Posted on 09/08/2007 5:42:54 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Last Friday, I inadvertently found myself in the midst of the opening salvo of a battle to turn the Twin Cities upside down next year.
I was driving home at rush hour from downtown Minneapolis, when several hundred bicyclists blocked the street leading to Interstate 394.
My fellow motorists and I sat obligingly for several minutes, missing green light after green light. Finally, folks began angrily honking their horns. If two police cars hadn't moved the riders along, people might have leaped from their cars to take on the bicyclists themselves.
Later, the protest ride turned ugly. Two officers tried to arrest several riders who covered their faces with hoods while blocking motorists. They resisted, and about 30 protesters surrounded the officers, chanting "Let them go! Let them go!"
Forty-eight law enforcement personnel from six agencies responded to a police call for help, and chemical spray was used to control the crowd. Nineteen demonstrators were arrested.
Get ready, Minnesotans. The protest was "a kick-off" for a "weekend of organizing against the Republican National Convention" to be held here in September 2008, according to the RNC Welcoming Committee, a local anarchist group.
Across the country, similar groups have announced their intention to cause havoc in our cities next year.
Annette Meeks has seen these tactics before. In 2004, she was a delegate to the GOP convention in New York City.
Meeks, my former colleague at Center of the American Experiment, said that many of the protesters in New York differed markedly from their predecessors.
"It used to be peaceful ex-hippies with placards -- they're almost quaint by today's standards," she said. "In New York we saw a professional class of protesters, with an angry, violent mob mentality.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Just bring out the dogs and the fire hoses —
Let them. I can’t think of a better way to turn the tide.
This isn’t 1967. The left is using tactics from the SDS days.
The ACLU will have a platoon of lawyers there, I guarantee you.
Leave the rubber bullets back at the station house.
Whoever picked Minnesota for the Repubs needs to have his/her head examined to see if they have a brain at all. Maybe some day they will learn, and I long for that day soon. The RNC will be trashed from day one there by the local media, and I cannot figure out why they went for this place. What foolish thoughts.
Rather bring out the riot guns and the tanks.
Funny how their right to act like thugs always trumps our right to go about our daily business without having them in our face.
Protest is fine, but ONCE they start interfering with OTHER people civil rights, they should be beaten down and arrested.
Could the Republicans sue the protest organizers for infringing on our Rights? While we do recognize their Right to peaceful assembly and protest, when it turns violent is that not an infringement on the rights of Republican citizens? The key here is to sue the groups, not individual protesters. Do they have a responsibility to control their own? And when they fail to do so, are they not liable for the damages and infringements?
mindless bots.
my tv-moron, union neighbor foams at the mouth when she sees bush.
bush in iraq, she tells me one morning. i point out to her that she couldn’t find iraq on a map and knows nothing about the geo-political issues.
no matter. her all-consuming rage against bush holds the morning.
america is full of these people.
Because San Francisco was being fumigated that week? Why didn’t they come here to Fort Worth? Or maybe Biloxi to showcase the real Hurricane Katrina recovery story?
...and Nixon won in 1968. However, Johnson was a Dem (though not running), so the incumbent was technically from the other party. A law and order candidate could very well win, no pun intended.
The RNC hacks in D.C. are idiots... they want to let the media run our primary and select who is a "top-tier" candidate... Flood the country with illegals, kiss up to the leftists in the press and protect the perverts...
That’s the same last friday of each month bicycle crowd you will see in cities across the US. They call themselves Critical Mass. Very hostile pro cyclist greens. Needless to say their politcs are left. AS a cyclist I dislike their tactics, intentionall massing of bikers to shut down traffic.
Thre will be plenty of nutjobs at the convention. I worked the 2004 convention in NYC and the nuts were out every day.
Don’t forget the rubber bullets... dems works real good!
LLS
The difference... our anger is righteous... their’s is political.
LLS
Will Hillary go to prison?
That’s the Left for you. If they don’t get their way, they’ll hold their breath until they turn blue.
If the police don’t arrest these childish authoritarian wannabes, what hope is there for a semi-orderly convention?
“Because San Francisco was being fumigated that week? Why didn’t they come here to Fort Worth? Or maybe Biloxi to showcase the real Hurricane Katrina recovery story?”
I’m even more surprized that it wasn’t held in El Paso since Mel Martinez is the RNC chairman, that way he could have more of his favorite constituents attend.
Remember, Officers: Just because they call it a nightstick, that doesn’t mean you can’t use it during the day!
[With apologies to Eddie Murphy.]
Lotsa luck Minneanoplace. Call Scandinavia for backup.
Roger that. I've read a few articles like this recently and I sense that the media is salivating in hope of a circus. Like 60's creeps who want to re-live their glory days, the media want's another Chicago 68.
One can just see the coverage of "fascist police brutalizing innocent Americans who wish only to exercize their 1st Amendment (you know, that part of the Bill of Rights that applies only to the left) rights."
It's predictable as hell. The GOP convention attendees will get no sympathy or support from the press for what they have to put up with.
Isn't that an oxymoron?
Anarchists should be taken very seriously. They should be the first ones put down when things get ugly.
It's a bit early for the kind of anger I feel at the very thought of those black hooded rabid dogs. I remember them well from the Seattle riots, and I'd love to settle a few scores.
Will the convention be in the Hubert Humphrey Arena?
Throw the Critical Mass bicyclists in jail. They deliberately tried to shut down transporation in a number of cities this week.
They are anarchists and need to be prosecuted as such.
Take off the kid gloves.
Imagine if they pull this crap on election day in Republican heavy voting districts.
When the Civil War begins, call out the National Guard and shoot the violent, masked agitators. No rubber bullets. And no vigilantism.
Seditious overthrow of our elections should not be a “police” matter. It is something that requires a military response to protect the national defense from internal agents.
The anti-WTO anarchists are not all US citizens, they go around the world to these events and need to have their visas denied. And to be thrown in prison as terrorists if they still sneak in despite their prohibited entry.
Not just Chicago 68. The Socialists want another Paris 1968.
“Imagine if they pull this crap on election day in Republican heavy voting districts.”
Impossible. It’s easy to shut down city traffic, but how many bicycles would it take to shut down most republican areas?
And when they do this to voters/candidates/party delegates they intimidate those trying to go to the convention:
Kerry cites voter intimidation examples
You won't hear any Democrats denouncing their tactics and yet Bill Clinton has said that the Dutch cartoonists should have been prosectuted for defaming Islam.
... "In New York we saw a professional class of protesters, with an angry, violent mob mentality.
Many of these "protestors" are professionals that are paid to drum up support from the fringes. Many couldn't even tell you what they protest. I faced some of these anarchist unionoids before and it ain't pretty.
I guess it's time to start organizing counter protests.
Fill the water with Dial soap and arm the police with deoderant. Then warn the rioters that if they dont leave in ten minutes, the police will give them all baths.
At least they didn't pick Milwaukee:
4 Sentenced for Election Day Tire Slashing (Milwaukee DemonRat Tire Salshers)
A congresswoman's son and three Democratic campaign workers were sentenced Wednesday to four to six months in jail for slashing tires (on 25 vans) outside a Bush-Cheney campaign office on Election Day 2004.
If you check craigslist you will find that it is a well funded effort that highers protesters and moves them to the cities (and even provides housing) for the “key” city protests.
Follow the money and they’d BETTER file with the FEC since it is NOT the actions of a private citizen working all alone.
hires
I hate Minnesota NAZIs. Hit it.
Seriously, why does the GOP pick Blue-Blue cities to have their Conventions in?
Actually it would’ve been wise to hold it in the desert.
The facilities for the convention would be indoors and air conditioned. The protesters would have to congregate in the hot sun and while their speakers may be in the shade and in tents, their crowd would not be (at least if they wanted an overhead shot to appear in newspapers).
Also there aren’t as many points into or out of such a location making it easier to monitor those coming to town.
They are really RED commie cities but the MSM has shifted the color charts for the elections I guess to disguise this fact.
They never bothered to mention the “colors” of a precinct until after they made this change which has only been for the past several elections.
Used to be True Blue Americans vs Commies now it it Red Meat Americans vs. the “Blue Collar”.
I think (without anything restraining them) that the tactics of the left will increaingly turn violent since our society no longer believes in any sense of morality, and if it doesn’t (the average joe)..The ~liberal protester will think they have nothing holding back their personal behavior from becoming violent!~
I’m so sick of those people. Perhaps we should organize a counter demo like they had in the 1960s. Both the Hell’s Angels and a bunch of construction workers took turns showing up at anti-war protests and beating the crap out of the hippies. The new crowd may be more angry but they still all look like little skinney vegitarians. I’m sure a contingent of freepers could deliver the ass whipping they so badly need (obviously most had liberal parents and never felt a switch on the butt in their lives).
Brace yourself. In a few years millions of Americans will line up to elect these people to the U.S. Congress and the Presidency.
There were probably more hard core socialists in the 1910s and 1920s then now. The Communist party was semi main-stream in that era.
I think the fruitcake left will always be a tiny, angry minority.
The question is how far can they drive the center left to adopt their views. Unfortunatley the track record there is bad. Goreism has become mainstream (the idea that we must throttle industrial civilization to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere). Chomsky-ism is widespread, and not just in graduate English departments of state universities anymore.
CWII Ping. Will violent anarchists disrupt the Republican Convention?
These animals, who would shut down all dissent from their views in about 2 seconds, are the same ones who have the gall to say Bush is taking away our rights! How odious they are. Yet you have to fear them because their influence with the Democrat party is great and the media will never reveal the full extent of their violence and radicalism.
...rube-central
I’m not worried the Mnpls Cops really don’t put up with any sh*t. They’ve been known to mash a few anarchists faces into the pavement when they try anything.
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