RNC 8

Anti-Capitalist Bloc @ the RNC: An I.W.W. Report, by Kdog, x359209 is an interesting look at events in Minneapolis in early September:

During the first week of September 2008, Republican Party delegates gathered in St. Paul, Minnesota for the Republican National Convention (RNC) – the media spectacle and corporate sleaze-fest that completes their nominating process. An army of armor-clad riot police, National Guard, and private security with their humvees, rubber bullets, and tear gas protected them. FBI-assisted sheriff’s raids at more than a half-dozen activist homes and organizing centers in Minneapolis-St. Paul sought to hinder opposition. But thousands of protestors still took to the streets to emphatically reject the Republicans’ vicious policies of war, discrimination, and attacks on the working-class and poor.

Among the more important mobilizing efforts against the RNC was the Anti-Capitalist Bloc, an initiative of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) union – Twin Cities General Membership Branch. The Anti-Capitalist Bloc was conceived as an organizing front for the week of the RNC that would unite those anti-capitalist activists with an orientation toward organizing. The Anti-Capitalist Bloc issued a “Call” and adopted a set of “Solidarity Principles” that made clear our opposition to not only the Republican party but the whole system of capitalism. Ten other groups signed on including three other I.W.W. branches. Approximately 1800 full-color posters with the Anti-Capitalist Bloc message were distributed over the course of the week.

The article is accompanied by a heap of links too. Of course, aside from the Anti-Capitalist Bloc, there was the RNC Welcoming Committee, eight members of which are currently facing terrorism charges. Last week, the RNC 8 released a letter, explaining their situation, and appealing for solidarity. While it’s easily available elsewhere, I figure the more publicity it receives, the better. So here it is:

Dear Friends, Family, and Comrades:

We are the RNC 8: individuals targeted because of our political beliefs and work organizing for protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention, in what appears to be the first use of Minnesota’s version of the US Patriot Act. The 8 of us are currently charged with Conspiracy to Commit Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism, a 2nd degree felony that carries the possibility of several years in prison. We are writing to let you know about our situation, to ask for support, and to offer words of hope.

A little background: the RNC Welcoming Committee was a group formed in late 2006 upon hearing that the 2008 Republican National Convention would be descending on Minneapolis-St. Paul where we live, work, and build community. The Welcoming Committee’s purpose was to serve as an anarchist/anti-authoritarian organizing body, creating an informational and logistical framework for radical resistance to the RNC. We spent more than a year and a half doing outreach, facilitating meetings throughout the country, and networking folks of all political persuasions who shared a common interest in voicing dissent in the streets of St. Paul while the GOP’s machine chugged away inside the convention.

In mid-August the Welcoming Committee opened a “Convergence Center,” a space for protesters to gather, eat, share resources, and build networks of solidarity. On Friday, August 29th, 2008, as folks were finishing dinner and sitting down to a movie the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department stormed in, guns drawn, ordering everyone to the ground. This evening raid resulted in seized property (mostly literature), and after being cuffed, searched, and IDed, the 60+ individual inside were released.

The next morning, on Saturday, August 30th, the Sheriff’s department executed search warrants on three houses, seizing personal and common household items and arresting the first 5 of us- Monica Bicking, Garrett Fitzgerald, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, and Eryn Trimmer. Later that day Luce Guillen-Givins was arrested leaving a public meeting at a park. Rob Czernik and Max Specktor were arrested on Monday, September 1, bringing the number to its present 8. All were held on probable cause and released on $10,000 bail on Thursday, September 4, the last day of the RNC.

These arrests were preemptive, targeting known organizers in an attempt to derail anti-RNC protests before the convention had even begun. Conspiracy charges expand upon the traditional notion of crime. Instead of condemning action, the very concept of conspiracy criminalizes thought and camaraderie, the development of relationships, the willingness to hope that our world might change and the realization that we can be agents of that change.

Conspiracy charges serve a very particular purpose- to criminalize dissent. They create a convenient method for incapacitating activists, with the potential for diverting limited resources towards protracted legal battles and terrorizing entire communities into silence and inaction. Though not the first conspiracy case against organizers- not even the first in recent memory- our case may be precedent-setting. Minnesota’s terrorism statutes have never been enacted in this way before, and if they win their case against us, they will only be strengthened as they continue their crusade on ever more widespread fronts. We view our case as an opportunity to demonstrate community solidarity in the face of repression, to establish a precedent of successful resistance to the government’s attempts to destroy our movements.

Right now we are in the very early stages of a legal battle that will require large sums of money and enormous personal resources. We have already been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support locally and throughout the country, and are grateful for everything that people have done for us. We now have a Twin Cities-based support committee and are developing a national support network that we feel confident will help us through the coming months. For more information on the case and how to support us, or to donate, go to [Friends of the RNC 8].

We have been humbled by such an immense initial show of solidarity and are inspired to turn our attention back to the very issues that motivated us to organize against the RNC in the first place. What’s happening to us is part of a much broader and very serious problem. The fact is that we live in a police state- some people first realized this in the streets of St. Paul during the convention, but many others live with that reality their whole lives. People of color, poor and working class people, immigrants, are targeted and criminalized on a daily basis, and we understand what that context suggests about the repression the 8 of us face now. Because we are political organizers who have built solid relationships through our work, because we have various forms of privilege- some of us through our skin, some through our class, some through our education- and because we have the resources to invoke a national network of support, we are lucky, even as we are being targeted.

And so, while we ask for support in whatever form you are able to offer it, and while we need that support to stay free, we also ask that you think of our case as a late indicator of the oppressive climate in which we live. The best solidarity is to keep the struggle going, and we hope that supporting us can be a small part of broader movements for social change.

For better times and with love,

the RNC 8: Luce Guillen-Givins, Max Spector, Nathanael Secor, Eryn Timmer, Monica Bicking, Erik Oseland, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald

Further analysis of the protests: Anonymous, Organizing Resistance — A retrospective on the 2008 Republican National Convention, infoshop.org, September 21, 2008. Workaholic, dreamer, realistic idealist, and Minneapolis local Johnny Northside also has extensive coverage on his blog. See also : LOL! Teh Interwebs are cool! Republicrats are not! (July 4, 2008) | Anarchism: Then & Now (July 9, 2008) | RNC 2008 (August 31, 2008) | Anarchy & (US State) Terror (September 8, 2008) | “Questions emerge”: RNC 2008 & The Spectre of Anarchism/Terrorism (September 17, 2008)