous joke you are. You lecture everyone on failing to do enough -- about doing nothing -- even though you are the very embodiment of do-nothingness that can be imagined.

    You beat your chest like some sort of rabid revolutionary but it's all confined to comments you leave here. I didn't see you at any of the protests in Denver or here. I've repeatedly invited you to post whatever protests and events you're organizing -- and promised I would do what I could to promote them -- and you never answer, because you do nothing, while attacking everyone who does things for not doing enough.

    You're a walking joke and everyone sees it but you.

  • unbelievable

    This last decade has been one unbelievable event after the other.

    Thanks glenn for posting this.

  • Perhaps one of the reasons

    That sounds like something I can read every day on UT.

    Some people no longer come here.

    As to dangerous, if your mother happens to be in critical condition in an ambulance on the way to a hospital and can't get there because of something these folks did... well, let's ask the lawyers here: Is that negligent homicide, manslaughter or could they make a case for murder if they was a felony charged in the initial acts?

  • the new incarnation of Anarchism is very different from the old union-organizing, bomb-throwers ... very

    I read up on them after Seattle (and more after Montreal) ...

    Much more philosophical, anti-hierarchical, pro-small, ecoconscious, etc.

    a couple of short pieces:

    from New Left Review (link on my name) January 2002 - DAVID GRAEBER - THE NEW ANARCHISTS (short)

    and a sort of ur-document, though Klein is not an anarchist as far as I am aware ...

    Reclaiming the Commons April 2001

    http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/blackwood/klein.htm

    =========================================================

    I'm not sure how the new anarchists have evolved since ... and their image has been plagued by association with those much maligned early antisyndicalists, trotskyites, etc. In the 1960's, anarchists were considered hopeless idealists, unable to sustain cohesion sufficient to create a "movement" ...

    There will always antisocial bad-assed young folks searching for a flag to rally under ... I think even the folks at ELF and EarthFirst, most of them anyway, have come to understand that vandalism is fairly universally unpopular and that long prison sentences alter and often ruin lives.

    Edward Abbey and the Monkey Wrench gang generally performed small acts and got away with them ... that was then (30+ years ago), this is now. What was "monkeywrench" then .... is "ecoterrorism" now.

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