Criminalizing of Dissent: What Would Thomas Jefferson Do?

When I got this letter enclosing 20 some business cards from a St. Paul bail bond company about three weeks before the Republican National Convention, to give to members of my peace group, I couldn't believe it.

As a retired FBI agent and former FBI legal counsel who also knew the non-violent composition of the protest and peace groups that were organizing the various marches, rallies, concerts, picnics and "unconventional" artistic events during the RNC, I wasn't very worried about police brutality or jail. I was more worried about the increasing intimidation that was deterring more and more people from participating. So we held an impromptu press conference that last week to try and alleviate the fears and get more people to participate. I also wrote a letter spotlighted in the St. Paul newspaper entitled "Patriots can't stay home".

Unfortunately it turned out the bail bond company had the correct scoop. Although my husband and I luckily managed to escape, hundreds of others would find themselves arrested for things like "unlawful assembly" over the course of the RNC week in St. Paul and hundreds more would be subjected to chemical sprays and police brutality.

No patriot should have to face what we did merely to exercise his or her first amendment rights. St. Paul authorities were apparently duped into letting their city be used and abused, probably because of the lure of the (Republican) money. But even the promise of making money did not turn out to be true for most St. Paul businesses. There's little appetite now, with the elections over, to dredge up and rehash the nightmare, but without better exposure and more critical examination of what happened, the kind of "war on dissent" that occurred the first week of September in St. Paul risks repeating itself at all future "national security events".

If you haven't seen the just released film "Terrorizing Dissent", please take two minutes to at least watch the trailer. The juxtaposition of McCain's phoney speech-making inside the Republican National Convention with the violent reality that was unfolding outside is quite eye-opening, isn't it? (The fact that TV and other main stream media only carried what went on inside the RNC and not outside contributed to creating the public approval "bump" for the Republican ticket -- certainly not unexpected following such televised extravagant displays but which was critical in 2008 for McCain-Palin to have any chance after Bush's eight disastrous years.)

Certainly, many folks who did not participate in the various activities held at the time of the 2008 Republican National Convention (Aug 31- Sept 4) and who did not witness it first hand, will have a hard time believing what an awful combat zone St. Paul was turned into much of the time that week; how pre-emptive raids effectively criminalized dissent; how community police were turned into militarized, dehumanized (and non-identifiable) robo-cops, equipped with tasers, pepper spray and tear gas; and then (unsurprisingly) pushed to over-react and use their chemical weapons and arrest over 800 non-violent citizens, including 40 some journalists. (In addition to the Glass Bead Collective and Twin Cities IndyMedia's raw footage film, there's a great insider viewpoint by William Cox: RoboCops: Professional Policing of Political Protest - An Insider's Viewpoint; the Sept. 1st Democracy Now interview of National Lawyers Guild Attorney Bruce Nestor and myself; and "Storm Troopers at the RNC" by Ray McGovern.)

All kinds of irregularities and bad departures from St. Paul's community policing model occurred. And the more we learn about the heavy-handed involvement of the Twin Cities' two (Republican) Sheriffs: Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher (whose deputies were convicted of corruption the week right before the RNC as a result of an FBI sting investigation) and Hennepin County Sheriff Richard Stanek (a McCain Campaign Co-Chairman), as well as diffusion of responsibility amongst a number of federal agencies, the more likely it appears these repressive police actions could have been politically motivated -- deliberately intended to intimidate citizens from exercising their first amendment rights in order to convey a false impression to the larger American public of little widespread opposition to the disastrous policies of the last seven years and those that Republican politicians continued to promote.

Unfortunately the intimidation did work, scaring thousands away from protesting and other activities in St. Paul that week. Watching the surreal scenes that unfolded outside the RNC, it's amazing any of us citizens had the courage to try, isn't it? In fact our little Peace Island Picnic group was only a block away from Mickey's Diner on Tuesday night, Sept 2nd (having just left the St. Paul "Free Speech Stage" outside the RNC) when police over reacted and shot their chemical weapons into the people on the street.

Help Defend the RNC 8! Sign the Petition to Dismiss Charges

If you're like me, you've probably signed hundreds of petitions in the last few years but I believe this one can really impact the situation because it's focused on one individual (Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner) who possesses the legal wisdom to recognize the wrongfulness in proceeding with a criminal prosecution of this sort that would set dangerous precedent -- dangerous to constitutional rights because it would broaden terrorism to include mere property damage instead of acts dangerous to human life. Interestingly enough, this new crime was created in the wake of 9-11 by passage of the Minnesota Anti-Terrorism Act -HF 2622, commonly referred to as Minnesota's Patriot Act. The expansive definition of terrorism was written and pushed into law in 2002 by the very same Richard Stanek when he was the Republican leader of the Minnesota Senate (before he became Hennepin County Sheriff and McCain Campaign Co-Chair). This provision of the Minnesota Patriot Act has never been charged before and the argument is that it blurs real terrorism with what was, at most, acts of intended civil disobedience.

Most noteworthy is the fact that, once the plan of blurring these lines and smearing protesters as terrorists succeeded at the RNC, Republicans carried their McCarthy like tactics a step further, and tried to do the same with Obama himself, alleging that he had "palled with terrorists." That's when their bluff was called. But it was too late for the eight young people (the "RNC 8") who were already charged with felony "conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism", charges that carry a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment and a $10,000 fine.

As an aside, I did not know any of the RNC 8 personally before this unprecedented attempt to use the expansive Minnesota Patriot Act to essentially "terrorize dissent" but you can hear them tell their own stories of what happened on this video along with comments of Naomi Wolf. If you're like me, you can sign their petition on the basis of principle alone: upholding the First Amendment and need for authorities to not blur what was, at most, planned acts of "civil disobedience" as opposed to acts of real terrorism.

What would Thomas Jefferson do?

He wouldn't hesitate to sign this petition. The turning of the "War on Terror" into a "War on Dissent" on our own citizens and the subsequent damage to First Amendment principles that we witnessed in St. Paul is reason enough to support this cause. Planning is NOT conspiracy. Protesting is NOT rioting. Dissent is NOT terrorism.

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere." --Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1787.

(Earlier versions posted at The Vigil and DownWithTyranny)

Comments

[provgrays]

This country does not show the foreign wars we fight nor the dead victims of those wars. It also keeps repression and persecution of a "free" press secret.

With the hundreds of journalists inside the GOP convention in Minnesota, couldn't a few of them had ventured outside with a camera crew and a notebook?

[Rule Of Law]

Yes! I've asked this before of many bloggers here--Where are our valiant and heroic (if you believe the neo mantra about war and sacrifice of Others!) war dead? If, as the neos claim, they died protecting our Freedoms and are to be praised and held up as an example for the next generation of cannon fodder, then why do we never see their glorious deaths in full color in our papers or on our tv? Why has All the Media abetted in this coverup? And I mean all, in this country at least.

And don't even begin to talk to me about the feeling of their families or other survivors. They knew what they were doing when they signed up and so did their loved ones. They understood the risk. They went anyway. This isn't about protecting anyone's feelings. This is about removing from the public eye--a lesson they learned the hard way from Viet Nam--the true and ugly nature of war and the death it causes. They have criminalized even reporting or showing it in pictures. They have criminalized even thinking about resisting it with the Home Grown Terrorist Bill that Jane Harman of California authored and Congress passed. They will soon criminalize any behaviour that doesn't fit the fascist model they want to force upon us.

[benali]

Why did candidate Obama never mention the unlawful behavior of the current administration? In the whole campaign, not a word about torture, habeus corpus, unlawful interference with the civil service, unlawful use of federal funds for political purposes, or domestic spying.

These problems will not be fixed simply by Sen Obama becoming the President -- they require investigation and responsive legislation.

Our top priority should be fixing our political system to ensure it is lawful in the future. Please Mr. President-Elect, show you understand the importance of preserving our unique Constitutional system.

[Rog49Thomas]

Stiffling dissent is a long and proud tradition in the United States.

The Sedition Acts (promoted by Hamilton, Adams and other of the Founding Fathers) along iwth the Alien Acts (Yep, aliens were dangerous even back then - Jacobins and all that).

Some things never change.

[Snowball]

So considering the rise in death threats against Obama and terrorist threatening of his supporters from the right wing, one wonders how the police will respond. Will they respond in the same way they have treated peaceful activist groups from the left?

Will they use the enhanced powers they have been granted by the Bush regime to infiltrate disruptive groups from the right?

They can if they want:
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Spying_victim_New_Bush_rules_are_1112.html

...but I won't hold my breath.

[Hoelder]

Welcome to my nightmare. Not my worst one, though, but it sounds so familiar. In my dreams protesters are renamed into dissidents, that is people intending to destabilize and defame the name and benevolence of the state and the nation. People who protest against the longest democracy and the freest country in the world with a majority in consent that this is the freest country and filled with true patriots who are willing to defend freedom and it's principles by holding them in well established retraining facilities so they may understand how great the wealthy and politicians have labored for the welfare of their citizen to find misguided terrorists trying to destroy the reputation of this great nation. Because we are right, they are wrong. The sanctity of the nation, it's flag and it's people must be protected by hard measures, like a father has to punish his deviant son... This is just my minor nightmare.

[proudem]

I find it interesting that while Republicans talk about less govt intervention and more freedom, they are the ones that act to restrict freedom by govt intervention.

[HearNoWeasel]

Exactly. More government intrusion on our privacy, more government control over constitutional rights which they can take away in the name of national security, more intelligence departments, more "defense" - more of everything that keeps them powerful.

Just less of anything that might actually benefit citizens.

[booboo111]

The republicans are always screaming about less government intervention into peoples lives, unless of course, it serves their own interests as in this case, dissent, or choice or "morality" or privacy, or wall steet bailouts. They've always been the party of hippocrites and maybe, just maybe, the citizenry is starting to wake up! If the democrats can hold on to power long enough, the right is going to find out just how "activist" future supreme court justices will be. A warning to republicans; be afraid.be very afraid.

[proudem]

The Repubs have also demonized anyone that believed in more freedoms as evil Liberals. Hey Old White Guys, America called and we want our Constitution back.

[macweenie]

Ah, but you are assuming that they consider US American citizens. Do YOU make more than half a million dollas a year? A quarter of a million? Yeah, neither do I. We don't meet the minimum criteria in the Republican party to be considered a citizen. We are the obnoxious little obstacles in THEIR country to them owning EVERYTHING.

To them WE hate America because we criticize THEM but the reality is that THEY love the country but hate AMERICANS. Now if we each produced oil...

[yappnmutt]

what is so scary is the police firmly believe they are doing the right thing ,and doing it to fellow americans, without conscience or remorse. i wonder if some of them ironically believe they are actually "protecting and saving" the usa.

[wendynyc]

Sad state of affairs! Pitting one group against another!

That's what's happened over the last 30 years.

We have a lot of repairing to do - especially with education and job opportunities for all!

[girlwild]

Thank you for your service in the FBI and for writing this article. It's important to understand that in the last 8 years, the Bush/Cheney administration was all about intimidating US citizens from exercising their right to free speech that includes criticism of the government, which our founding fathers viewed as essential to a thriving democracy/republic.

I hope people keep commenting here so keep this important article/topic at the top of the site so that it can be copied, link sent to all Americans.

[booboo111]

Yes, keep this blog on the home page as long as possible, print it, make copies, and send it in to everyone in your net addr. book, your local papers and democratic legislators. Also the a.c.l.u. needs to get involved in the St. Paul cases, if they haven't already.

[rmm4402]

Perhaps this was a reaction to the shabby treatment some RNC delegates rec'd in NYC in 2004.......

Physical assualt - being spit uopn..... some of it's actually still on you tube.

There's always two sides to a story. Some people give those who want to protest peacefully a bad name.

[RussellH]

There is no such thing as payback "for shabby treatment" in a democracy! If there was shabby treatment there it should have been inviestigated and indictments handed down. Four years later, however, after witnessing shabby treatment continuing by the Bush administration, not only does their departure merit jubilant applause but more investigations by a new Justic Department. I only recall one side to any story that came out of the White House, the Justice Department and the Pentagon for the past eight years. Shame on you for not grasping this in your comment.

[ThinkCreeps]

Boo Hoo, Poor you!

How many were killed by the spit?

[Sassys]

I was both ashamed and angry when I saw this go down on the news! I grew up in Spain when Franco was the "leader" and I can tell you I have seen riots and all kinds of horrid things...to see this happen in this day and age is shocking, but to see it in America is scary and wrong!!

[Chris Rodda - Huffpost Blogger]

This post made me think of Thomas Jefferson's famous 1799 letter to Elbridge Gerry, in which Jefferson first laid out his party's platform. Often overlooked is how Jefferson ended this letter. With the Sedition Act still in force, even Jefferson was worried about being accused of criticizing the government. He not only didn't sign his letter, but asked Gerry to burn certain parts of it after reading them. The letter ended:

"And my trust in you leaves me without a fear that this letter, meant as a confidential communication of my impressions, will ever go out of your own hand, or be suffered in anywise to commit my name. Indeed, besides the accidents which might happen to it even under your care, considering the accident of death to which you are liable, I think it safest to pray you, after reading it as often as you please, to destroy at least the second and third leaves. The first contains principles only, which I fear not to avow; but the second and third contain facts stated for your information, and which, though sacredly conformable to my firm belief, yet would be galling to some, and expose me to illiberal attacks. I therefore repeat 
my prayer to burn the second and third leaves. And did we ever expect to see the day, when, breathing nothing but sentiments of love to our country and its freedom and happiness, our correspondence must be as secret as if we were hatching its destruction!"

[Coleen Rowley - Huffpost Blogger]

Thank you for that amazing piece of history! The brave author of the Declaration of Independence was later afraid something he wrote in a letter would get out!

The RNC 8 petition-makers must have had this piece of Jefferson history in mind when they provided that people who don't want their names on a public document like this can sign the petition as "name not displayed".

The "RNC Welcoming Committee" group of young people called themselves "anarchists" even though their definition of "anarchism" is more like what I'd call "radical democracy doers". The "anarchist" term, similarly to the fear of being associated with a "communist" during Joe McCarthy's witchhunt, tends to produce some reluctance of otherwise good people to sign their names in association with them.

[Chris Rodda - Huffpost Blogger]

The late 1790s is a time in our history that people should really be looking at now. There are just so many uncanny similarities between what was going on then and our current political climate. The "Alien and Sedition Acts" were essentially their "Patriot Act." It was the atheistic French that we had to get over there so they wouldn't get us over here. There was the smear campaign against Jefferson because of his religion (or lack thereof), with rumors that he would ban Bibles and make religion illegal, and that the country would go to hell in a hand basket if he was elected. If you take stuff written during the campaign of 1800 and replace the French jacobins with the "Islamo-fascists," you'd think it was written during the 2004 and 2008 campaigns.

[Coleen Rowley - Huffpost Blogger]

Sheriffs and Police Chiefs have now begun trading rationales and sniping a bit at each other in their attempts to explain their mistakes. A day ago, a FOX 9 news story appeared that reported St. Paul law enforcement "lost control" of St. Paul to the "rioters" for the first two and a half hours of the RNC. This newest rationale for the subsequent heavy handed law enforcement response is contrary, however, to what the Sheriff previously declared: that if he hadn't engaged in his pre-emptive raids, massive arrests and use of chemical weapons, that the "city would have been destroyed" that first day. Only a relatively small amount of damage--a couple of broken windows--occurred during the time that the Sheriff now says the police were ordered to vacate the parts of the city where the "rioters" were.

Click FOX 9 Counters Fletcher’s hype:“town would have been destroyed" by (my husband) Ross Rowley

[Coleen Rowley - Huffpost Blogger]

Oops, I forgot, here's the url for Ross's piece on exclusive FOX news story: “Audio Tapes Reveal How Police Lost Control During RNC”:

http://www.mnpact.org/sblog/blog.php?id=1486

[moonflowerjewelry]

i think i have been purposefully naive most of my adult life. obviously, i thought these things didn't happen here, anymore. i can't even think of words to express my disgust, fear and outrage.

[Skeptic6]

Fantastic story! Colleen Rowley is a patriot of the highest order.

I don't understand why nobody is talking about REPEAL of the legislative excrement known as the USA Patriot Act.

Even Russ Feingold wants to just amend it. What a travesty.