Police State in St. Paul...

I got an e-mail from a very good friend who lives in St. Paul. He provides an excellent "first hand" account of the way the police acted in St. Paul during the Republican National Convention. Are there tougher times ahead for the very patriotic notion of political dissent?

Greetings from the police state of St. Paul.

I don’t know if it got any coverage outside of the local area but the RNC was crazy times. On the last day of the convention they had a protest march and they arrested around 300 people including all of the journalists who were trying to cover the event. The really crazy thing was that there weren’t many more than 300 people in the march to begin with. They were arrested for unlawful assembly even if they tried to leave the march because they hadn’t left soon enough. So our freedom of movement does not even extend to public streets and parks in our cities. The resources brought in were incredible. Everything hidden in plain sight.

They even brought in a passenger train full of god knows what. They put up a temporary station and covered it with bunting. I thought the VIPs chartered it but then you start to think… what good is a one car platform on a ten car train. I know enough about railroads to know that although it is possible to charter a car or even a train there is not enough money in the world to get permission to park it on a mainline track.

When a president is in town They always escort him with a couple of large marine helicopters. I was expecting to see them for this event. Instead we had “news” helicopters overhead 24/7 for two weeks. We had more police than I have ever seen anywhere including revolutionary Nicaragua. I believe that we are rapidly sliding into post democracy. Probably there already. An event like this is really just a large drill when they get to practice their control techniques on real citizens. They said they learned a lot. Good for them. I think you and Joni have the right idea.