{"id":3307,"date":"2008-09-15T06:00:44","date_gmt":"2008-09-15T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3307"},"modified":"2008-09-15T06:00:44","modified_gmt":"2008-09-15T11:00:44","slug":"against-type-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3307","title":{"rendered":"Against Type"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s not often that I find myself defending Saint Paul mayor Chris Coleman.  Indeed, I die a little inside at the thought.<\/p>\n<p>But they say you can learn a little about a guy by his enemies.<\/p>\n<p>So here goes; good job, Mayor Coleman.<\/p>\n<p>A group of stalkers <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twincities.com\/ci_10451912?nclick_check=1\">followed Coleman to a fundraiser<\/a> last week:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>About 30 demonstrators showed up outside a fundraiser for St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman on Friday, objecting to what the group saw as an overreaction by police during last week&#8217;s protests outside the Republican National Convention.<\/p>\n<p>Carrying signs that read &#8220;I Am Ashamed&#8221; and &#8220;I Survived 9\/1,&#8221; the group strolled the sidewalk in front of a St. Anthony Park residence where the event was being held, briefly confronting Coleman when he arrived.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Look, I don&#8217;t support government overreach; police overreach against <em>legitimate <\/em>protest is no better than, say, siccing the FCC on conservative talk radio under the guise of the &#8220;Fairness&#8221; Doctrine.<\/p>\n<p>But look at what Coleman&#8217;s administration &#8211; which is of a relatively small city, remember &#8211; was facing:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A movement that pledged to &#8220;shut down&#8221; Saint Paul <em>and <\/em>the convention<\/li>\n<li>Groups that were threatening to stalk and kidnap delegates and other people.<\/li>\n<li>Credible threats of violence and mayhem from groups that have carried it out in the past (see Seattle, 1999).<\/li>\n<li>Groups that <em>did<\/em>, in fact, commit violence against delegates on the first day &#8211; sandbag attacks on buses, bleach squirted at delegates and so on.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>With that background, caution was hardly misplaced.<\/p>\n<p>So did officers possibly use &#8220;excessive caution&#8221; on protesters who didn&#8217;t obey lawful orders to disperse &#8211; macing people excessively and so on?\u00a0 Possible.<\/p>\n<p>Did the police break up <em>any<\/em> protests that were legally permitted, and where the protesters were operating within the conditions of the permit?\u00a0 I&#8217;ve been asking counterculture types for the past week, and heard nothing.<\/p>\n<p>The protesters, I suspect, are upset &#8211; legitimately at what <em>may <\/em>have been instances of cops overapplying mace, and illegitimately at the overall approach, which seems <em>not <\/em>to have had any affect on legal, permitted protests.<\/p>\n<p>And they&#8217;re upset because their protests, outside the echo chamber of the perennially-angry far left, had <em>zero<\/em> affect on the convention, on national policy, on the GOP, and &#8211; most galling to them, I suspect &#8211; the national press coverage of the convention.\u00a0 Pissed off kids and ageing hippies throwing things in the streets?\u00a0 Dog bites dog.\u00a0 Sarah Palin sweeping all before her?\u00a0 Pitbull bites lightworker.<\/p>\n<p>The protesters barely qualified as a sideshow.\u00a0 Unless you were a cop.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway &#8211; good job, Mayor Coleman.<\/p>\n<p>Feel free to keep the good will flowing, by the way, by reconsidering your property tax hikes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s not often that I find myself defending Saint Paul mayor Chris Coleman. Indeed, I die a little inside at the thought. But they say you can learn a little about a guy by his enemies. So here goes; good job, Mayor Coleman. A group of stalkers followed Coleman to a fundraiser last week: About [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,42,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-convention-08","category-days-of-adolescent-rage","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}