What If They Had A Riot, And Nobody Came?
By Mitch Berg
When you’re a Republican in Saint Paul, you get used to feeling like a Finn at Suomussalmi.
It’s a rare thing indeed when the good guys outnumber the left at much of anything in this town.
Today was the last day I expected to be one of them.
The Anarkids – the various arrested adolescents who are planning on bringing violence to the Republican National Convention next year – had a “News Conference” at the Capitol at 11:30 today.
Present were:
- Camera crews from two cable access outlets and WCCO TV.
- A reporter from Minnesota Public Radio (indeed, the same one I talked with on Friday).
- Lassie from Freedom Dogs
- Leo from Pscychmeister’s Ice Palace
- Jamie Delton, blogger and local GOP activist.
- Sandra Brown-Rivers, spokesperson for the RNC Welcoming Committee.
- Three or four anarkids. One of them drove…(wait for it…wait for it…) a Prius – brand new and mighty expensive, for a bunch of kids who reject capitalism and money. It was plastered with bumperstickers.
- Myself.
So – of the 15 (I counted ’em) people at the “news conference”, both the news media and the GOP presence were greater than the Anarkids!
Ms. Brown-Rivers – a short woman who looked either frumpily perky or perkily frumpy – did a lengthy soundcheck, looking hot and sticky and uncomfortable in her dark, dirty-looking standard-issue anarkid-wear duds, and sounding tentative behind the microphone, at the bottom of the capitol steps. Then she cleared her throat, and as camera crews and the cute redhead reporter from WCCO tried to get her name for attribution, replied “We’re not taking questions…”
“No, we’d like to get your title”, replied one of the camera guys, who I suspect must have been wondering what he did to piss off his assignment editor.
Finally, after an extended buildup, Ms. Brown-Rivers read the following statement, word for word (barring a few flubs which I won’t bother to re-create):
Thank you, ladies, gentlemen, and otherly-gendered of the press, for joining us on this, most glorious of occasions. This Labor day weekend, anarchists and anti-authoritarians from every city, every town, every hamlest, every last Hooverville of this great nation convened a grand congress. Together, we have magicked into being a detailed plan, worthy of note, to receive the Republican National Convention. Like many a good plan, it is broad in scope, aimed an othering less than complete controll (!!) of this hallowed turf, our fair city. Today, declare our first victory, having a chieved a complete shutdown of government services citywide. This we have accomplished whilst wading in the dark tide of the State and their attempts to crush us on the first even of our festivities, when the gentle flesh of our comrades was met with hard metal and penetrating volts by members of the self-appointed police force – a foreshadowing glimpse. Yet here we stand, and our chariots ride on. Much as a phoenix rises from its own ashes, we admist that tomorrow the city will function anew. But know this: its hegemony, like all but the truest of loves, is fleeting, ephemeral.
I thought about fisking it – but this may be the most perfectly self-fisking statement in the history of public oratory (although other bloggers may feel free to go for it!).
Ms Brown-Rivers stalked off the steps, leaving the reporters looking mildly pissed.
And so the season begins!
So – did anyone manage to make it to the Jackpine Community Center to see what the rest of the “anarchist organization” was doing?
September 3rd, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Mitch, is this another of your creative parodies? I can’t believe this woman is stupid enough to claim responsibility for the closure of government on Labor Day.
“complete shutdown of government services citywide” So she thinks all the evil, jack-booted “self-appointed police” are home watching the MDA Telethon?
Seriously, if this is legit how many of the reporters started snickering?
September 3rd, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Well, it’s especially ironic considering the NEXT page of their press release.
On which more tomorrow.
September 3rd, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Glad I didn’t make it. My Chaotic nature would have tempted me to do something stupid. Here’s a chant: “Hey Hey Ho HO! Organized Anarchy has got to go!”
September 3rd, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Here’s a shot of one anarkid’s Prius.
Sticker 1: Pro-life? Go Vegan.
Sticker 2: Abolish Corporate Personhood
I’m sure they’re gathered now, magicking another detailed plan, worthy of note.
September 3rd, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Mitch, if I didn’t know you, I wouldn’t believe you.
Wow, these idiots are more idiotic than I thought.
September 3rd, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Who (or who’s) fair city are they talking about? St. Paul, or every hamlet and Hooverville (or was it Hooterville)? Come to think of it, our village was missing its idiot this weekend.
Oh, and that “magick” thing explains why you couldn’t see any more people there – they were invisible!
September 3rd, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Oh, and that “magick” thing explains why you couldn’t see any more people there – they were invisible!
Not so much invisible anarkids, but perhaps camouflaged by layers of dirt from nfrequent washing. Exhibit A.
September 3rd, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Well, Lassie’s last posted picture DID look “otherly-gendered” alright.
September 3rd, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Nice bike. I’m surprised the MPD gave it back so soon.
September 3rd, 2007 at 6:56 pm
It sounds like they were lrping Illuminati or Illuminati:NWO.
September 3rd, 2007 at 7:46 pm
The afternoon was not wasted – it was a great opportunity to trade ideas with leading activists and bloggers who I respect alot.
Kermit – you wouldn’t have believed it!
http://jamie.mee.nu/a_little_labor_day_anarchy_in_st._paul
http://jamie.mee.nu/files/anarc.jpg
http://jamie.mee.nu/files/anarc1.jpg
Vast emptiness:
http://jamie.mee.nu/files/anarc3.jpg
Jamie
September 3rd, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Other gendered? How many options you got up there?
September 3rd, 2007 at 8:47 pm
The one driving the insite has a government license tag on it? Come on kid! Fight the power! Dont let the man keep you down! What a wuss.
September 4th, 2007 at 1:28 am
I thought the anarchists of the ’70s were posers but they would eat this generation’s for brunch.
September 4th, 2007 at 8:41 am
Mitch, is this another of your creative parodies?
No, I didn’t “majick” this one “into being”. There were three other non-media witnesses!
Here’s a chant: “Hey Hey Ho HO! Organized Anarchy has got to go!”
Save it for the 15th!
September 4th, 2007 at 9:49 am
Can she really think they achieved a complete shut-down of local government on Labor Day? Even if they were responsible for the shut-down and not the union contract, is she seriously saying that all government services were shut down and it’s a glorious thing?
Didn’t she flush the toilet once all day? Where does she think the clean water came from and the dirty water went to? I know, sanitation isn’t glamorous, but clean water and sewage treatment are two of the three fundamental requirements of urban life and are done at the local level.
Don’t believe me? Shut down the water plant so there’s no water in the faucet for a week, or shut down the sewer plant so the sewage backs up the pipes for a week, to see how unliveable the city becomes. Shut either of them down for a month in August and you’d have rampant disease and city-wide evacuation.
The other fundamental is crime control. Don’t believe me? Pull all the cops off the street for a week and see how unliveable the city becomes. Try it for a month and see who’s left standing in town.
A woman who can’t see that local government is the basis of urban civilization is the same sort of person who would ban electrical power generating plants then complain when she can’t use her electric grinder to grind her Fair Trade Coffee. She’s completely divorced from reality. Nuts!
September 4th, 2007 at 10:47 am
You can only hope that SOME of them will grow up and join the real world when they hit 25 or 30.
September 4th, 2007 at 11:00 am
You can only hope that SOME of them will grow up and join the real world when they hit 25 or 30.
Back in ’86, I interviewed a few kidz from the old “Backroom Anarchist Center” on my old KSTP talk show. Before the show, out of curiosity, I did a little digging on my three guests. All of them hailed from the likes of Edina, Wayzata and Woodbury. Now, I have nothing against upper-middle-class ‘burbs – but I DO have something against the children of immense privilege playing dress-up and playing proletarian revolutionaries.
And I’ve wondered; the three anar”kids” I interviewed in ’86 have all got to be between 39 and 43 today. I’m wondering if they’re all still living in anarcho-syndicalist communes in Oregon, or if they used their degrees and their family connections to rejoin the straight life, more or less like their hippie anscestors did?
February 11th, 2008 at 7:26 am
[…] 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. […]