And now – the Jack Pine Community Center is calling it quits:

Twin Cities radicals and activists will lose one of their most beloved meeting grounds when the Jack Pine Community Center closes its doors this week. Citing a lack of “sufficient energy to make the Jack Pine financially feasible,” the group has decided against renewing the lease to its East Lake Street location.

Opened in April 2006, the Jack Pine sought to provide “a child-friendly and sober radical space” and resource center…The space also hosted organizing and networking events for individuals planning to protest at the upcoming Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

I figured it’d be something more like “their landlord evicted them for damaging the place”.  I’m actually almost gratified to see the owner blame “lack of activist energy”.

The last full day of operation for the Jack Pine will be Friday, March 21, with a closing party to be held on Saturday.

Count on a commemoration on the NARN this weekend.

Brad Carlson spent a gorgeous Saturday afternoon wandering about where madness dwells – at “Youth Against War and Racism’s” “anti-war” rally in (where else) Uptown Minneapolis:

I took the liberty of mingling amongst the young skulls full of mush outside an Army recruiting station on the corner of Lyndale Avenue and Lake Street. The group who calls themselves Youth Against War and Racism (slogan: “We’ve never met a pierced orifice we didn’t like.”) gathered at High Noon to chant endless vapid slogans.

As such, I took the opportunity to record video footage.

He did!

Expect lots of these, as the local patchouli-and-outrage industry warms up for September and the RNC Convention in Saint Paul.

I imagine during the convention that the Army Recruiting Station at Lake and Lyndale will draw tens of thousands of protesters – mostly U of M insta-radicals who have no idea how to find Saint Paul.

Yesterday’s explosion at the Times Square military recruitment office is still under investigation – but, as Malkin notes, the left in America, by commission and omission, has long been engaged in a campaign against the military, through its most visible representatives, its recruiters.

Those of us watching the far-left’s preparations for the GOP Convention in Saint Paul this fall have been warned to keep an eye out around military recruiting centers, memorials (downtown Saint Paul has several) and anything else with military connotations.

Malkin also covers the continuing investigation into yesterday’s bombing; while the leftymedia continues to back away hard from the notion that it could be left-wing domestic terrorism, Congressional Democrats have been getting mail from someone claiming to be involved.  While in itself this proves nothing, it’s interesting watching the lengths that ABC went to (in the linked post) to avoid mentioning the target of the blast (is journalism really about getting the who, what, when, where, why and how?).

At any rate, watch how this coverage shakes out for cues about how the leftymedia will cover potential violence this fall in Saint Paul.

(Hint:  Poorly)

Last week, a little bird told me that several of the groups that are planning anarchist anarkid actions planned to hold a meeting over the weekend.

Most of the meeting was to be held (naturally) in Minneapolis, at the “Jack Pine Community Center”, which seems to serve the same purpose as the “Walker Church” and the “Backroom Anarchist Center” used to serve back in the eighties for the local fringe left, as gathering places and flophouses.

But, the email (taken from one of the anarkid websites) also said that there was going to be an expedition during mid-afternoon to Saint Paul, presumably to size up the city (or, given how many anarkids are from Minneapolis and the more posh suburbs, show them how to find Saint Paul.  “Dude.  It’s like totally waaaay east of Lyndale, dude.  Like, dude”) from 1:30 until three-ish. 

And I figured that’d have to be fun.

I was among a couple of center-right bloggers that went downtown to view the hilarity.

Or try to, anyway.

It was a dreary day; it would have been perfect for bagpiping, actually, with a steely overcast and a steady chilly drizzle.  At 1:30, I was at the Capitol. 

There were ten people up at the top of the steps – all of them waiting to get inside for capitol tours.  There were two twenty-somethings down by the Duelling Socialists statues (below the driveway, above the Mall) – one with a professional photography rig and a camera on a tripod, another in a wheelchair holding a crudely-scrawled sign that he kept pointing lapward except when the photographer was shooting.  I kept walking.

As I went down Wabasha, of course, I saw some likely prospects – but in that neighborhood, you always do.  There are one or two high-rise apartments that are wholly filled with the mentally/emotionally handicapped; some of them looked dishevelled enough to be anarkids, but they were too old, and they didn’t have the carefully-cultivated air of misfortune that anarkids affect.

Likewise, as I got close to the Xcel Center, I saw some scraggly types – but most of them were on their way to or from the Dorothy Day Center, the big homeless shelter kitty-corner from the X.  Also, unlike every “anarchist” I’ve ever met, some weren’t white.

I did see two people with the impeccably-ripped and grafitti’d clothing and precisely-scraggly hair of the full-time anarkid, climbing out of a Toyota SUV in a parking lot at Fifth and Wabasha.  I saw them wandering around for a bit as I walked toward the X. 

Other than them, and one guy on a bike who was either an anarkid or a victim of heroin-chic fashion? 

Bupkes.

If it rains during the Republican Convention, the streets will be devoid of anything but Republicans.

The latest talking point among the paranoid left in the Twin Cities is that the Saint Paul Police Department – a union operation in the third-most-liberal city in the nation’s fourth-most-liberal state – is secretly out to brutally squash leftist dissent at this September’s Republican National Convention in Saint Paul.

The local Sorosphere can be expected to, and forgiven for, doing what they’re paid to do – push lefty talking points. And Andy Birkey at the MinMon does his bit, expanding on a bit of lefty hysteria that’s been making the rounds lately:

St. Paul Police Department is requesting 230 Tasers to outfit the all of the department’s officers with the electroshock weapon, Fox 9 News reports. The SPPD will purchase the Tasers with $210,000 collected from drug raids. The St. Paul City Council will have to approve the purchase.

The purchase is expected to arrive in St. Paul just in time for the Republican National Convention prompting media speculation that the weapons are being purchased specifically for the convention. When asked by Fox 9 News whether the police will use the weapon at the convention particularly against protesters, police spokester Tom Walsh said, “Our hope is that no one will have to use any degree of force. If it becomes necessary, will that be one of the tools available to them? I suppose that’s safe to say.”

Now, the conceit among the local fringe-left is that the SPPDs is going to act as a tool of Karl Rove:

We need more of these lethal weapons when the wild and crazy protesters come to exercise their 1st Amendment Right to free speech.

Now, that’s the kind of rubbish we’ve come to expect from the local fringe left – the City government is bending over backwards, if not a little further, to make protesters welcome (in some quarters, more welcome than the delegates themselves).  The tasers are for when the “anarkids” – the trust-fund fops that are promising violence in Saint Paul next September – get violent and won’t respond to a regular arrest, but the cops don’t want to over-escalate.

If one assumes that the critics of the SPPD are completely irrational, of course, you might assume that they’re unaware of what tasers are for.

Tasers – used legally – are a step in the escalation to dealing with a violent suspect that needs to be restrained for the public’s and, often, their own safety.  They are used when the police need a relatively safe means to subdue and restrain a violent suspect, and simple holds and hand-to-hand techiques won’t work.  It is both less violent than other means (of which more in a bit), and vastly less indiscriminate.

So let’s say some of you get your wish, and the SPPD doesn’t have tasers.  What then?

Here’s what.

When (not if) someone gets violent, without tasers, the police will have to resort to…:

• Billy clubs and riot batons – which are  much more violent than tasers, vastly more prone   to cause injury, and a propaganda coup for the wackjobs.

• Pepper Spray, which is both less reliable at subduing people, and much more indiscriminate.

• Pepperball and beanbag rounds, and  “Baton” rounds, which are high-impact  “non-lethal” founds fired from shotguns and/or 37mm/40mm grenade launchers, respectively.  They hit their target like Mohammed Ali in his prime,   knocking them down quite violently.  They are vastly more likely to injure their target than  tasers.  Worse, they involve firearms, which are a psychological crossing of the Rubicon   that any sensible police department would like  to avoid.
• Clouds of tear gas applied via hand grenades, grenade launchers and so on.  An area weapon, it’d make huge parts of downtown Saint Paul un-usable until the clouds of irritant dispersed, and be both a nuisance and health hazard to everyone in the city downwind, and a potent propaganda symbol for the anarchists and the entire fringe left.

So if it’s safety you’re concerned about, you should SUPPORT the purchase of the tasers.  I’d be willing to chalk the opposition to tasers up to ignorance…

…but underestimating ones’ opponent is a fool’s game.

Insert the obligtatory “I support free speech, and the right of the peaceful protester, bla bla bla” here. And let’s be honest – neither I nor any other Republican is afraid of any of the violence these screeching little weasels are planning, since ANY Republican is an even match for 20 lefties in ANY kind of scrap, rhetorical or otherwise (and this forum is evidence of it).

But let’s not be stupid; there is a significant faction among the demonstrators that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the safety of the protesters.  They WANT a riot.  They WANT the psychological images of tear gas and grenade launchers and cops in riot gear.   They WANT to reap the propaganda bounty of an indiscriminate, violent response to their provocations (as they did with the Critical Mass riot last year).

Tasers enable a measured response to small acts of unreasoning, illegal activity.

And that’s just not crazy enough to suit the demonstrators’ purposes.  They want to provoke a massive, polarizing response.

You can practically see the genitals tingling when some of these fops talk about the violence – indeed, as we noted last week, some of their actions seem calculated to provoke panic reactions – the panic that will play into the propaganda plans of those who seem bent on provoking a riot.

I’m sure Andy Birkey doesn’t want that. 

Some of the rest of them? Well…

Ask a Saint Paul DFLer about the potential for violent demonstrations at the Convention this fall, and most of them will say “oh, they’re just a lunatic fringe.  Mainstream Tics won’t stand for that kind of thing” (not to mention “the rioters are just a strawman”).
If only it were true.  I got this from a Saint Paul politics discussion forum:

When considering the feasibility and likelihood of unlawfulness and
property destruction at the RNC this summer, a number of posters here have
presumed that riots are counter-productive to the interests of
protesters, and that the Seattle experience was a failure for those protesting
the WTO. Let’s look at the these presumptions again.

Since the WTO debacle in Seattle, there has not been single new
multilateral trade agreement signed between North American or European powers and the Third World, and several attempts of advancing the WTO agenda through the Doha round of talks has failed. In view of this, the
Seattle protests, including the “brick-throwing” tactics, should be seen as
an unqualified success for the organizers of the protests, both lawful
and unlawful, not a failure.

Likewise, the civil rights riots following the death of Martin Luther
King are largely credited with providing Washington with a sense of
urgency for reforming and funding the urban renewal and anti-poverty
programs of the 1970’s, such as the Community Development Block Grants
(CDBG), a federal form of Minnesota’s LGA.

Brick-throwing, under certain circumstances, does work, particularly
when employed by groups who have few other options for exercising
political power over a given policy question. In light of this, and the
unpopularity and powerlessness many feel regarding the war in Iraq, it seems
pretty reasonable to expect that more radical forms of action will
occur than merely exercising one’s right to free expression.

In other words, “they may be thugs, but they’re our thugs”.

I don’t know how representative the writer is of Tic opinion in Saint Paul – you be the judge, but he appears to be a garden-variety lefty rather than a spittle-flecked radical.

I think – and this is just my opinion – that the majority of DFLers are opposed to the brick-throwers.  But I think there are a few, like the writer, who can think of all sorts of obtuse rationalizations – and a bigger minority who’ll look at the convention like a hockey game or a NASCAR race or a Britney Spears appearance, looking for the spectacle.  Perhaps they’re wistful for their lost youth forty years ago; perhaps they’re teenagers (literally or emotionally) who love drama.  Whatever.  A riot, to these people, might be counteproductive – but it’d sure be fun, woonit?

Along with my friends at True North, I’ve spent a good chunk of the last year getting primed to deal with the hordes of “anarchist” thugs – generally upper-middle-class college kids or twenty-somethings – who plan on coming to Saint Paul this fall to cause mischief.

This blog has spent lots of time and effort documenting their statements of intent, and their actions.

While I support everyone‘s right to free speech, and am perfectly willing to ascribe 90% of the things the Anarcho-fops are saying to “post-adolescent drama-addiction”, there are enough of them out there who do intend to cause serious trouble – vandalism, rioting, assault and mayhem – that I plan on doing what I can to protect my city from their depredations.

And when I’ve mentioned this in mixed-politics forums – like the “E-Democracy” Saint Paul discussion group – the resopnse, almost to a person has been an ignorant “riiiiiiight” at best, and a denial-clogged “the Republicans are just as likely to get violent” at worst.

One of the people who’s given us plenty of both was Grace Kelly of the local leftyblog MNBlue. Kelly, a 9/11 “truther”, is shocked, shocked, to notice that some of her fellow protesters are up to planning no good!

While nearly every peacemaker group has focused on elections, one small group, Protest RNC 2008 has been focussed on protesting the Republican National Convention(RNC), which is normally a good activity except this time.

(Which is a sentence that makes perfect sense except for this time)

I wrote of the importance of nonviolence and peace pledge previously. Now all groups who are participating with this group are being asked to commit to a unity pledge

Let’s be clear, here (since Grace Kelly doesn’t state it very clearly); it’s the “Protest RNC group” that’s proposing the pledge below. Kelly herself proposed a pledge – one of those “unicorn in every garage” pledges, all full of high expectations and dreamy assumptions that are the peacenik’s only useful tangible intellectual product – and is somewhat upset that the other guys’ pledge is getting more traction among the anarkids.

And – this kills me – she’s surprised that the anarkids want to pledge people to… (Kelly’s responses are in parentheses below; mine will be in square brackets):

• respect the diversity of tactics (ignore the people who state on public email lists that violence to property like throwing bricks through windows is ok

[Or on MPR, or in the Minnesota Daily, or…]

• >separate activities (please don’t stand next the person throwing bricks or you too will probably get arrested

[we’ve been through this one before; this is part of the art of psychologically priming people to help create a riot against their will]

• don’t criticize publicly (like I am doing right now, no free speech, no request for peace pledge, no request for a standard of non-violence, no openness, no transparency)

I get a kick out of this; Kelly, like many dozey peaceniks, is actually surprised that people whose intellectual and ideological roots trace back to Lenin, Mao and Stalin would actually stifle free speech.

The horror of it all! Who knew?

• don’t cooperate with police (like my pledge to point at the person throwing bricks)

Of course, Kelly’s a 9/11 Truther – so even though the intent to commit mayhem against both the city and the convention and her fellow “peaceful” protesters is right there in black and white, we all know whose fault it really is…:

Well I looked at this unity pledge and I thought, all that Bush has to do to shut down protests is join the groups protesting as “George Bush, Tactic – Iraq War and Group – US Government” and to live by the unity pledge, the protests could say nothing.

And there is more, to even sign up to go organizing meeting of the “umbrella” of groups planning for the peace protest, you have sign a pledge of endorsement – which means the group’s name can be used, basically associated with all the “diversity” of tactics used and dragged through media mud.

Gosh. D’ya think.

The Protest RNC 2008 and RNC Welcoming Committee had a “community” meeting, which I came to represent St Paul. They only collected questions and then promised to answer question later if we came to the organizing meeting.

Hm. Where have we heard this before?

Oh, yeah. From conservative bloggers who’ve been “covering” the fops for the past year.

I came to that meeting and was requested to leave because I advocate for the community, the peace pledge and non-violence. I am not “one” of the them. Exactly, I am a peacemaker. I am a member of several peacemaker groups, all of which have declined to be involved.

No kidding!

We on the right have been warning you about exactly this since the very beginning.

Many peacemaker groups have long experienced activists who know the history of people who join groups to cause difficulties. The question is what happens to groups advocating for peace, who do not have that experience. Will they unknowingly sign on and take the unity pledge? Will people’s unwillingness to question tactics of people who seem to work for the same cause get them in trouble?

Clearly we need a separate non-violent peace pledge committed group to organize a separate peaceful protest.

No, Grace. Clearly, what “you” in the “peace” movement need is to rise up and condemn those who advocate violence; you need to make them feel unwelcome in the Twin Cities. You need to actively reach out to Law Enforcement and make sure that thugs, mayhem-seekers and other degenerates get the welcome they deserve from Saint Paul.

But y’all aren’t gonna do that, aren’t you?

Because you still think “pledges” and the unicorn-in-every-garage rhetoric of the “peace” movement actually carries any weight among your movement’s degenerate wing!

Mark my words; the anarchofops are going to be here; they don’t give a shit about your motivations; they will actively seek to disrupt the convention and life in this city. They may be a tiny minority of those protesting, but they will get the vast bulk of the press coverage. They will vandalize. They will destroy. And, if some of their rhetoric is to be believed, they will attack anyone who gets in their way.

And the “peace” movement will do nothing about it, because the “peace” movement is only about taking the easy moral stands.

Which means that they are utterly worthless at either making peace or dealing with aggression.

Fops: You’re in my town, now.

Well, that changes everything!

The Republican Convention is going to draw scads of protesters.  Bully for them.

It’s also going to draw scads of arrested (figuratively) adolescents who intend on creating mayhem.  Some of them have been saying in public that their intention is to “shut down Saint Paul” and “stop the convention” and harass delegates outside the convention and generally cause mayhem.  And while I’m willing to write 90% of it off to vainglorious adolescent posturing, rumor has it that it’d be naive to assume that it all is. Very, very naive.

Fortunately, Grace Kelly rides to the rescue.  Kelly – a Saint Paul area 9/11 Truther and DFL spear-carrier – writes for MNBlue, a blog that lost last year’s “Unintentionally Funniest Leftyblog Contest” only because I didn’t allow myself to vote 200 times a day – submits a pledge for your approval:

I propose that everyone involved in the peace parades and peace protests at Republican National Convention (RNC) use the same pledge as the School of the Americas vigil in Georgia.

We will gather together in a manner that reflects the world we choose to create. We will promote an alternative to domination systems by acting with love, respect, mutuality, compassion and acceptance for the interdependence of all life.

We will struggle for a world free from violence, and we will use
actions, words and symbols consistent with this struggle.

We will not use or instigate violence against any person.

We will act with respect for the people and property of the local community.

We will promote the safety of ourselves and others through our
actions and interactions.

We commit to recognize and to work to dismantle all forms of
oppression in our personal relationships, local neighborhoods, globally and with Earth itself.

We will return to our communities with renewed energy to create the peace.(Retyped from a physical copy)

One minor change is in pledge to ensure relevance , the phrase “to close the SOA/WHINSEC” is changed to the more generic “to create peace”.

An alternative is the Pledge to Nonviolence. that all marchers in Birmingham had to sign, before participating in the marches:

Oh, have no fear; since the various Tic factions resemble the Peoples Front of Judea sketch, Kelly actually submits about forty different options for pledges, delving into the semiotics of each in a way that sjdaksd kl,ml;ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
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Oh, crap.  I’m sorry.  I nodded off.  Where was I?

Pledges.  While Kelly (have I mentioned she’s a 9/11 Truther?) does give a small pile of options for pledges to give out, she neglects to tell us how she’s going to get the Black Bloc, the “Youth Against War”, and the other groups that have reported dedicated themselves to mayhem and violence to take, and follow, them.

Note to all you lefties; we know most of you aren’t going to cause any problems, pledge or no.  It’s all those “people” who travel with you that we’re watching.

…the days until a leftyblogger actually addresses the facts of a Katherine Kersten column, rather than just blurting out facile, juvenile ad-hominem.

Two of her recent columns have drawn the ire of the not-too-smartosphere (here and here)

I’ll start the count at one day right now, based on these two (obtuse and selectively ignorant) posts bits of blog discharge.

We’ll start with obtuse; Matt Snyders, who seems to be on a mission to rhetorically peck at Kersten’s ankles, writes:

Depending on what kind of reactionary observer you ask, these individuals had it coming because they a) blocked traffic, b) taunted police in mysterious ways that the MPD has so far been unable to describe, c) are bourgeois hipsters and bourgeois hipsters deserve to be beaten, g*d damn it!, or d) some combination of all of the above.

Actually, there’s an option “d”, one that I suspect is the real answer that Matt Snyders (and the entire CP staff) dare not whisper:  Critical Mass are patsies for other people.

This topic comes up for discussion again a month-and-a-half later for two reasons: first, the resident she-jackal at the Strib  [She-jackal?  I feel like I’m reading a screed by some Campus Maoist – Ed.] has had a field day with the incident, penning two columns in the past three weeks on her newfound bogeymen. Check ’em out here and here. You won’t be disappointed. (“Minneapolis isn’t the only place where the Mass mob has strong-armed the police and City Hall,” it wrote on October 8, presumably with a straight face.)

One ad-hominem (ad-feminem?), two giggly but unsupported inferences…zero actual beef.  I mean – would Snyders at least let us knuckle-draggers in on where Kersten might be wrong?

Secondly, Critical Mass supporters launched a website earlier this week in order to “support the victims of the police violence and brutality” and to “help resist the remaining charges that are being leveled against 4 individual participants so that the cops and the city can save face and have someone to blame for their misconduct.”

Well, that should settle it then.

Look – as I wrote before, as a guy who dices it out with Twin Cities drivers on my bike at  least a couple of days a week (having the kids back in school cuts down on my biking time), I’m not unsympathetic to at least the part of Critical Mass’ agenda related to raising awareness about bikers.  But Snyders doesn’t apparently feel it necessary to show the reader where Kersten is supposedly wrong about Critical Mass.  Perhaps the CP staff knows that their audience is going to reach the conclusion they want no matter what they write – it’s nothing new. Or maybe Snyders needs to work on writing to an actual point, lest he be regarded as “the worst writer in the Twin Cities’ altmedia since the legendary Margaret Grebe”.

You be the judge.

Oh, it gets worse. This’d be the guy from “mobjectivist”, which if you want to get nit-picky about philosphy might be too-telling a name after all:

Trying to understand her obsession over bicyclists, I think the StarTribune columnist, Katherine Kersten, has tried to frame and conflate other recent Critical Mass events with the sanctioned ride.

Well, actually, she wrote about the ride that turned into a riot.  Remember that? 

 And another local assbag blogger, [“Assbag”? Mommy?  Is that you?  – Ed.] thinks it has something to do with prepping “greens” for bad behavior when the RNC comes into town next year. I guess what better way to practice intimidating conservatives than a bunch of bicyclists roaming the streets?

Prepping greens?

Where on earth did the “writer” get that?

Look, numbnuts “WHT” – I could care less about “Critical Mass”.  Indeed, I bike, so if they have something in mind to actually get drivers to stop knocking us off, more power to ’em.  Indeed, friends of mine ride with ’em.  And as far as “intimidation” goes, most of them are from Minneapolis, and if they ever crossed the river they’d need me to help them get out alive.

But if either of y’all have any ideas about facts that Kersten supposedly got wrong, sound off, m’kay?

(And “Needing someplace to refer to her as a snaggled-tooth witch” isnt’ even warm).

So – one day and counting!

IMF protest in DC turns bloody.

You can expect to see some of these thugs in Saint Paul next September.

If conservatives aren’t being obligingly bigoted, frame ’em!

A group of seven GW students sent an e-mail to The Hatchet late Tuesday night admitting to hanging hundreds of controversial posters around campus early Monday morning.

The students – Adam Kokesh, freshman Yong Kwon, senior Brian Tierney, freshman Ned Goodwin, Maxine Nwigwe, Lara Masri and Amal Rammah – said their motives were misinterpreted. Students for Conservativo-Facism Awareness hung the posters in opposition to Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, an event being held beginning Oct. 22.

Kokesh, a graduate student and Iraq War veteran, gained celebrity over the past year because of his vocal opposition to the war. Nwigwe and Rammah are also graduate students.

In related Saint Paul news – on the local politics discussion boards, some of the lefty commentators have been going to amazing lengths to try to show that any violence that breaks out at the GOP convention next year is equally likely to be from right wing agents provocateurs.

They were conveniently short on actual incidents.

Ed points us to this story, where a bunch of BDS-addled cretins counterprotested…

…a bunch of daycare kids:

“What an opportunity this is for our children,” center director Liz Burkhard said while herding children ages 4 to 6 into a compact, orderly row behind the yellow police tape lining Stony Battery at Church Street.

One group of protesters quickly descended on the happy cluster, however, chanting and singing their own songs to drown out the children’s voices.

“Stop brainwashing children to support a president who doesn’t deserve our support,” one man yelled through a bullhorn.

Now, let’s reiterate: I’m a greater proponent of free speech than any of my critics.  Always.

But this story touches on something in a piece I’m writing for Monday, about the self-centered narcissism that’s behind so many “protesters” – how their ends justify their means, no matter who they crap on in the process.

Ed said:

When children greet a President, they’re not endorsing policy or campaigning for his vote. They sang because of the office, not the person. Whomever would scream at children through bullhorns to promote their own hatred and obsession really needs some psychiatric care. Can you imagine how these children felt when a group of adults descended on them, screaming and shouting through bullhorns?

Scared out of their minds, I bet.

But no matter; to the BDS-addled “protester”, it’s all about them.  As Katherine Kersten pointed out earlier this week, indeed, it’s a pathology of some academic interest:

Robert Lichter of the Center for Media and Public Affairs has studied protest movements…In his psychological studies of ’60s-style radicals, Lichter discovered two revealing things: They scored high on the power scale, exhibiting a strong need to feel powerful. They also scored high on narcissism — the need to call attention to themselves, to get public notice.

Not surprisingly, Lichter says, protesters often latched onto high-sounding motives to justify their self-absorbed actions. “You can’t take expressions of love for humanity at face value,” he explains. “They can serve as cover for aggressive feelings and tendencies.

“It’s all about meeeeeeeeeeeeee”

Scumbags.

I’ve enjoyed this past few months, biking to work.  Of course, biking is something that’s only intermittently tenable when my kids are in school – I can manage it once or twice a week (there’s a post in there), but it’s been a great thing for me.

It didn’t teach me anything new about human nature, really; I used to bike a lot, and I ran into (figuratively) all the usual pathologies about urban traffic and raging drivers.  Of course, I have always been something of a stickler about following traffic laws; something about not wanting to spend the rest of my life in a vegetative state, and ending up no better than a contributor to Dump Bachmann…

…but I digress.  Like a lot of people, I’d not heard much about Critical Mass until last month, when the group’s monthly ride turned into a riot in Minneapolis.  I bought the original “Critical Mass” line – that they were just a bunch of peaceful bikers, minding their own business, when (Pick One: The cops went wild/a couple of outsiders started provoking people).

in Minneapolis.  I bought the original “Critical Mass” line – that they were just a bunch of peaceful bikers, minding their own business, when (Pick One: The cops went wild/a couple of outsiders started provoking people).in Minneapolis.  I bought the original “Critical Mass” line – that they were just a bunch of peaceful bikers, minding their own business, when (Pick One: The cops went wild/a couple of outsiders started provoking people).in Minneapolis.  I bought the original “Critical Mass” line – that they were just a bunch of peaceful bikers, minding their own business, when (Pick One: The cops went wild/a couple of outsiders started provoking people).in Minneapolis.  I bought the original “Critical Mass” line – that they were just a bunch of peaceful bikers, minding their own business, when (Pick One: The cops went wild/a couple of outsiders started provoking people).in Minneapolis.  I bought the original “Critical Mass” line – that they were just a bunch of peaceful bikers, minding their own business, when (Pick One: The cops went wild/a couple of outsiders started provoking people).According to yesterday’s column from Katherine Kersten,  I might have been wrong to be sanguine.  Assumptions about Critical Mass’ benign-ness might be misplaced:

They block traffic by “corking” — some riders hold cars at intersections during green lights while the mass passes through a red light. Others stand in the street and wave their bikes defiantly over their heads.

Are you rushing to catch the last few innings of your son’s baseball game?

Trying to get to the show you promised your wife for her birthday?

Critical Mass doesn’t give a rip. Tough luck for you, Mac, because you’re a gas-guzzler and I’m living green.

So do we chalk this up to innocent adolescent posturing?  Or, with 11 months until the Republican National Convention, is there something more sinister to it?

Why are Minneapolis police condoning this lawbreaking? Because the guys upstairs do. Two City Council members, Cam Gordon and Robert Lilligren, joined the Critical Mass mob on last week’s ride. Mayor R.T. Rybak also rode with the mob once several years ago.

In August, after some of the ride’s rougher elements provoked a confrontation with police, and 19 people were arrested, Gordon, whose aide was one of those arrested, called foul. The usual hand-wringing and internal investigation in the police department followed. Gordon organized a meeting, where police and Critical Mass representatives discussed what were called mutual expectations.

Police Chief Tim Dolan says he doesn’t like expending limited police resources on Critical Mass rides. But support for more hard-nosed enforcement isn’t there, he says.

In other words – in Minneapolis, the well-connected get a different brand of justice.

It’d be interesting to see what’d happen if a right-to-life group, or Protest Warrior, interfered with traffic in Minneapolis.

This breeds a sense of entitlement.  Kersten notes…:

Robert Lichter of the Center for Media and Public Affairs has studied protest movements. He points out that political protest has changed since the ’20s and ’30s, when those involved were usually poor…The ’60s and ’70s brought a sea change. For the middle- and upper-class young people who flooded into the streets, protest became a vehicle for self-assertion — the “politics of personal expression.” (Think Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.) Middle-class kids wore their arrest record as a badge of honor.In his psychological studies of ’60s-style radicals, Lichter discovered two revealing things: They scored high on the power scale, exhibiting a strong need to feel powerful. They also scored high on narcissism — the need to call attention to themselves, to get public notice.

Not surprisingly, Lichter says, protesters often latched onto high-sounding motives to justify their self-absorbed actions. “You can’t take expressions of love for humanity at face value,” he explains. “They can serve as cover for aggressive feelings and tendencies.” A phenomenon like Critical Mass “allows people to act aggressively, while convincing themselves and some others that it’s all for a moral purpose.”

The problem with tolerating – and even officially encouraging – this sort of self-absorbed adolescent posturing is that it breeds the same solipsistic sense of entitlement that we noted last summer in Kathleen Soliahs’ husband and daughter:

“She lived in Berkeley,” Emily [Olson, Soliah’s daughter] says, trying to explain her mother’s affiliation with the SLA. “It was kind of normal.”…says Fred. “The LAPD massacre of the SLA was a bellwether event-the first televised SWAT team -” “Team murder,” Emily interrupts…“I always tell people she wasn’t a terrorist. She was an urban guerrilla,” says Emily, smearing Blistex on her lips while waiting for the waitress to return.

And, perhaps in parallel, much of official Saint Paul, acting unofficially, condoned Soliah, and continues to to this day.

Minneapolis authorities eventually will discover what parents learn when they allow petulant children to break the rules “just to keep the peace.” You don’t get peace. You just open the door to bigger trouble.

That’s my only klinker with Kersten’s article.  I wouldn’t use the “spoiled kid” analogy.

A kid starts out with perfectly innocent motives; her parents do the spoiling.

A better one; if you leave the door open, over and over again, even after being repeatedly burgled…

Lassie writes about this Macalester “experimental” class…:

Macalester’s EXCO (Experimental College) offers a four-session experimental class starting September 27. Pop quiz: find the oxymoron in the course title…

Non-Violence and Anarchy: An Intergenerational Dialog
When: Thursday nights, 7-9:3pm, start 9/27 (4 wks)
Instructor: Betsy Raasch-Gilman, Rob Czernik
Contact: to [redacted] or (651) 222-4956
Where: Hope to alternate between Jack Pine Center and Friends for a Nonviolent World

Even the class venues are an oxymoron. Jack Pine is where the anarkids meet up, Friends is where the peacemakers meet.

I wonder – will the Quakers teach the anarkids tantrum-free demonstration?  Or will the narks teach the pacifists about peace through adolescent posturing?

I biked over to the Capital Mall on Sunday to watch the union “peace” rally on the Capitol steps. 

I inadvertently got there very early – guess I don’t know my own strength! – so I went down to the World War II memorial, at the foot of the mall by the Veterans Services buildling. 

An older couple were there, wearing matching T-shirts commemorating their son, an Army major who’d been about a year and a half older than me when he was killed last year in Iraq. 

Now, I can’t pretend to imagine what it’s like to lose a child; the safety of my own children is a constant nagging worry in the back of my own head.  I’m no shrinking violet, and I’m certainly not the most sensitive guy, but I do know when to just shut up and let people talk.

And the woman – the bereaved mother – did talk.  She must have figured she was among friends, being on the grounds of a “peace” rally (and, indeed, she was; some things should transcend politics; caring for our kids and loving them more than anything in the world is one of them), and she unloaded, as her husband stood quietly by, admiring the WWII memorial. 

She was angry.  Still demolished with grief. 

She raged against the President. 

I wasn’t about to argue.  I disagreed, naturally, but what could I say?  What should anyone say?  She’d lost her son; for her, the sky might be red and the sun might rise in the west.  I can’t say as I’d see differently in her shoes.

And then she added “…it’s 2007.  We should be able to settle things by talking…”.

I wondered – to myself, of course – if, 65 years ago, Jewish advocates in Poland might have postulated the same ideal; that if they could only talk with Hitler, they could find a way to settle things, before the rest of their families disappeared into the nacht und nebel?  If some Ukranian kulak pondered the idea of just getting a letter through to Staliln to try to settle things as his children starved to death during Stalin’s famine, or if a Cambodian merchant or a Tutsi farmer yearned just to try to settle things like human beings as doom engulfed them and their families?  If some gay Afghan or pregnant Iranian teenager had a the urge to try to reason with their killers before the evil snuffed them out?  Did they believe that evil could be placated?  That behind the implacable mask of the Nazi, the chekist, the Khmer Rouge ideologue or Hutu zealot or Taliban or mullah, or muj with a cell phone alongside some road in Iraq, was someone who just needed to be reasoned with?

I didn’t know, and I didn’t ask.  I nodded, and listened, and expressed my genuine mutual sorrow.

———-

As the couple walked away toward the capitol, I noticed a group of people – younger and middle-aged – in red polo shirts, gathering around the memorial’s reflecting pool.  One of them came over and greeted me; I was among friends – in this case, “Families United“, a group of people whose children, spouses or siblings are in Iraq – or, in a few cases, who died there also. 

As the people in the distance on the Capitol steps  slowly gathered and strummed guitars, the Families United group – two dozen people, altogether – gathered under the American flag and had a brief observance.  The founder – Merilee Carlson, who lost a son in Iraq – read some letters from some of her group’s sympathizers who were also members of the participating trade unions, and were outraged that their unions would spend their dues money on demonstrating to scupper the troops’ mission.

———-

And money, they spent – although apparently not on trying to help people get there on time.  The permit was slated to kick off at 1PM; people were draggling in until two o’clock; between one and two, the crowd swelled from 200 to maybe 500. 

Four fairly posh motor coaches lined up on Constitution Avenue, reminding us that this wasn’t the same crowd we’d had two weeks earlier (at least, some of it differed); the unions, the AFL-CIO and AFSCME, among others, had pulled out the stops to make the day as low-impact as possible on their members.

And still, over half of the “crowd” was the usual suspects; the ACORN crowd, the poverty pimps from various “church” “social justice” groups – everyone but the anarchists, it’d seem.  It didn’t look like the “A-team” of protesters; the signs looked wan and halfhearted; a guy wandered up and down the Mall walkway, banging a pot to no apparent purposes (and yes, if the other guys start that “banging on pots” thing at the convention next year, I am bringing the bagpipes.  Oh, yes I am).  They didn’t know much about sound; they brought a PA system fit to handle a sock hop in a junior high gym; the speakers all exhibited that tendency that inexperienced, underamplified speakers do, shrieking into the microphone like they were hollering to be heard above a nor’easter.

The protesters shied away from talking in person; they’re smarter than most demonstrators (the ones that approached us two weeks earlier were generally woefully illiterate on current events, if not on talking points).

I left after a bit; it was too nice a day.

Janet Beihoffer and Jamie Delton were there, and covered things. 

Question:  If a leftyblogger says a unicorn is standing next to you, and then declares himself “reality-based”, should you saddle up for a magical ride through the starry skies?

Mark Gisleson continues to try to turn my comments about conservatives and demonstrations into something they’re not. 

Too much stuff to fisk (now), but this bit in particular was interesting:

Mitch says there won’t be much in the way of counterprotesters at the RNC next year because “conservatives” just aren’t into groups. Funny, they sure used to turn out in record numbers for George Bush, but then “conservatives” love to be lied to. Over and over again.

Now, do we really think Mark Gisleson can’t tell the difference between going to a campaign rally – an energizing gathering of people whose company one generally enjoys, toward a mutual end (no matter what your party or who your candidate) – and standing on a sidewalk waving a hand-made sign as an endless procession of not-too-literate droogs slouches past chanting gibberish and oozing self-righteousness? 

No, I know it’s possible.  I’m just asking.

Mark Gisleson of Norwegianity, apparently bummed about finishing way out of the big money in the Unintentionally Funny Leftyblog contest (despite years of dedicated striving from colleague MNob, would would definitely be a contender in the Individual category, if I had the bandwidth to present such a contest) apparently didn’t like this line, from a post last week about conservatives and protesting…:

 Conservatives are like sharks; any one of us is a match for dozens of liberals, and our very presence at marches or school board meetings or community council elections provokes unreasoning fear, panic, irrationality and an “end justifies the means” mentality.

He responded:

The first graf is the award-winner [for some hypothetical “unintentionally funny conservative blogger” contest – of which more below], the latter is the clip and save for next year to see if he’s still using this excuse for the pitiful wingnut counterprotester presence at the RNC.

He was talking about this quote from me:

 So I have neither the illusion of nor the desire to try to get thousands of conservatives out into the street next year for the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul. But I do want to get dozens out on the street, and spotted around the city’s various choke points, with cameras and video and laptops and wireless cards, to make sure that the “demonstrators” are held accountable to the world for the actions of their, er, less-restrained fellows.

 Of course, Gisleson misses the point; if he could see the point, he’d be a conservative.

Nobody – least of all me – is under any impression that conservatives will ever clog the streets of Saint Paul, waving signs and carring papier-mache puppets and chanting like a bunch of lobotomized droogs.  That’s the left’s monopoly, and y’all are welcome to it.  We cannot “fail” to spark a mass movement “in the street” at the convention, because there is not the faintest intention to try to create one.

Never has been!

Never will be!

The real intentions?  They’re hidden (apparently) in plain sight, in one post or another here and on True North, for whatever it may be worth to you.

So read again.  And focus.  Belay your dreams of bobbing down Kellogg Boulevard inside a giant Cheney head puppet for a few moments. 

Leave the goalposts alone.

While the local anti-genocide community was out at Triangle Park demonstrating against the “peace” movement (Jamie Delton has the best wrapup of blog coverage I’ve seen), Jack Langer was at a contemporaneous rally in Washington.

And he was…unimpressed?

The protestors, around 8,000 in all, soon lined up in marching formation. But there was some major organizational problem, and they remained in place for over an hour before setting out for the Capitol. Once the march began, it got about two blocks before organizers temporarily halted it, informing us through bullhorns that we had to allow large groups to catch up who were still back at Lafayette Park, unaware that the march had begun. I was mystified how so many people failed to notice thousands of banner-waving, drum playing, chanting protestors leave their vicinity.

The rest of the march was equally disorganized. The massive lead banner, stretching around 40 feet across the width of the protest, ripped in half, hindering the lead protestors’ efforts to hold a straight line. Then they had to endure a three-block stretch that was lined with around a thousand flag-waving, pro-American counter-protestors. The marchers at first tried to ignore the interlopers, but their self-control always seemed to break down right around the guy who was singing into a bullhorn “All we are saaaying, is give soap a chance.” Some heated exchanges ensued, but the cops maintained order and the marchers eventually arrived at the Capitol.

Yeah.  “Unimpressed” is the word.

They stopped at a wall, about waist-high, that separates the Capitol steps from a large field split by a walkway. Behind the wall stood a line of dozens of cops, some in riot gear. Sensing some action was about to break out, I rudely shoved my way to the wall. I was joined in the front row mostly by other, equally uncouth reporters, none us caring one iota about basic manners when a big story seemed about to break.

It was at this point that the “die-in” commenced. Hundreds of protestors lied down and, I suppose, pretended to be dead. I think the spectacle was somehow supposed to help end the Iraq War. After all, nothing conveys the dignity and solemnity of a noble cause like a “die-in” does.

And, hopefully a portent of things to come in Saint Paul…:

The anarchists really disappointed me. None of them jumped the wall. They portray themselves as the most militant wing of the antiwar movement, but they didn’t even have the guts displayed by the Code Pink grandmas. The anarchists claim to want a revolution, but apparently not a single one of them is willing to risk a misdemeanor arrest to achieve that glorious goal. Instead, they sufficed with yelling a lot of slogans about class war at the cops. This was ironic, seeing as the anarchists were almost certainly all college kids, while the cops were about the only working class people in the entire crowd.

Back “in the day” when I was a wanna-be punk rocker and weekend talk show host, I interviewed a bunch of kidz from the “Backroom Anarchist Center”, the old narky commune in Minneapolis, on my old graveyard shift talk show.  I took the liberty of checking into some of their bios.  To a kid, they were from upper-middle-class neighborhoods – Edina, Woodbury – and apparently going through some sort of rite of rebellious passage.  As I’ve written before – I’d kill to know what those kids are doing now, when they’re all in their late thirties.  Not living in the back of a van, I’ll hazard.

And in the end, what had the protestors achieved? Not much, it seems to me. I asked a cop about the fate of those arrested. He told me they’d be processed and then released, probably spending no more than a few hours in a holding cell. The entire spectacle was really just a kind of performance art, acted out for the benefit of a gullible media that laps up these exhibitions and presents them to the nation as if they reflect some meaningful social current.

I hope to spend the first  week of next September documenting the silliness.

We drew (according to one count) about 30 people to yesterday’s counterprotest on John Ireland Boulevard.

It was a huge success.  Before I took off from the house Saturday morning, I had a hard count of maybe 18.   Getting nearly double that?  Awesome.

Of course, the point wasn’t to demonstrate.  Demonstrations don’t really affect policy in any way at all.  What they are, if you keep things in perspective, is a dandy social occasion; a time to get together and realize you’re not alone out there. 

Liberals and “activists” are like tuna (and, if it’s possible, please believe I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense); they travel in big groups, they get uneasy when they’re NOT in a big group, they have a hard time conceiving of existence that doesn’t involve big groups. 

Conservatives are like sharks; any one of us is a match for dozens of liberals, and our very presence at marches or school board meetings or community council elections provokes unreasoning fear, panic, irrationality and an “end justifies the means” mentality.  And we usually operate alone.  Conservatism is fundamentally a solitary thing; we usually come to the movement alone, or with a spouse.  Liberals have their marches and their union meetings and their poli-sci classes; our social impulses are usually carried out via talk radio and blogs, at work or while hauling kids to school.  Getting a group of five or more conservatives together for ANYTHING but an open bar is a major undertaking.

So I have neither the illusion of nor the desire to try to get thousands of conservatives out into the street next year for the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul.  But I do want to get dozens out on the street, and spotted around the city’s various choke points, with cameras and video and laptops and wireless cards, to make sure that the “demonstrators” are held accountable to the world for the actions of their, er, less-restrained fellows.

Like Brad Carlson did with this guy.

The left labors under the fantasy that there’ll be an equal amount of provocation from the left and the right.  My goal; to have the radical far left’s sins and crimes spread far and wide, in the event that their lunatic fringe misbehaves in Saint Paul this year.

And yes, I fully expect that the left will have its phalanxes of “citizen journalists” trooping through the streets with cameras, trying to do the same.

Hopefully we’re all going to be bored stiff.

Anyone wanna place bets on who’s gonna be busier?

Kermit, Brad, Dr. Jonz and Swiftee were there…

20 to 1?

Seems like a fair battle.

I had to take off before the actual fun started at the Cathedral and long John Ireland Boulevard in Saint Paul this morning – I had to get to the station to do the NARN show – but I’m told it was a great time.  Most of the lefties behaved (all of the counterprotesters, naturally, behaved impeccably), and our presence – for a bunch of people who are just not wired to stand around on a gorgeous Saturday waving signs and yelling – was way stronger than I expected.  I had hoped to draw 15-18 counterprotesters – by all accounts we doubled that. 

I’ll be linking to some of the other bloggers who were there – but this was a great start.

More later!

Kerry Hogan at Smoothing Plane, preparing for Saturday’s counterprotest, notes:

Arguing with the deranged shows optimism but is futile. The unreasonable do not come to reason through reason. Humor and ridicule, that’s the ticket.

He’s also got some ideas for signs.

Please join us – the Twin Cities’ anti-surrender, anti-appeasement, anti-genocide community – at a counterprotest this coming Saturday. 

The counterprotesters will gather and demonstrate at Triangle Park in Saint Paul (the triangle-shaped block east of the linked map) at the corner of Marshall Avenue and John Ireland Boulevard.   (For an aerial view, click here)  We’ll be counterprotesting the Vietnam rally “Peace” march, which starts around noon-ish.  We’ll be getting to the park early in the morning.

The park is located a block north of the Cathedral of Saint Paul and east of John Ireland Boulevard (the road that connects the Cathedral and the Capitol) across from Saint Paul College.  It is Saint Paul Parks property, and is reserved for the use of counterprotesters during the time of the march.

Interested in attending?  Drop us a line at the email address “demonstrationwatch”, at Yahoo.com. 

We share a city with some…”interesting” people. 

Lassie at True North notes that the “9/11 Truthers” are setting up shop over in Minneapolis:

 This Tuesday, September 11, many will reflect and say a prayer in remembrance or honor those who lost their lives in the wake of 9/11/2001. Then, there are those who think 9/11 was an inside job — the 9/11 Truthers. They plan to show their film “9/11 Press for Truth” and act out with some street theater in Minneapolis, with Coleen Rowley, former FBI agent.

Spend an evening celebrating our freedom of expression thru music, dance and spoken word (open mic time, too.)

Learn about the case for impeachment, find out about the campaign for a US Department of Peace, and discover great ways to work for change right here in Minneapolis…

Speakers Include: Coleen Rowley, former FBI agent and Time person of the year 2003, Marv Davidoff founder of the Honeywell Project…

If there ever was a better opportunity (or duty) to crash a party, this is it.

Hm.  Some parties, I’d like to crash.

Others, I’m happy to let stew in the fetid backwash of what Dostoevskii might have called their “brain fever”.

A group of people who support the troops, and want the world to know that not all of the Twin Cities agrees with the anti-war, pro-surrender agenda, will be staging a counterprotest at the “peace” march on September 15.

The counterprotesters will gather and demonstrate at Triangle Park in Saint Paul (the triangle-shaped block east of the linked map) at the corner of Marshall Avenue and John Ireland Boulevard.   (For an aerial view, click here – it’s one of Saint Paul’s coolest places, in a lot of ways)

The park – a memorial to Minnesotans who served in the Civil War – is located a block north of the Cathedral of Saint Paul and east of John Ireland Boulevard (the road that connects the Cathedral and the Capitol) across from Saint Paul College.  It is Saint Paul Parks property, and is reserved for the use of counterprotesters during the time of the march.

Interested in attending?  Drop us a line at the email address “demonstrationwatch”, at Yahoo.com. 

First things first: Joel Rosenberg brought up a great point in two comments in this thread the other day; no police department is immune from causing problems such as the ones Minneapolis had last Friday at the “Critical Mass” rally-turned-riot.

Mitch, I think the perception in the worst — and numerically small, but dominant — culture of the MPD is that they’re collectively utterly untouchable, and that what the peons think of as misbehavior has so long gone without consequence that there’s no need to worry about it. It’s how you get things like a cop booking a guy in on a non-existent crime (civilian possession of hollowpoints); the one that got drunk, decided to recreationally tune up a guy in a bar, took it outside and got beaten up and his gun taken, and got a couple of days off with pay; etc.

Those are hardly the only examples; they’re the ones that come to mind without having to violate some innocent’s privacy.

Or, to put it cynically, when one’s motto is “l’etat, c’est moi,” one doesn’t pay much attention to the subtleties of the latest polling.

Now, I’ve shared my misgivings about the upper-management of Minneapolis’ police department in the past. And while I know an awful lot of excellent officers on the MPD, the department does have a history of having had some bad apples that have caused all sorts of problems. They don’t have the most sympathetic reputation.

Which, along with Joel’s comment, started me thinking: what if the rioters were counting on that fact?

And I thought back to the other day, when I was at the anarkids’ “press conference”. I received a copy of the anarkids’ prepared statement about the bike rally riot.

There was a passage in the statement that caught my eye; it seemed almost incongruous in context…:

The RNC Welcoming Committe (RNC-WC), a group hosting the pReNC, gave a public speech before the ride exhorting riders to avoid confrontation throughout the weekend.

…and I filed the thought away for later.

“Later” arrived some time after reading Joel’s comment…

…and getting the following email yesterday. Over on an e-democracy discussion group, a friend and occasional interviewee of mine – who has never been mistaken for a conservative – wrote about the riots (with me adding occasional emphasis):

The way I read this situation is that we have first hand reports of
people they had never seen before making grandiose statements about what to do when the cops show up, something that has never been an issue with CM before. And then the cops do show up – in force, coordinated with the Deputies. Someone had tipped them off that a riot was about to happen.

Who tipped them off?

Why, the rioters, of course.

That part seemed incongruous to me at the time; for something like the “Critical Mass” rally to go from bucolic meander to riot inside a week? For the cops to have a bear in the air and cars standing by? For fifty cops to show up when the first disturbance call went out (although believe me – I understand why cops respond so quickly to “officer needs assistance” calls)?

That’s the way it used to work in Miami. You take a crowd of peace-loving citizens and start a riot by giving the cops an anonymous tip that there will be a riot. If you have police department that is known to to Neanderthal at the slightest provocation, it’s an easy gig to arrange. Then you have a whole bunch of middle class white people who have their dresses bloodied because they are no longer virgins when it comes to rioting. You want the middle class white people pissed off as all Hell at the cops for their awful brutality. You want them on *your* side when the big show comes to town. You want their resources and their money and their bodies, all for your cause.

Why would you do that?

It’s called “radicalizing”.

In my article on the subject, and in various communications with others on the situation, I’ve used different words – that the riot makes the anarkids and their lilywhite liberal supporters feel like victims, thereby justifying whatever means they want to bring to bear in protest.

And if I were looking to create exactly such an incident, what Metro police department would I pick as…my mark, for lack of a better term?

I use the term “mark” because that’s where the email was leading:

In short, Minneapolis got played. Bigtime. The rubes who fell for this
routine are nothing less than suckers. I’m especially mad at the cops for
falling for this, but they’ve never showed that they had too much in the
way of sense before so it’s not much of a surprise.

And then, this part here – which brought my attention directly back to that Anarkid press release about the big speech telling the Critical Massers to “stay peaceful”:

What I am quite sure of is that this WILL happen in Saint Paul sometime in
the near future. Any of you who attend a peace rally or any other thing
will suddenly hear someone shouting about how to conduct yourself in the event of a major police action. That’s the warning shot. They do this because they want you to flee to avoid arrest.

And, according to the Anarkids’ own press release, that’s exactly what they got:

Nearly twenty squad cars arrived on the scene. Over forty police created a line formation in which they advanced on bikers, arresting, and brutalizing those who fell behind.

If this correspondent is right – and some reading about crowd/mob psychology is on my agenda here – it’d seem that the Anarkids have taken charge of the public agenda. They even seem to know the political turf pretty well:

I heard that there was a similar incident in the works two months ago in Saint Paul, but our cops didn’t over-react enough to start the appropriate riot. If that is true, good for them. Having the best led and best paid police force in the state is doing us well.

Of course, even the best cops – and I share the correspondent’s regard for the SPPD – get worn down. And the Anarkids would seem to know that:

Remember, above all else – this isn’t about you. It’s not about your rights or your person or anything like that. It’s about finding fresh meat to put into the grinder to get a really big riot going. They will have to stir things up a lot if they are going to have a big show one year from now, and that means radicalizing a lot of people. That also means beating down Saint Paul’s finest and getting them battle-weary.

Don’t play that game. It’s not yours to win. Stay cool, stay smart.

True for all of us, really, on both sides of the fence – since any counter-protests will no doubt be met with provocations designed to play equally into their plans.

Something to keep in mind for the 9/15 counterprotests.