On September 1st, 2008 I attended the Labor Day anti-war protest in St. Paul with a couple friends. It was supposed to be the first full day of the 2008 Republican National Convention, and I was there working on a story for a quarterly publication in Providence called The Agenda. I was also there as a concerned citizen interested in learning about the Convention from a first hand perspective. Both the rally and the march from the Capitol to the Excel Center, and back, were a resounding success with over a hundred different coalitions participating (nearly 20,000 people altogether.) There were a lot of riot cops and military barricades downtown but I witnessed no aggression at all from the march. We were a peaceful and highly energetic group of citizens assembling to protest the Iraq War and the Republican Party’s orchestration, execution, and prolonged continuation of it. After the march, my friends and I headed off in an inspired, joyous mood. Hopeful, motivated, and completely oblivious to the absolute shit storm of police misconduct headed directly for us.
The next big event of the day was the Service Employees International Union (S.E.I.U.) benefit at the Harriet Island Pavilion. Billy Bragg, Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine, Atmosphere, and Mos Def were all playing. It was a couple miles from where we were, but definitely walk-able. Riot police were blocking off certain streets and bridges down town on the most direct route to the show, so we tried our best to find an alternate route. Twenty minutes we later found ourselves in a nice little park right across the river from Harriet Island. The Mississippi stood between us and the high wall of the Pavilion which blocked any view of the concert, but we could hear it all very clearly. Tom Morello was on-stage wrapping up the Night Watchman set, followed by a representative from Iraq Veterans Against the War, and then Atmosphere began. I heard Slug’s voice through the sound system and a huge smile washed over my face. We took off south bound along the path of the river park, eager to find our way to the concert and catch as much of the set as possible.
None of us knew the area but there was a large bridge in the distance and we could see people walking across. On the way toward it we came across pockets of disgruntled fans saying that the bridge was being blocked by cops and no one could get across. We kept walking in hopes of getting a concrete answer or finding another way around, but the pattern continued and more and more rejected would be show-goers (as well as protesters), were coming toward us. Suddenly, my eyes fixed on what they were all walking away from: an enormous line of storm trooper looking riot police and what looked like National Guardsmen, in full army gear, had blocked the entire width of the road and were advancing steadily toward us like one long plow blade. There were hundreds of them, some with gas masks, some on bikes, and many holding new age weapons I had never seen before.
Helicopter blades could now be heard slicing through the air high above us and I got a very tingly, surreal end of the world feeling. Like life had suddenly become a scene from 28 Days Later or Dawn of the Dead, complete with scary police state soldiers, droves of panicking civilians, and live Atmosphere songs for the soundtrack. People started moving away very quickly. The militarized lines of officers came to a halt and then fanned out, blocking anyone from leaving by any of the roads at the southerly end of the block. One brave kid had a video camera and was hippy dancing about 20 feet in front of them. He reminded me of a little bird I had once seen in a storybook eating popcorn off a crocodile’s nose. My friends and I agreed that it was time to pack up our wagons and get the fuck out of Dodge.
Heading quickly in the opposite direction we began to hear frightened voices shouting the same thing in front of us, “We’re trapped, we’re trapped… They’re not letting anybody out!” People looked visibly shaken. I’d seen a similar scenario at the RNC in 2004 when the NYPD got the order from up on High to just scoop up whole crowds of people and fence them in with thick orange construction site webbing, like one big butterfly net, before spiriting them off to pre-arranged warehouse facilities; protesters, shoppers, journalists, senior citizens, legal observers, and anyone in the path of their directive. I didn’t think St. Paul would be employing those same abuses on the first day of this Convention, and certainly not so far away from any march or actual event. I wasn’t sure if they had locked everyone in the park yet or not but I knew that they could if they wanted to, and that if this was turning into that type of situation then we had very little time to evacuate before the clamp down.
We sprinted from the road back into the park and through the forming crowds of confused people. Sure enough there was a line of dozens of bike cops using their bicycles as a blockade. Their line ran through the small park up to the road where another massive line of riot cops had closed in from the opposite end of the block and locked down the street. The perimeter was secure and a lot of people, anywhere from 100 to 200+, were now detained and being held against their will without an official charge or order to disperse. No acknowledgment from the police at all. They wouldn’t explain, they wouldn’t answer questions, they hardly even looked at us.
More riot police arrived 5-10 minutes later, advancing vertically into the street running parallel to the park and the river. We were now penned in by men in black; facing us down from the road as well as the south and north ends of the park. The river behind us had five coast guard boats with machine guns on the hull. Armed guards semi-circled the park from the water. People were terrified. It looked as though they could open fire on us at any moment. I threw my hands in the air and let out a sick little chuckle. At the very least, we were all about to get taken into custody and spend an indefinite amount of days in jail for doing absolutely nothing…and there wasn’t a damn thing any of us could do about it.
The riot cops looked grim as storm crows in a cemetery, glaring from their lines, walking quickly here and there, and seemingly making all kinds of plans. Something was happening. We weren’t quite sure what yet, but there was definitely a whole separate game being played above our heads and it didn’t look good. Glancing around we saw that there were all different types of people in the park; young kids who had been there just listening to the concert like us, some very stunned looking college students, a group of middle aged women, protesters, and more. Some people were still wandering around asking to be let out, but many just sat down on the ground. There was a teenage girl next to us shaking and sniffling with tears running down her face. I leaned over and said, “Hi, my name’s Jared. I want you to know that you’re doing just fine. Don’t let these bastards see you cry. We didn’t do anything wrong so let’s not give them the satisfaction.” She forced a crooked but brave smile.
People were now passing around black magic markers and writing down the number for a volunteer legal collective that made its services available to anybody attending the RNC. Numbers were being scrawled wildly across the inside of forearms, stomachs, shins, and thighs. The sky took on an odd rusty grey tinge that made me think of Ray Bradbury’s lightening rod salesman: “Something wicked this way comes…” Trying to keep a clear head and needing to stay busy, I got out my cell phone and called the number for the legal collective (now tagged on my inner thigh) and the Minnesota ACLU. I gave them all my information and as many details about the situation as I could.
As if most of the people in the crowd weren’t terrified enough, a menacing sterile voice came over a megaphone instructing everyone to sit down and place their hands on their heads. No real explanation as to what was going on, no details at all in fact, just stone military directives. The riot cops then sent in commando-like squads through the different pockets of people and singling out particular individuals. Going from group to group, they’d point out a person and then scream for everyone around that person to move back. Then they’d roughly push them forward, cinch their wrists with zip ties as tight as they’d go, and haul them off. Every fifth officer or so was carrying a black rifle. It didn’t look like it shot regular bullets, but it shot something. I didn’t like the way the men who carried them were clutching the grips so tightly. They looked like they were practicing for a Bruce Willis movie. One boy refused to acknowledge his captors when he was chosen out of a cluster of kids 20 ft in front of us. The aggressive cop, leading this particular incursion, screamed for the kid to put his hands on his head. When he still didn’t move the cop pulled out his bottle of pepper spray.
Whether he was really going to give him the juice or just threaten him, we never got to see. The officer’s hands were shaking so badly that he dropped the bottle on the ground. Other cops rushed in. The commotion prevented me from seeing what was going on, but people throughout the crowd started screaming “Put down the gun!!” “Let him go!!” Could the officer really have pulled out his firearm? As if the unarmed boy, who was already on the ground and surrounded (not only by the 8 heavily armed grown men in front of him but also by the hundreds of other cops surrounding the park) was somehow going to snatch the bottle from the ground and harm them? From what I could tell the boy never even looked up. I don’t know if he saw what was pointed at him, but the young officer’s face went white as a ghost. He quickly re-holstered whatever he was holding, retrieved the pepper spray from the ground, and then kept it trained on the boy’s face as the other officers bent both arms back, zip tied his wrists and then carried him off. The crowd cheered for the first time in awhile. I wondered how we’d fair when the Kevlar vested, futuristic weapon wielding hang men came for us. Atmosphere’s set was almost done and, fittingly, they were playing the acoustic, more somber version of Not Another Day:
“Whoaaa-ohhhh… Not another day… Not another day of the same old song, c’mon…”
The haunting tone drifted across the muddy swirls of the Mississippi, perfectly encapsulating the moment. The whole damn thing was so surreal. There were thousands of anti-war and labor movement people less than a mile away and we could hear them cheering after each song, but they had no idea what was happening. One got the sense that if we could only reach them, swarms of war resistors would come teaming over the hill at any moment, fording the river in home made rafts. Normally, I would have had Slug’s number with me, and if my phone hadn’t died (erasing my entire phone book only days before) then I would have called him. It would’ve been embarrassing, but I would’ve done it anyway. Maybe he would’ve picked up and maybe he wouldn’t have, but it was all I could think about. Slug from stage: “Ladies and Gentlemen, excuse me for a second, I’ve gotta take this one. Jared? I’m in the middle of my set, this better be good…”
“Yeah man it’s good alright, I’m right across the river with about 200 other people, most of whom wanted to get to the show. We’re completely surrounded by more cops than I can count. They corralled us all into this park down on Shepard Road and now they’re hauling everyone off one by one, can you all make some noise for us? Just so that we know this isn’t all happening in a vacuum? We’re isolated down here by the water, the legal observers haven’t arrived yet, and there’s not too much media either.”
After the special selections were all successfully profiled and extracted, they came for the rest of us. Officers (3 at a time) would run up to a group of people and drag somebody off; wrists bound behind them, and forced to walk backwards. It was odd because they were made to walk that way. You got to see the person’s face as they were taken, trying to decide whether or not they’d get in trouble for looking back at their friends and concentrating on their footing so they wouldn’t fall. My group of friends tried keeping the spirits high. They seemed to be doing better than I was. Getting arrested for something you believe in, at a peaceful event you care deeply about is one thing. Mass arbitrary arrest while sitting in a park listening to music, unexpectedly, unprepared, and with the whole week long convention still to report on is another.
Finally it was our turn and the urban military officers, wearing nearly $10,000 in futuristic gear each, rode down on us. It was like having your number called after an hour of watching a long line of people get kicked out of an airplane before you. Now here we were, stepping to the edge of the exit hatch staring down an angry jump Sergeant, ready or not; hopefully our chutes would open and everyone in the park would land safely on the ground. Amen. My arresting officer was a large, angry man with dark sunglasses and a grating voice: “You gonna give me any trouble? Let me tell you something, I don’t like assholes who give me trouble; If you give me any shit you’re going to have a bad day, you understand me? I can make this very hard for you…”
“Officer, I have no intention of giving you any trouble. I believe this is an unlawful arrest, and I’ll be contacting my lawyer as soon as I’m allowed to use a phone, but I respect you, and I won’t be a problem.”
Atmosphere was done and Mos Def was on stage now; the soundtrack for our mass arrest continued as they went through everyone’s pockets and wallets, threw personal effects on the ground, and split our property up in different bags to be shipped off to god knows where. After waiting in cue for nearly 20 minutes, I was taken behind a truck for a photo. A field station was set up, and shots were being taken of all the people dragged out of the park while the officer held up some document or another. I believe it was here that I learned that I, and many others, were being charged with “Felony-Riot,” which I’ll admit sounded pretty bad ass in a Cool Hand Luke sort of way, but a Felony is an extremely serious charge and I hadn’t done anything but listen to music by the river. It felt markedly less romantic than it looks now in text.
I smiled for the photo and when I did, one of the cops standing around made a condescending comment about me acting like everything was a joke, and I was like: “Look, I know I’m not supposed to be talking, but what do you want from me? If I scowl into the camera with handcuffs on then I look like a criminal. If I look scared then you’re gonna act like I’m making a big deal out of nothing. Either way, if this photo ever gets out it’ll be easier on my Mom if I’m smiling in the picture and don’t look hurt.” He cocked his head slightly to the side and gave me the funniest look before walking away. I had no idea what he thought, I was too busy imagining him in wrist ties held down by big armed guards while I snapped photo after photo inches from his face asking him to smile.
By this point, there were on ton of press and many legal observers on the scene. I saw them on the other side of the police line as the
2008 RNC Magical Mystery Tour continued, like a conveyor belt to the next station. We were led onto a large city bus with only a few open seats remaining, so I had to sit up close to the driver and the cops. Awesome. There were only two officers on board and it seemed like people had been waiting a long time. My friend Zach, who I was previously separated from, was on the bus! God it felt good to see him: “You good?” “Yep, you?” “Alright so far, I can’t believe this is happening…” “I know.” I wasn’t seated more than 10 minutes before everyone on board started singing in unison. It was slow at first, but then everybody started in, loud and fearless. We made it part or all the way through Johnny Cash- Folsam Prison Blues, Bob Dylan-Like A Rolling Stone, The Beatles-Hey Jude, Bob Marley-Everything’s Gonna Be Alright, and many others. It was quite impressive actually, but the best was absolutely yet to come.
In a very Simple Twist of Fate type of way, the ageless, mirrored lathe of the cosmos turned in on itself. The ironic force of sheer ridiculousness that dictates the ebb and flow of the Universe, every atom comprising its vast and incalculable quilt of Coincidences and Contradictions, somehow saw it fit that our bus (filled with the first 50 out of 200+ unlawfully arrested U.S. citizens) rolled out just as a boisterous and exalted rendition of The National Anthem caught fire. “Ohhhh SAY, CAN YOU SEE…?” And in that moment, it felt as though an entire life time of witnessing, dealing with, and attempting to adjust to the endless injustice and hypocrisy of America rose in one collective swell. It poured like thunder from the dark mountains in our hearts, reaching out for every jail cell, detention center, and prison camp on Earth. I didn’t even know I knew all the words to that song. I don’t know if any of us did, but the lyrics were just there.
Ours was the first bus to leave, and as we passed, flash bulbs sparked with reporters rushing to get photos of the commandeered public transport filled with singing prisoners. Officers detaining the last of the poor souls extracted from the park, talked to other cops, or just plain stood around all paused for our Anthem. Some shook their heads in disgust. Others stood slack jawed and stunned, seemingly unable to process what was going on. “Hey Stevens!? Is that really a bus full of asshole protestors singing the National Anthem? Jesus it sounds like they really mean it…”
Goddamn right we did. Not in any ugly, pride bloated, nationalistic sense. And not just to give voice to the sheer irony of innocent people singing an anthem of freedom while in the process of being illegally detained. But in the”having a badge, waving a flag, or misinterpreting your astronomically fortunate luck at just happening to be born within the legal borders of The Most Chosen nation on the planet, as some sort of divine endowment or indicator of personal value, does not make you even a single drop more American than us” kind of way.
The crowd building outside of the police perimeter gave us a resounding ovation and we rode out like patriots; unapologetic, unbowed, and unbroken. Singing for strength, and taking heart in the sound of each others voices, like the kidnapped, shackled, and wrongfully imprisoned have always done since the beginning of time.
RNC Arrest Pt 2 (Ramsey County Jail)
Processing took a long, long time. They barked orders and made us stand with our noses to the wall as we waited. Wrist ties were cut and they proceeded to move us around from room to room for hours. Pockets of 20 or so people were stuffed into small, filthy holding cells with no bathrooms. While sitting around talking with folks, I discovered that most of the people taken from the park were being charged with Felony Riot. Utterly ridiculous. Many people were scared. Scared at the implications of what having a Felony on one’s record could mean and scared at being in the County Jail for an indefinite amount of time.
I reached out with my mind and tried to imagine how many people were currently locked up in this dark fortress. I saw it all stretch out before me like an unbeatable video game; so many different levels, boards, and stages. An ugly hive teeming with all manner of prowling bad guys, bosses, and under bosses. Maybe the County Sheriff was a fire breathing dragon somewhere high above at the last level. Maybe if you made it there you got a chance to explain your way out of everything and wound up eating an apology dinner with the Mayor of St. Paul. But the realness of what was happening was as stark as the gunmetal in the holster of every henchman stalking these gloomy halls. There were no cheat codes or passwords out of this dreadful place.
After being finger printed for the first time I was made to sign a property waiver, at which point I discovered there was no record of my wallet, ID, cell phone, or bank cards in my ‘property’ at all. The officers had been refusing to answer any questions since the park, but I refused to be easily brushed off on this one. “Officer, I’m here writing an article for a paper in a State over a thousand miles a way. If you lost my wallet, my ID, my phone, and all my money, then what am I supposed to do? I won’t even be allowed to buy an airline ticket, let alone get on a plane. I need to know where my stuff is.” The officer looked like he had a split second’s worth of remorse, but it disappeared just as fast as it came. He said there was no way to know where my stuff was or if they even had it. The best I could do was track down the Police Station of my arresting officer when I got out.
About 20 of us were now crammed into a small room with two large windows. Looking out we saw the cops bring in a huge, terrifying looking man; black boots, mean scowl. He had to be at least 250 pounds with tattoos and a shaved head. They put him in the room adjacent to ours. He immediately stuck his nose up to the glass pane of his door and began to stare directly at us. He started mouthing threats like “You’re dead meat” and “I’m going to kill you.” This frightened some of the people in our cell at first, but a closer inspection showed that the room holding the psycho was in fact not a holding cell at all. It was a questioning room with a desk and a cabinet. Shortly after, another cop brought in some papers and we saw that our psycho was actually an off duty cop brought in to scare us (many of whom had little or no previous jail experience.) Later the same guy was spotted laughing with the other on-duty officers behind one of the processing desks. And these are the people we are paying to “keep us safe.”
I was in the cell long enough to make friends with some of the other people who’d been on the bus with me from the park. We began singing and telling stories to pass the time and to keep our morale up. The eldest of our bunch, a photographer from an unnamed paper, sang a beautiful Irish labor song. I performed a poem of mine called ‘Dig’ with an intro from the anti-war traditional ‘Down By The Riverside.’ People applauded and stomped on the floor. Shortly after a cop came in and screamed at us for singing. He cursed at us and said that our “racket” was preventing them from doing their jobs, and if they couldn’t process us then we’d be stuck in this cell for a long time.” People were respectful to him, but he seemed shocked that nobody was scared or apologizing. He left in a huff and slammed the door behind him.
I honestly cannot say how many more rooms they moved us to after that. Maybe as many as 10 or 11. It’s a defense department tactic known as “Frequent Flyer.” The idea is that if prisoners are constantly moved around that it will lead to confusion and hopelessness. You move them from one place to another, allow them to think they’ve gotten to where they’re going for the night, get comfortable with the people they are currently being held with, and then just as they start to relax you move them again. It makes prisoners become disillusioned, dispirited, mentally exhausted, and easily pliable. We had been in custody for hours and whether the Ramsey County “frequent flyer” treatment was part of the plan or not, I noticed it take a toll on the people around me. After hours of this treatment, an angry officer with a clipboard stepped into our holding cell and began calling names. But we had questions…
“Officer, do you know what time it is? Do you know where we’re going?”
“I don’t care what time it is, and you’re not gonna like where you’re goin’.”
“Do you know when we can use the phone or what time court is tomorrow?”
“You ain’t going to see no judge tomorrow. You boys are gonna be in here for a long time…”
“Come on, man. Can’t you just tell us?” ”
“I can tell you that if you don’t shut your mouth I’ll do my best to make sure you wind up on the third floor with the rapists and murderers far away from all your little protest friends.”
I tried really hard not to show it but my stomach sank. I think everyone’s did. I didn’t really believe general population with
violent offenders would be part of the plan but I knew they could do anything they wanted with us. We were, after all, being charged with Felony-Riot. What got to me the most is the way he spoke so surely about us being in for “a long time.” How long would it be… two days? Till the end of the Convention? Longer? Would I make my scheduled performance in Syracuse on Sunday night? This began to concern me more than the RNC article I would now be unable to write.
When my name was called I was led down a hall lined with shower stalls that didn’t have any actual shower faucet heads. There were grimy yellow walls with a moldy, rancid meat smell that filled both nostrils and brought me near to gagging. An armed guard led me to one of the stalls and said, “Strip, then put your clothes in that crate.” Excuse me? “TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES AND PUT THEM IN THE CRATE.” Everything in me wanted to refuse. I was innocent. I hadn’t done anything and they had no right to keep me there. Blood rushed into my face as I looked the huge man up and down. I saw that he was tired and very irritated. Not abusive like the other officer, just worn out and at the end of his rope.
I was more angry than scared but I knew it would be dangerous to tap into that kind of venom. This is how the Law tricks innocent people into more trouble than they were swindled into in the first place. I switched my focus. “Remember everything and then write it all down,” I thought. “When you get out, win this case, prove your innocence, and then report on how justice was trampled here in St. Paul.” Trying to remain calm I took a deep breath and removed my clothes.
“Turn around, face the wall. Lift up the bottoms of your feet, one at a time. Good. Bend over and touch your toes, spread your ass cheeks; left, right. Good. Stand up, turn around. Lift up your sack, move it to the left, the right. Separate the shaft, from your sack; left, right. Good. Now wait here and don’t move.”
He shut the shower curtain and left with my clothes. Naked as a newborn, I waited amongst the meat smell until he returned with another crate. “Now put on the uniform and wait till I come back.” The uniform was a bright orange jumpsuit and it reminded me of images I’ve seen from Guantanamo. I thought of all the innocent people that have been held in that place for years without a lawyer, without rights, and I felt ashamed for what little I’ve done to get them out of the illegal shackles my tax dollars paid for. I also thought of all the innocent people in American jails that I’ve done so little for. Then I thought about the implications of putting that suit on myself. It seemed, to a certain degree, that the simple act of stepping into it was a giving over, a rendering, an acceptance of defeat, or an admission that a crime had been committed. I mean, how many hours walking around in G-Bay orange does it take before you you start thinking of yourself a criminal on one level or another?
It was late and I was incredibly tired. I had to remind myself that the Victory would be in making my way through this snake pit without them getting the best of me, following it up with a successful legal battle once I was released. My arms and legs (seemingly on their own orders) went slowly, methodically putting on the suit. Mismatched orange socks in scummy, thousand-time worn County flip flops click clacked along the dull floors as we were finally placed in cells where we could sleep. Two guys to a cell about the size of a walk-in closet. Stainless steel lidless toilet, two mattress-less bunks, and one sliver of a window made of frosted glass. I’m not sure why they have a tiny window that no one can see in or out of, but lets chalk it up to some kind of metaphor I haven’t deciphered yet.
Before shutting us in for the rest of the night, the guards informed us that we were on 23 hour lock down. This means that we’d only be allowed to come out of our cells and onto the main floor area for two 30-minute blocks per day until our release. We would have to remain in our cells for every second of the other 23 hours. In addition to that, nobody would be allowed to use the phone until “later.” I thought this was just another intimidation technique, like, they have to give us our phone call right? Once again I had terribly underestimated the Ramsey County Jail’s ability and willingness to do absolutely whatever it wanted to with its captives.
We were given a tooth brush, paste, soap and two paper-thin sheets for bedding. My roommate and I brushed our teeth and then collapsed into bed. We wouldn’t have been taken to an actual prison cell like this if we were seeing a judge in the morning and we both knew it. It felt like a semi-permanent placement but we were too tired to care. I opened my eyes in the morning not quite sure of where I was. A quick look around confirmed that yesterday had not been a dream. A maddening claustrophobia washed over me but spirits improved mid-morning when I was allowed to speak with an attorney.
The ACLU had taken all my info when I called them from the park and thanks to some small miracles they were able to locate me. The attorney explained details about my case and took down whatever family members’ phone numbers I could remember, as well as the email address of a good friend. I was nearly shaking with happiness just to be outside of the cell. I found myself trying to stretch out our meeting like a school kid trying to buy time in the Nurse’s office, knowing full well that the next class period was waiting as soon as the bell rang.
We were allowed to make phone calls at this point but only collect calls and even those seemed to hang up randomly. Sometimes it would hang up right in the middle of a call and then block you from calling the number you had just dialed saying “The person you just called has not yet set up a customer account with Ramsey County phone services. You must wait 30 minutes before calling again.” Being that we were only let out for 30 minutes at a time it was very difficult to contact people or get anything done.
The ACLU attorney gave me the phone number of a trustworthy Bail Bondsman’s office nearby. However, I couldn’t be bailed or bonded out because I hadn’t been arraigned yet. By law, Ramsey County could hold me for up to 48 hours without bringing me before a Judge. It was awful just knowing that they could hold me until Wednesday night without even getting bail set. Our session ended with the attorney giving me his card (the only non-County property I was allowed to keep with me.) He was very supportive and I felt a thousand times less alone knowing that he’d contact my family and start working everything out.
Later that day, during my final 30 minute break from the cell, the attorney phoned me and said he’d gotten in touch with my sister as well as Sean Daley. They were both working to find out everything they could and making plans to get me out ASAP. I spoke with them both for 45 seconds each before the phone cut out. My sister’s voice was the strongest thing I’d heard in years. It filled me with hope, like she was right there on the side of me. She explained to me that Sean had spoken with the lawyer first and then he called her explaining how everything would be worked out and that I would be fine. I thanked Sean for that before our connection was cut. I walked away feeling recharged.
The ball was rolling on the outside, but inside Ramsey Jail it was a decidedly mixed bag. Some folks were handling the situation really well and others were not. There was a guy who had the flu, which got worse over the course of the night. His cell was drafty and they wouldn’t give him more than the standard thread bare County sheets or medical attention. Another guy was in a cell all by himself and starting to get shaky about it. Under other circumstances it may have been better to have the space all to one’s self given the size of the rooms, but we were on 23 hour a day lock down and his cell assignment ended up resembling solitary confinement.
The correctional officers referred to our hall as “the pod,” and the 1st floor corner of our pod was one room stuffed with people. Apparently they had filled the other 20 or so rooms with two inmates each (except for the 1 guy in semi-solitary) and all the extra people had been put in that one corner cell. During one of the breaks I was able to peek into the room. It looked like a Yoga class in Hell. 16 or so beds stacked side by side. Had it been allowed, I would have swaped my room with one of those people to relieve them of their sardine-like quarters, but as it turned out I was destined for general population.
RNC Arrest Part 3
The hours passed slowly. Sometimes we called to each other from the cracks beneath our cell doors, checking to see what time it was or if anyone had heard any news. I had found a shitty Dean Koontz novel in a rack of old books they let us choose from. At a certain point in my life it would’ve been a real score, but now? Not so much. Cliche plot, simple characters, and a lot of rehashed pop culture concepts, but it was enough to take my mind off things.
During breaks from the book I thought about the Convention and how people out there were being treated. Today was Tuesday and my good friend B. Dolan was playing the big show on the Capitol lawn with Dead Prez and many other acts. Different stories were circulating amongst the arrestees, it was rumored that Rage Against the Machine might be playing a surprise set and also that many more people had been arrested over the course of the previous evening.
We tried to keep morale high and made sure everyone had spoken with a lawyer. From speaking with attorneys and family outside we learned that legally they were only supposed to be able to hold us for 48 hours without bringing us before a judge, but when did that 48 hours begin according to the Sheriff of Ramsey County? Had they found some loophole to keep us in for longer? Would I be out in time to cover the next day’s events or the final day of the Convention, Thursday?
We got an unexpected answer to how the show went later that day. The march that left the Capitol after the concert ended up passing by the Ramsey County Jail and cheering ferociously for the prisoners within. Sound bounced off the buildings on the street and the guards looked alert, as though maybe a siege of ghosts belonging to any innocent person who’d ever spent a night in that unforgiving place had suddenly risen and was now crashing down upon them. The people in our Pod cheered back, it felt like a rescue scene in a movie. But needless to say, this wasn’t Hollywood and no matter how much the people in that crowd wanted their friends, family, and any other innocent people freed immediately, no one would be let out today. Nevertheless, it felt good knowing that so many people understood that we had been taken and were making an effort to be supportive. Was B. out there cheering with them? I forgot the cage around me for a moment and smiled to myself, thinking of all the events he and I have covered together through the years and hoping that the storm troopers outside hadn’t got their grubby mitts on him.
Day faded into night. My roommate was a photographer and one of the most friendly people I’ve ever met. We talked for a long time about the election in November and the dangerous ways in which things were changing for America. It was quite obvious to both of us that authorities are using more and more Riot Police in more and more unnecessary situations all the time. That riot police seldom de-escalate any situation, but rather, are much more likely to create tension and often intentionally provoke a negative response from the crowd. All the gear, body armor, and high tech weapons? The rubber bullet guns, helmets, visors, knee pads, shin guards, utility belts, batons, mase hoses, bean bag guns, tasers, hydration back packs, radio equipment, riot vans, etc? All the over time pay? It must cost the taxpayers millions, and where does that money go? Well, the more situations that occur where authorities successfully demand that the use of riot cops is necessary, then the more laws will change in favor of mandating the use of paramilitary crowd control in nearly any situation they want. At which point, more and more riot gear and equipment will be needed. The more riot gear and equipment is “needed” then the more corporations that manufacture weapons them will produce them.
We all know that weapons companies have more lobbyists in Washington than any one us wants to believe. So now we’ve got lobbyists pushing for legislative changes that require the use of riot police in more and more situations, multiple different Defense Department programs needing to create problems in order to justify their bloated budgets, and an Administration bending all of its will toward convincing America that there are terrorists around every corner. Put it all together and it means there’s a strong chance we all be seeing many more lines of heavily armored officers on our streets for a long time to come.
They’re already using riot police at anti-war protests and immigrant’s rights rallies. Riot police called in to “keep Boston safe” during the American League Championship Series in 2004 killed an innocent 21 year old student at Emerson College named Victoria Snelgrove when she was shot in the face with a supposedly “non-lethal” projectile rifle. Should we expect lines of heavily armed riot police called in during peaceful Labor rallies or Marriage Right’s press events outside of the State House? Will we then see riot police at holiday parades and any public concerts? College sporting events and Little League games too? We are on a very slippery slope and it isn’t difficult to imagine how things could go from bad to worse in a relatively short time.
We eventually fell asleep but were woken up promptly at 3:30 a.m. which is when they serve breakfast in County Jail; all part of the program to keep prisoners disoriented, dispirited, and obedient. To the best of my knowledge, the logic is that if you wake people up to eat at 3:30am then they’ll do it quickly and go back to sleep. Then you wake up hungry and looking forward to lunch around 11, have dinner at 5, and are docile and ready for bed around 9 or 10. Eating breakfast 2 hours before dawn is early, even by a farmer’s standards, but there wasn’t any choice so we ate.
A guy who had been picked up by RNC security forces days before us had been moved unto our pod during the night. He was scared and told his story to anyone he could. We had spent two nights in jail already and everyone seemed alarmed at the prospect that we might actually be staying for many more. The new pod member said that he had been arrested on Saturday afternoon, which meant he had already been in custody for over 4 days. It was terrifying. The news spread from cell to cell like a dirty secret and before lunch all the arrestees on our pod agreed to collectively refuse food until we were allowed to see a judge or be let go. Lawyers and family members were alerted on phone breaks that we would be hunger striking. This was done in order to make our intentions clear and also to indicate that additional medical attention might be needed.
As morning crawled along and the afternoon light of late summer touched down on the outside pane of my glazed window I tried to put the prospect of skipping dinner out of mind. It was low quality lunchroom food (under cooked rice, white bread, canned apple sauce, and maybe a packet of high fructose peanut butter) but I had foolishly missed breakfast on the day of the arrest. That, matched with 2 days of these prison meals, had me feeling thin and weak. Suddenly there was a clamoring in the cells and my roomy and I flew to the door quickly pressing our noses against the small window. There were now guards walking in with paper work and voices coming from arrestees out of door slots. They seemed to be taking us out one cell at a time. Finally, almost exactly 48 hours after we’d been taken from the park, we would be brought before an actual judge.
We all cheered and the guards bellowed for us to shut up. But after 2 days on 23 hour-a-day cell lockdown the excitement was not containable. Visions of stretching my legs, breathing fresh air, getting a real meal, and holding Rheanna’s hand were all I could think of. Rheanna is one of the friends I was watching the concert with when we all got arrested and thought of her made me shudder. Since that point it had been 48 hours surrounded by men, being cramped in room after room overcrowded with men, being led down hallways in long lines of men, all guarded by men, and supervised by men. We were held in a cell the size of a walk in closet for 23 hours a day with a man and then, for 30-40 minutes a day, let out into a small rec room full of more men. Men brought us our food and men spoke to us through the intercom, and nobody had known when we were getting out at all! Our worst fears had me wondering if these conditions wouldn’t remain constant for a week or longer, and at the moment I felt as though I would’ve agreed to almost anything to feel a woman’s arms around me, to smell the skin on her neck, or even to just to hear a female voice.
Excitement was high at first, but it eventually leveled and crashed. We realized getting off the pod didn’t really mean much for the immediate present and that this process, too, would also take a long slow time to unfold. We were moved from room to room, again, and then finally wound up in a big holding cell next to meeting rooms where a bunch of ACLU affiliated attorneys and Public Defenders were waiting.
Slowly but surely they packed the holding cell with nearly 50 people and one by one we were allowed to speak with a lawyer. The attorney I’d been working with called me out and explained that this was basically just a bail hearing and it would be very fast. He said that my friends were waiting to bond me out but that I might not actually be released till later on that night. It all depended on how quickly they processed me and whether or not the cops had specific plans to stall our release. I was so ready to go home I could almost taste it. Three days of eating peanut butter and jelly on the lowest quality white bread known to man, suspect looking fruit, and that thick, dry rice… my mind went wild thinking of all the things I’d eat when I got out.
After I was done speaking with him they brought me back to the holding cell to wait again. Shortly after a guard led me toward the courtroom. He opened a door, push-steered me through it, and then very quickly closed it behind me. I soon realized that I was in a small prisoner’s alcove sectioned off by a high wooden wall and thick clear plastic above. The whole courtroom turned and stared at me in my orange Ramsey County prisoner’s jumpsuit. The prosecutor wanted bail set at $4,000. My lawyer got it down to $2,000, and the judge ordered me back to court on September 30th. The whole thing might’ve taken 90 seconds and I didn’t even get to speak. After all that time in the cell and all that emotion, I felt like I was owed some sort of expression, but it was just a bail hearing and they weren’t even accepting pleas. I felt disenfranchised, humiliated, and enraged all at the same time.
Back in the holding cell everyone was talking and sharing details, trying to figure out what was going on. A few local people had gotten really low bail, but most of ours had been set up around $2,000. There were a bunch of younger guys in there with us. One of them was really scared and on the verge of tears. He was white trashy like me, reminded me a lot of my neighborhood growing up, and it seemed he had misunderstood what the public defender had said to him. He was anxious and shivering, thinking that he wouldn’t make the money for bail and would have to stay in County Jail after all of us had already gotten out. Said that his parents didn’t have the money and none of his friends did either. He swore he hadn’t done anything illegal but started talking crazy about taking a guilty plea to anything they offered. My roomy and I sat him down and explained how the bonding process worked, and that it wouldn’t be hard for him to get someone to throw down 10% of the bail. He just had to keep his head and hold on for a little longer. We borrowed a pencil from a guard and wrote down the number for the bondsperson my lawyer had given me. The boy squared his shoulders and shook my hand. Much of the frantic look had left his face, but he still seemed so small. So crushable. I continued to worry and kept an eye on him for the rest of the time we were in the same cell.
Shortly after, they began moving us from room to room again. It was irritating but the idea that we were actually being processed out began to set in and my spirits rose. Also, for a short while, we were placed in a room across the hall from a bunch of the girls also taken at the park, and others from “the parking lot” (which we had found out was the location of another mass arbitrary RNC arrest site.) We could hear them singing and it felt good; good to know they were safe, good to know they were weathering this whole mess seemingly much better than we were, and good just to hear the sound of their voices. They peeked in the door windows and smiled at us. It was unquestionably the high point of the preceding 40 or 50 hours.
However, much to my shock and dismay, when I was finally called out of the cell I discovered that I wasn’t being released. Rather, I was brought back down the same dark hallway full of shower stalls without faucets from 2 nights before. Instead of giving me my clothes back, I was actually subjected to a second strip search only to then be brought back out to a different pod and placed in general population.
I could feel the heat rise into face. Standing completely naked, once again surrounded by that dirty meat smell, with my hands on the wall. Déjà vu. The internal struggle to rebel all over again. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I was made to turn around, bend over, and display my genitals from all angles before another huge guard and his gun… all over again.
RNC Arrest Part 4
Note: please check out the RNC 4 Blog for more info.
(End of Part Three: “I could feel the heat rise into my face. Standing completely naked, once again surrounded by that dirty meat smell, with my hands on the wall. Déjà vu. The internal struggle to rebel all over again. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I was made to turn around, bend over, and display my genitals from all angles before another huge guard and his gun… all over again.”)
Yesterday we’d heard rumors that one of the RNC arrestees held in another pod had been beaten severely by correctional officers in his cell. The story was confirmed by multiple sources I spoke with in the pre-arraignment holding room we’d just come from. Apparently the guards decided to retaliate against the arrestees (who were chanting for release) by making a violent example. Witnesses said they saw a group of several officers rush into his room and form a wall blocking any view from the door. At which point they heard sounds of a fierce beating and the arrestee (a younger boy, not much older than 18) was carried from his cell by the officers, bloody and swollen. None of the arrestees had seen or heard from him since.
If he caught a gang beating for simply chanting in his room, what would I get for refusing to put the jumpsuit on and standing there naked till I was given my rightful clothes and told when I’d be released?
All at once, I remembered the story of how my father had almost wound up a victim of police brutality back in Rhode Island years before.
He was leaving his local bar one night and saw one of the regulars across the street. The guy had way too much to drink and was singing and yell while walking back and forth along the side walk. It was late and, as Dad knew, only a matter of time before someone called the police, so he went over to try and convince the guy to head home.
A squad car pulled up while they were talking and immediately the officer made it clear that he intended to arrest the man. Dad tried to work it out: “C’mon man, he had too much to drink for sure, but he’s got work in the morning and he really can’t afford to miss, can you just let me take him home?”
“I’m taking this bum down to the station and if you don’t want to wind up going along with him you should go home, NOW.”
Not wanting to push the cop but still worried about the guy, Dad tried one more time: “Officer can I please just walk him back to the bar and we’ll call a cab?”
“I said… GO HOME.”
“This is a free country and we haven’t broken any laws, c’mon man…”
“That’s it, you’re under arrest too, Asshole.” The officer immediately called for back up and true to his word, arrested them both on the spot.
At the station they checked Dad in but didn’t take him to any standard holding cell. Instead he was brought to small room at the back of the police station garage. His arresting officer dropped him off with one guard and then came back with two completely different officers. All three of them wearing shiny black leather gloves.
He ordered my father to take his shirt off.
It was clear that the other two officers had been brought in to corroborate any details the first guy wanted them to and potentially take part in the beating if there turned out to be a struggle.
His arresting officer was breathing heavy and clenching gloved fists, eyeing Dad up and down, eager for some wrong word or sudden movement, but my father just stood there quietly. The cop began taunting him: “Not so fucking tough now are ya?” and “Oh, you don’t have too much to say all of a sudden?”
The officer then stepped forward like he was about to strike, but stopped. Dad still hadn’t moved, flinched, or even spoken. The cop stared on in frustration. Slowly, his face began to change and the mask of whatever raging enemy he’d painted my father into faded, as he now saw the reality of what was actually in front of him; a relatively small man in work boots with kind eyes, who tried to prevent an acquaintance from getting arrested but wound up half naked and about to be severely beaten by an angry cop nearly twice his size.
Abruptly, the officer turned on his heel and stomped out of the room. There was a muffled, inaudible exchange between the other two and they left as well. Dad put his shirt back on and waited in the dim room for a long time before anyone came back, like a peasant snatched up by soldiers or a forgotten dog locked in a shed.
A couple hours later he was charged with “Disorderly Conduct” and released but that’s not what I was thinking about now, as I stood there with my own naked back to the cold stone of Ramsey County, goose flesh down my arms and the damp draft running along my bare ass.
What I was focused on was Dad’s face. What his eyes must’ve looked like staring down his captor that night. Like, “This is it. This is what it comes down to.” After all these talking heads campaigning and thumping the podium about Justice and Democracy and the greatness of our country, after all their talk about the glorious Founding Fathers, it still comes down to the same thing; all the freedoms of the Constitution are yours to exercise as long as the way you use them remains convenient to those in power.
The moment it presents a problem, attempting to get a friend off the street (when what he clearly needs is his own bed and an alarm clock, not a jail cell and court costs) can get you a hair trigger’s pull away from the worst beating of your life, and walking through a park with friends on a summer afternoon could just as easily lead to multiple strip searches before an armed guard and 23 hour a day lock down.
Too often it takes first hand experience in order to arouse our individual empathy or attention. Seldom do we even think it can happen to us. It’s always “somebody else” getting chased down in the street on COPS. Somebody elses husband or mother being dragged off by ICE. Somebody elses uncle doing 3 years for one crack rock while college kids caught with 50 times the value in coke have their parents retain a lawyer and walk away with probation and community service; Somebody elses family wiped out by soldiers or cluster bombs in Burma or Darfur or Gaza, Aceh, Kabul, Somalia, or Fullujah.
Life is a movie and that’s what happens to supporting characters but not ME. I’m the star of this picture and bad things are bound to happen but the worst is supposed to be reserved for minor role players and cardboard cut-outs.
What we so easily look past is that although this movie has too many acts to even count, they are all shot on the same film and in the blink of a eye any goddamned one of us can become the “stand in” permanently written off in an opening scene car crash or the random soldier exploding on the periphery in any give battle scene; the heart attack, train wreck, or innocent protagonist hauled off screen for a crime they didn’t do.
Dickens and Steinbeck and Upton Sinclair, Hemingway, it’s what they’ve all been saying right along. It’s all one story, one movie, and innocent people get fucked all the time. There are thousands, millions of them sitting in jails around the world as we speak.
This was my mind, heating and expanded to Red Giant phase then pulling back before super nova.
I thought of all those who had it indescribably worse than me, Fred Hampton, Leonard Peltier, Amadou Diallo, Troy Davis, countless others, their respective families, and all the innumerable atrocities committed to the American civil rights and labor organizers who paid in blood for the rights and freedoms I now enjoy and also seek to protect.
My movie is only a short stint in orange, physically unharmed, sustainably fed and with various avenues for the redress of grievances upon release. Someone elses movie is death row, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib.
I stopped believing in God somewhere between learning about factory farms and reading the case files of the youth sex crime survivors I worked with during my first full year in social services. That doesn’t stop me from praying.
For honest prayer, you really gotta dive in headlong regardless of who or what you’re calling out to. You’ve got to sort of sit down inside yourself and cry out to the infinite, to all the unnamed forces pulling and thrashing around out there in all that incalculable black, recycling and reforming past every check point you ever thought was the Road’s End, till you got close enough to see it was just another toll booth (with an impossible engine of new highways winding, generating, converting, and alternating back in an endless coil of gear-like spirals right behind.)
You gotta hurl, face first with the same heat and hope you always did. Call It out its name and be open to whatever answers back. Stone drop down to the quiet mud at pond’s bottom and feel the wind rushing its fingers along the surface above like it was the flush of your own cheek. Clench the leaves around you - pretty - in dark fists and know that the trees from which they came still stand.
If Coincidence is smiling down, a reflection of your conscience from the other side of the curtain, and the collective heartwood of every good thing you’ve ever known (Mom, Dad, Douglas State Forest, Sister, beaches under shining pallets of warm summer evening, Alan, Francis, dinner at Memere’s table, the promise of a best friend kept in the strength of his daughter’s smile, the girl with brown hair at the window rushing to throw both arms around your neck, and your own open mouth howling at an ivory sliver of the moon from pole position in a downhill bike phalanx with the ones you love whirling right behind like a pack of gypsy dogs across a meadow) will press Its mouth to the glass of that great divide and water your blood back to bloom.
It will speak your name like an anchor and build fire in your bones. “Come forward!” It will say. “There is time yet for you to run hot and set the pistons in your gut against all the cannons you can count, against the cold, against all the shame and the sacrilege but for now, and always, these faces and these songs are yours to keep.”
And it will be as real as any incense ever waved or gospel ever sung, worth more than the contents of any coffer ever flooded.
There is no authority over how one speaks to the Universe, or how It speaks to the universe in you; Prayer is older than speech. Prayer is for the merciful, for the inspired and the imprisoned.
Prayer is for the strength of doves.
Dad believes in America, always has; American flag on the dash of every beat up work truck he’s ever owned. Through the brothers and cousins and buddies lost in Vietnam, through slow work and recessions, through divorce and hard times, through picnics, parades, and Christmas parties. Made me memorize my governor’s and president’s names at age 5, told me I could do or be anything I chose in life; made sure that I grew up believing America was a sacred place in the history of everything.
I believe too.
Different than him,
but
I
still
B-E-L-I-E-V-E.
I put the orange jumpsuit back on and said nothing.
My socks and the few items of familiarity I’d acquired in this place were back at the room I’d stayed in for the last two nights, but now I was taken to a pod with almost no one from the RNC.
The guards ordered us to stand by a wall just inside the main door and left us there for a long time. There was a TV mounted in the center of the space, bright and flashing with commercials. The volume was all the way down and it was strange how suddenly obscene those advertisements seemed to me; so cheap and offensive. Even here, as prisoners, we are still consumers and potential buyers, bombarded with the solicitation of products we don’t actually need and can’t really afford.
Prisoners peaking at the TV through tiny glass windows in their cell doors saw us and began to call down.
“Hey Hey! What time is it? Do you know what time it is…?”
“WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU!”
“HEY, Get me one of them books off the rack!”
But the most common was clearly:
“Protestor? Are you protestors?”
Already it felt much different. The other pod was full of people snatched off the street during the RNC and we were all together. The cops were vicious and despised us openly but one got the sense that we (the RNC arrestees) were being kept separate. Now I wondered how long I’d be in this general population wing and who I’d end up rooming with.
Would other inmates try and fuck with me when we were let out of our cells? Where were the other RNC arrestees and why was I taken here if they had already been released? WAS I GOING TO BE HERE FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK? LONGER?!
Finally the door opened and a new guard came up to us:
“Alright guys, I’m gonna go over a few things with you, so listen up…”
He had a huge belly that hung out over his belt and a round face with tired beady eyes, receding hairline, and a bored, irritated sort of posture that suggested he’d been through this routine a million times.
“So, this is My pod and I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell ya but this floor ain’t full of all your little protest buddies. Some of them have gotten out, some of them have been taken to other parts of the facility, but they’re not my responsibility and I don’t really care where they are. Frankly, I’ve heard some of you been acting like a bunch of animals in here and I wanta letchoo know that shit ain’t gonna fly on my floor.
You wanna act like a bunch of dickheads, fine, but you pull that shit with me and I’ll make this the worst part of your stay here at Ramsey. Believe it.
Hopefully it won’t be like that. Now listen, the facility is on 23 hour a day lock down. We’re not at full capacity yet, there’s still plenty of room but we have received a large number of prisoners in a short amount of time and there’s some shuffling going on.
Until everything gets worked out Lock Down will remain in effect. That means that you will stay in your cells for 23 hours a day with the exception of two 30 minute breaks. I know that sucks, but I don’t make the rules.
Remember what I said fellas, don’t act like an asshole to me or my guards, and I won’t act like an asshole to you. Now we’re gonna do our best to try and get some of you to a phone before bed but we got alot of shit to do and I can’t promise anything. So don’t be pushing the call button bugging me about phone calls or anything else. Alright. We’ve got your room assignments here so let’s go, single file…”
All I had been thinking about was calling Sean and my attorney to find out what the hell was going on, hearing that I might not even have access to a phone till the next day was absolutely crushing.
As they walked us up to our rooms the inmates we passed tapped on their windows and called to us:
“Hey hey, are you protestors? You protestors??”
Some scowled or stared dead-pan.
I faced forward trying to look tough but the whole thing was so ridiculous, all that came out was the semi-crazed game show host grin that seems glued to face whenever the shit is about to hit the fan (which, in the long run, may have been more effective than looking tough anyway.)
The door buzzed and I was let inside only to find that after any worrying I’d done about the possible draws for a new room mate, my guy ended up being one of the RNC arrestees anyway. He’d been in Ramsey since Sunday when the cops pulled his friend’s car over and grabbed everyone inside. He looked tired as hell but seemed to be in good spirits
We talked for a while and I gave him one of the two books I had stuffed in my bedroll while waiting for the guards downstairs. Time passed and no one came to let us use the phone. My room mate was sure his bond had been posted, but suspected that the Sheriff’s office was simply holding people as long as they could to keep dissenters off the street.
He kept telling me to use the call button and ask for the phone. The last thing I wanted to do was piss off our new floor boss and have him revoke my phone call just for asking before it was my turn or whatever. I waited patiently while looking out the small window in our door. Other people were definitely being allowed to use the phone.
Over an hour and a half went by and it was getting late. I knew that no one was allowed to use the phone after a certain point and that if I was going to make my move it would have to be soon. My room mate kept telling me how easily the staff forgot about or just plain neglected to give phone calls or other rights in here. He said, “if there’s anyway for you to get out tonight, you should do it, it’s worth pissing off a guard if your bond has already been posted. Don’t wait for them, use the call button…”
He was right. I walked over to the panel by the door and hit the button. I waited for awhile and just when I thought they weren’t even going to answer, I heard a very irritated sounding guard over the wire: “Yeah?”
“I know they said not to ask man, but I’ve been in here since Monday and I haven’t gotten to use the phone at all today. My bond was supposed to have been posted and I really need to find out what’s going on.”
“You haven’t used the phone at all today?”
“No man.”
“Christ. Alright. I’ll buzz you down in a little bit. You got 10 minutes so be quick.”
It felt like I won the lottery. My room mate smiled down from the top bunk and gave an excited thumbs up. A short time later the door buzzed and I rushed down to the wall of phones. Sean’s voice came loud and strong over the receiver, and he broke it all down:
“I paid man, it went through. You posted bond at like 2 or 3pm this afternoon. I drove over right away, I’ve been waiting out here in the parking lot ever since…”
“What!?”
“Yeah man, I knew it would be a couple hours or some shit, but I didn’t think it’d be like this…”
“Sean, you don’t gotta do this, you’ve already done enough. I’ll work it out and call you when I get out.”
He was like: “Nah man, I went to get some food and I’m good. I’m not gonna wait out here all night but I’m definitely down to stick it out till late, and even if I have to go I’ll come back and scoop you as soon as they let you out the door.”
I started to ask if he’d have my sister call my Mom and say that everything was all good, but the phone went dead.
The electronic voice came over the receiver: “All outside callers must set up an account with Ramsey County phone services. The person you were calling has not yet set up an account…”
I ran back up to my cell excited, anxious, and disappointed all at the same time. It felt great knowing that my bond was posted, but once again I was in limbo; If the payment already went through, why hadn’t I been released?
My room mate and I started talking about what we were going to do when we got out, what the first thing we were going to eat was (same as the night before - I imagine talk of “what I’m gonna eat when I get out” is a universal conversation held by prisoners all over the world), and beginning to think about sleep. Suddenly, the call intercom crackled and the guard in the office came over the speaker telling my roomy to get his stuff and come down when the door buzzed.
He flew off the top bunk like a volunteer fire fighter on amphetamines. Quickly pulling on his socks and grabbing some papers he had on the table. He wished me luck with my case and thanked me for the book. We shook hands and reminded one another how important it was to refuse any plea deals and maintain our innocence in court. “You’re bond is posted man, you’ll be outta here in no time I’m sure,” he said. A short time later the electronic door locks snapped open and he was gone. It was the first time in all of my stay at Ramsey that I was alone. It felt weirder than ever. I did a hundred push-ups in sets of 25 and then tried to read one of the books.
I was steeling myself for another day or two, trying to prepare for it mentally but less than an hour later, the buzzer rang again: “Jared, you’re out of here. Get your stuff and be ready to move in 5.” Victory on top of battle ships! I put my bare feet into those ancient county flip flops and gathered the sheets my lawyer had given me with Sean’s number and the bondsman’s info. They’d become a sort of Talisman to me in here. Just looking down at them over the hours and seeing my attorney’s handwriting on the pages had given me strength. I clutched the folded papers tightly and waited by the door.
It buzzed loudly and I was out, heading passed the other cells along the second floor walkway, down the steps, and over to the main door. I was trying not to smile; trying not to rub it in for those who were still stuck there and also not to tempt fate by giving the guards any additional reason to take me down a notch.
The main door opened almost right away and I thanked the officer behind the glass for letting me use the phone. For anyone in my situation expecting to get through the release process quickly, the next 3 hours would have been excruciating, but I knew better by this point. I WAS being released and that was the thing to focus on.
I was taken to a room with about 5 other RNC arrestees. We hugged, celebrated, and began comparing notes. Asking about how different folks were and if everyone was alright. No one had heard anymore about the boy who’d been beaten in his cell, but so far it sounded like there had been no other incidents where that level of brutality was employed.
We were moved from room to room again, and also taken for another set of fingerprints and more photos. At one point I was in a room right across from some of the RNC women going through the release process as well. Once again they seemed to be in generally much higher spirits than we were, somehow more vital. We could hear them singing through the door, sounding like church or summer camp, and it made us all smile.
After being shuffled to at least four more rooms with four different sets of arrestees I was finally on the home stretch. The guards kept coming in and calling different people’s names, sometimes they’d be there, sometimes they wouldn’t. The officers looked worn and aggravated.
It was a really tricky situation because some of the guards expected you to act like you could get tazed at any moment for stepping out of line and others were significantly more lax. I had gotten in the habit of literally doing exactly what I was told in terms of transportation commands. For instance, when called out of a room and told to face the wall, after they’d pat me down, I’d never turn around until they said, “turn around.” Honestly not knowing if we were supposed to stay the way we were facing till told differently (which happened a fair amount of the time) or not. Sometimes they’d get done frisking you and you’d just turn around on impulse and they’d be like, “DID I SAY TURN AROUND? Face the wall and don’t move…”
Then the next officer to pat you down would get all frustrated if you didn’t turn around right away: “what are you some kind of asshole? TURN AROUND,” he’d bark, then grab you by the shoulder forcing you forward. I once replied, “It seems safer to do exactly what I’m told officer, I was waiting for your instructions” “Yeah, I get it, fucking wise guy.”
Or when taking you to fill out forms or have a photo done, they’d say: stand here, move there, sign here, follow me, etc. But after saying follow me at three different stops in a row, if the officer suddenly moved on to another desk without saying to follow, I’d stay put, figuring that if I were going with him he would’ve said so. Then he’d turn around half way across the room and look back, like “Let’s Go!” or “What are you doing back there?”
They did their best to make you feel stupid at all times. It was like playing Simon Says in a nightmare.
And now in this final stage things were drastically more intense. It was Wednesday and they’d made nearly 700 RNC related arrests in a little over 4 days. Some officers had worked multiple double shifts and there had been mistakes and clashes of authority all over the place. Certain officers were visibly irritated angry with others: “All this paperwork was supposed to be done before they even came down. I don’t about you but i’d like to get the FUCK out of here at some point and all this bullshit needs to be sorted out before that happens. I don’t know what to tell you. If you don’t wanna be here, then me know now and I’ll get somebody else…”
Tensions were high. Finally, I was moved to a room where arrestees were getting their clothes back, stuffed in dirty milk crates. There were about 15 of us in a space the size of a small bedroom and no place to change, but at that point nobody cared. We’d been shitting on lidless, stainless steel toilets right out in the open or in tiny cells just a few feet away from each other for days now. Orange jumpsuits were flying off left and right as arrestees dove happily back into their own clothes. It felt sort of like gym class. When mine came, I stripped down right where I stood and got back in my cut down Dickies, sneaks, and tee-shirt.
The order in which arrestees were being released had nothing to do with who got into the final processing room first, and it was fucked up because I got my clothes back faster than a whole bunch of guys who’d been in there before me. I started yelling around to everyone, “Good luck fellas. Don’t sweat it, this is the last part. Real Food and a real bed tonight!! Then it’s on to court. You didn’t do anything wrong and I want to make it clear, I’m not taking a plea NO MATTER WHAT. What they did was illegal and we all gotta fight it.”
I had been very vocal over the past few days and it was good to see that my words carried weight with the guys in the room (most of whom I’d already met at various points of our processing at Ramsey.) The guard came back for me and a few others. I hugged a friend I had made along the way named Andrew and wished him luck.
We were brought out to the line where they were taking more pictures. There was an FBI agent with a high tech looking camera and a big gun in his holster, chewing gum and looking annoyed. He was taking photos of everyone’s profile, but mostly he was getting shots of people’s tattoos, piercing holes, scars, and birthmarks.
One arrestee was absolutely LIVID. “What? I’ve already had my photo taken like 10 times and I’m not doing it again. Is this even legal? I don’t have to show you my tattoos, if you wanted them, you should got them BEFORE.”
I admired his brass, and agreed with him whole heartedly, but it was pretty obvious what the alternative was.
One of the officers in charge came flying over, more stupefied then angry and said, “Do you even see how many people are in this fucking line? Are you kidding me right now? You got two choices, either take the photos or go back to your cell. Nobody’s got time for this.”
I saw the kid weighing it all out in his mind. There were less than 15 or 20 people in front of us and the next door led out of this desert, into the Promised Land of the exit lobby beyond, sure as day follows night. We could almost taste the air out there. He relented and began showing the ink on his back and forearms.
Next was getting our “property” bags back. Which we quickly found out meant “belts, pocket trash, and any coins we had on us at the time of our arrest.” Our wallets, ID’s, cell phones, and cash were all gone. It was shocking. By this point it was nearly 3am and here we were about to be released onto the street like beggars, with no way to contact our families or whoever we were staying with and no money for cabs, bus fare, hotels, or flights (and no ID to secure a room or travel arrangements anyway.)
The first thing that crossed my mind was that it was only Thursday morning and the whole last day of the Convention was yet to happen, not to mention any day after festivities; it occurred to me that the cops outside would almost definitely still be combing the streets and “making arrests.” People in our exact predicament would be sitting ducks. Maybe releasing us only to be scooped right back up was part of the plan?
At that point, I had no idea where Ramsey County Jail even was in regards to downtown St. Paul or where I was when I’d been taken. I had to find Sean as quickly as I could and get the fuck out of here or I might wind up right back in custody. It was an extremely vulnerable feeling, which I’m sure, was the point.
Trying to inquire as to where our actual property had been taken was as unsuccessful now as it was on the way in. The officer in charge snapped that Ramsey County is where we had been taken but not who had arrested us, and that we would all have to call the St. Paul Police department when we got out. He would give no other information.
We were handed some paper work and taken to the outside lobby. A group of 10 of us had to sign a release form at the window. A bunch of officers were talking casually behind the glass, one or two of them glanced at as us perfunctorily and seemed to sigh as though we were interrupting something. I waited at the window after the person in front of me had gone and wasn’t acknowledged till this one officer had finished a story he was telling. After a burst of collective laughter the officer closest to the ledge scowled at me in a semi irritated, semi disgusted fashion and called, “Next.”
The rising excitement at being released took a decidedly more anxious turn as we were then confronted by our escort. The officer assigned to walk us to the gate was absolutely the most high strung and screamy cop we’d had to deal with so far (the very last boss at the then end of the last level of this whole stupid real life video game.) He was a huge man in his late 30’s, but it looked like he could still play inside line-backer at any Division I school in the country. His massive head and square jaw swiveled sharply from side to side as he yelled. We could see the veins bulging in his neck and it looked like he could hulk out of his shirt at any moment.
In perfect drill sergeant staccato he fired: “Listen Up! You are almost out, but you are not OUT - YET. I repeat, YOU ARE NOT OUT YET. Minnesota law states that you are still an inmate at Ramsey County until you are completely off our campus. You are still on campus now and you will remain on campus until we pass down through the gates and onto the street. THINK VERY CAREFULLY ABOUT HOW YOU HANDLE YOURSELF AS WE APPROACH THE STREET. THERE’S A BUNCH OF PEOPLE OUT THERE YELLING AND CAUSING TROUBLE. THIS MAY PROMPT YOU TO START YELLING BACK, JUMPING UP AND DOWN, SCREAMING, HANGING ON THE FENCE OR ANY OF THIS OTHER HAPPY HORSE SHIT. While you are on our campus this type of behavior is unacceptable. We’ve got plenty of room and if you pull any of that shit with me you’re going right back inside, do you understand me gentlemen?”
I had no idea how this guy’s gears got wound so tight or what the rest of his day, week, year, (life?) had looked like, but I had no intention of doing anything to set him off.
The “trouble makers” he was talking about turned out to be the RNC arrestee Jail Support crew (volunteers with cell phones, first aid, water, food, and a network of places we could stay if unable to contact friends/family!) We couldn’t see them yet but their cheers were loud and it felt good to hear them sounding so strong.
“Alright gentlemen, let’s move out. SINGLE FILE, SLOWLY. DO NOT TOUCH THE FENCE AND REMEMBER WHAT I SAID, YOU ARE STILL AN IN-MATE AS LONG AS YOU ARE ON THIS CAMPUS. DO WHAT EVER YOU WANT WHEN YOU GET OUT BUT KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT AND BEHAVE UNTIL WE PASS THROUGH THAT GATE.”
The exit path was a winding tunnel completely surrounded in metal fencing and barbed wire. It was dark and after 3 days in a vacuum of hope or light the air was indescribably beautiful, even through chain-link. We rounded a corner and could now actually see all the people out there to support us! They cheered wildly when they realized another group of arrestees were headed for the gate. It took everything I had not to howl back and rattle the cage, but somehow I kept it down.
One more section of path left to go and the android-like drill sergeant was right behind us, walking sharply with fists clenched to his sides, waiting for even the slightest infraction. My stomach began to flutter. 15 steps left.
10 steps…
5…
He opened the gate and we passed through as quickly and orderly as possible. Camera bulbs flashed and over a hundred people out for Jail Support burst into applause, running toward us at once. We rushed to meet them and laughter filled the air. It was so goddamned cinematic.
I hugged the first person I saw and we spun around and around. Perfect strangers were embracing and high fiving all over the place. The guy released directly behind me in line was immediately wrapped up by his lady and got the biggest, wettest kiss I’ve ever seen in public, another one got tackled by two friends and they were all rolling on the ground laughing
Kids were pounding on water jug drums and jumping all over the place. Somebody gave me a bottle of water and some vegan granola. “Are you good man?! Congratulations, you made it! Do you need anything?”
“A phone… I need to use somebody’s phone…”
“Sure thing man, right here…”
I grabbed the phone, unfolded my talisman sheet of numbers and called Sean, fingers frantically working over the keys.
“Jared?”
“I’m out homie, I’m OOUTTTTTT!!”
“HA HA HA, I figured man… you alright?”
“Yes man, YES! Did you already leave-it’s OK if you left there’s tons of people out here I’m sure I can work something out…”
“Na man, I’m right here…”
“What? Where?!”
“I’m in the parking lot half a block down from where that big crowd of people is…”
“Holy Shit! I’ll be right there.”
The Jail Support sidewalk looked like a refugee camp. There were people huddled together sharing blankets, people on the ground passing thermoses of coffee, traveling kids in traveling clothes, and all manner of supporters from the various different anti-war communities. The authorities had been on a rampage arresting people since Saturday and there was no rhyme or reason to the way they were releasing us, so folks basically had to keep their cell phones on (ready to answer numbers they didn’t recognize and collect calls) and camp out side Ramsey County in order to be sure they’d be there whenever their boyfriends, girlfriends, brothers, sisters, friends, parents and colleagues were free.
Many of those present were there during the mass arrests and had seen just how brutal and uncompromising the police had been. They weren’t there for anyone in particular, they just felt like it was their duty, their part, to be there cheering and showing support for all the arrestees as they were released.
I began asking around for Zach and Rheanna, no one had heard of or from them. I saw several people I’d made friends with inside and we embraced. Suddenly, somebody was pushing through the crowd and calling my name. It was my old friend Ryan! Ryan was an organizer I’d met in 2004 while covering the “DNC To RNC March” (a 200+ mile march against war from Boston all the way to New York City) for the program I was running at WRIU Student News. We were together last week at the 2008 DNC in Denver when the Iraqi Veterans Against the War marched to the gates of the Convention and stood down 800 riot cops, refusing to yield till a member of Obama’s staff agreed to meet with them.
That same energy was with us now. This was where the story was, this was the moment to cover, right here at Jail Support. I felt like if I could just get a couple cups of coffee and some food, then I could go all night, singing and screaming my lungs out, conducting curbside interviews, and making valuable notes to finish the story I was sent out here to cover in the first place.
But looking around, I noticed that there were cops everywhere; cops across the street, cops inside the gates, cops down the block behind us, even cops behind the low row of bushes in the parking lot next door. They weren’t saying anything, but they were definitely watching us.
Apparently, they had been not only monitoring but aggressively interfering with Jail Support all day. Jail Support had been right there to thwart the tactic of releasing people with out cell phones, ID’s, or cash since the blanket arrests began on Sunday. This form of “causing trouble” had pissed off some of the cops so much that in response (or maybe as planned all along) they began driving released arrestees to far off parts of St. Paul, outside city limits in some cases, and kicking arrestees out into the night, whether the knew where they were or not.
I would later find out that Rheanna and four other young women had been driven to one of the sketchiest streets in town riddled with dive bars, porn stores, and pawn shops then dropped off without even enough money to use a pay phone.
At least now, here with the current Jail Support crowd there were a few volunteer “legal observers” from the Coldsnap Legal Collective and a volunteer lawyer present, but that didn’t make me feel much safer.
I had nothing. No license, no cash, no phone, and even then, all my contact numbers with my phone. I didn’t have any of my Minneapolis friend’s numbers memorized, not even Rheanna’s, and even if I did - her phone was in lock up as well.
These cops could crash in and start detaining people whenever they wanted, for whatever reason they decided. If I was taken again, the charges would be more severe this and both cases would be harder to beat in court (not to mention the fact that I’d definitely miss the last day of reporting for the Convention.) It just wasn’t a strategic place for me to be, and so, though it burned the loyal indy journalist and Movement conscience inside of me, I made the decision to go.
It’s just so hard to leave the Moment.
I said my goodbyes and headed off to the parking lot. Sean jumped out and gave me a big hug. He was absolutely larger than life and it gave me a tremendous amount of strength just seeing him. My hands were shaking and the words were coming out all clumsy.
We climbed into his car and just like that we were making our escape away from the parking lot, the cops, and the crowd speeding through the Minnesota night. Sean got on the phone to Pizza Luce and ordered me spaghetti with vegan meatballs and vegan cheese, garlic bread, and a side of veggie chicken nuggets with a root beer to wash it all down. My mouth watered just hearing him place the order.
The food was glorious and hot, easily among the best meals I’ve ever tasted. I dug in with both hands, pouring on the salt and savoring each bite as we began the search for Rheanna’s apartment (I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Sean Daley for Mayor of Minneapolis!)
I’d only gotten to town the day before the Convention, I didn’t even have the name of the street she lived on, just the neighborhood. It was dark and not too much looked familiar, but thankfully the building was surprisingly easy to find. Sean offered to drive me to the city the next day to try and get my property back, then walked me to the front door. I went through the darkness of the hallway, up the stairs, knocked gently, and then opened the door to the apartment like a dream.
Everything was so quiet. I followed the dim light into the living room and there she was, legs folded on the couch, lost in a book. Her eyes opened wide like window shades on a sunny morning and in a flash she was in my arms. It was the first time I really allowed myself to believe that the danger had passed. We pressed tightly together, twirling around in the center of the room and didn’t let go till morning.
RNS 2008 Arrest Pt 5. - The Final Post
The day after I got out of Ramsey County was spent trying to locate my property. Both Rheanna and my cell phones were in lock up, and there was no land line at the place we were staying; no cell, no Internet, no way to locate our belongings without actually heading back down to Ramsey County Jail in person. Neither of us was up for that; it just didn’t feel safe. Fortunately, a family member of Rheanna’s allowed us to use the business line at her office to make calls. Trying to get a straight answer out of the St. Paul Police Department, Ramsey County Jail, or the St. Paul Courthouse proved to be beyond frustrating. One place would tell us to call the other, and we would - only to end up on hold for 20-30 minutes or longer, at which point someone else would come on the line and explain that they couldn’t help us, suggesting we call the place we’d just spoken with previously. Over the course of 10-15 calls, it became clear that information was intentionally being withheld.
There was a large antiwar march scheduled later in the afternoon (the final day of the RNC), and I wanted badly to cover it for the story but having no identification and being fresh off arrest left me feeling gun-shy. We knew that RNC security forces would be making mass arrests again and that anyone on the street could be taken into custody at any time, for any reason. Unsure of our next move, we headed to Hard Times Cafe, a worker-owned, vegan restaurant with fair trade coffee. Being open 24 hours a day with free wireless Internet and a sympathetic staff had made Hard Times the unplanned emergency relief center for scores of RNC arrestees and their loved ones. To understand it completely, you have to imagine that with the homes of multiple Twin Cities peace organizers raided, half of the local anti-war community in custody themselves, and 300-400 arrestees from all over the country released onto the street like refugees with no phone, no wallets (money, credit/debit cards) or ID’s, people were scrambling to secure even the most basic of necessities. Many had no way to get in touch with one another or locate the people they had traveled to St. Paul with. People needed a place to meet, and Hard Times was it. Upon arrival, we saw folks we’d gone through the 4-day trauma of Ramsey County with - folks we thought we might never see again. Those who still had their phones passed them around for others to use; and everyone shared laptops, sending emails and texts, making calls, locating lost friends, and making travel arrangements out of town.
It was here that we heard more about Amy Goodman and the Democracy Now! producers (www.DemocracyNow.org) fighting their charges and that Ramsey County authorities were actually going forward with charges against a group of community organizers for “conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism” under the Minnesota-PATRIOT Act. From a computer screen, we watched footage of Democracy Now! producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar being brutally knocked over and dragged across the concrete, screaming in fear and pain. Dozens of journalists had been arrested, staffers from NPR, I-Witness Video, the Associated Press, and Fox News among others. All evidence led to what was clearly a specific targeting of journalists by authorities. People huddled around our booth as we watched and heard firsthand accounts of marchers, journalists, and pedestrians describe the various “non-lethal” military weaponry that had been deployed by riot police. Such “non-lethal” weapons included: “triple chaser grenades” - a canister that splits into three separate tear gas releasing units after fired; “impact rounds” - “non-lethal” metal bullets fired from “riot guns;” stun grenades or “flash-bang grenades” - explosives emitting high volume blasts and semi-blinding flashes; and enhanced mace-dispersal weapons.
There had been beatings, unlawful detentions and searches, undercover surveillance/provocation, and a vast array of human rights violations, including the severe beating of a 19 year-old Twin Cities resident named Elliot Hughes. According to his testimony, Elliot had been knocked unconscious when Ramsey Country Corrections officers rushed into his cell and struck him in the face. His head was then smashed on the floor, resulting in a concussion and bleeding. He was dragged to a separate holding room where several officers tied a hood and gag over his head then brutalized him for over an hour and a half. Multiple officers held him down while others applied pressure-point pain techniques on his jawbone below the ear and bent his ankles back. The boy vomited inside the gag-hood, but officers refused to remove it. After they were done, he was taken to the hospital (still wearing the hood) but was left in a locked room and did not receive medical attention for several hours. His testimony was one of several. After watching and talking amongst ourselves, the arrestees at Hard Times seemed more committed than ever to fighting the charges against us.
That night, we headed into downtown Minneapolis, but not for the protest. We decided it would be a worthwhile (and much safer) use of time to support the Ralph Nader/Matt Gonzalez “Open the Debates” rally instead. I felt like a coward for not continuing my coverage but didn’t have the resources to handle another arrest, let alone trumped up charges for getting booked twice in one week. Our drive to the event led us past entire city blocks covered in militarized divisions of riot police and the menacing drone of chopper blades was ever-present as police helicopters trolled above. The Minnesota night pulsed with a deep sense of foreboding but the atmosphere inside the Nader/Gonzalez event was full of warm light and good music. All the speakers on stage were quality, but Nader and Gonzalez were especially empowering. They each gave a thorough breakdown of the millions of tax dollars allocated to pay for both the Democratic and Republican conventions, including $50 million each for security alone. The Republicans actually paid the premium on an additional $10 million insurance policy specifically for police liabilities, which had almost certainly emboldened the widespread use of unconstitutional tactics and excessive force witnessed all week. After the speakers finished, organizers from many different communities stayed to talk and share ideas, and morale was vastly improved by the time we left. We went back to Hard Times, anxious to gather news on the protest we had missed.
How disorienting and Orwellian that the city looked like an armed police state, and yet there was almost no coverage of the protest on any of the local or major networks. Watching them, you’d never know that there were thousands of people speaking out against the war, mass arrests, and conflicts happening throughout St. Paul - like it wasn’t even happening. The independent blogs and news coverage wouldn’t be out till the next day, so the only place to get info (outside the basic details at www.imc.org or the actual line of fire) was a vegetarian restaurant at midnight. Perfect. We learned that another 350+ people had been arrested, and that the use of tear gas, flash-bang stun grenades, mace, and beatings had continued; and again, journalists were specifically targeted.
The next morning, we spent several more hours on the phone trying to locate our property. We were finally told by someone in the Property Room that they had our names on file but were not authorized to address whether they had our belongings. Further, if they did have them, the earliest they could be available would be the following Monday. I was booked to perform at Veg Fest 2009 in Syracuse on Sunday and there was no way I could wait without breaking the conditions of my contract with the festival, so I packed my things and caught a Megabus out of town with no ID, no phone, and very little money.
The next couple weeks were a blur - researching what had taken place at the RNC, learning about my case, and looking for a lawyer. I spent hours on the phone talking to different attorneys, the Coldsnap Legal Collective, and other arrestees. Strange Famous Records supported me the whole way, and eventually we decided to retain the ACLU-affiliated lawyer who had come to my aid at Ramsey County. At the end of September, I flew back out to St. Paul for my first court date.
The St. Paul Courthouse was almost obscenely lavish. Nearly the entire interior is crafted of black marble, with mirrors and intricate brass or copper trim throughout. It looked more like a luxury hotel than a Courthouse. I was stunned to find that the officers inside mostly nodded and smiled at me - it took a second to register that with a fresh shave, suit, and glasses, I looked more like a lawyer or someone’s assistant than a “protestor” or “troublemaker.” My “appropriate attire” suddenly felt more like a disguise. It was empowering and I walked down the hall with an added spring in my step, confident and unintimidated, like all innocent people deserve to feel in a place where the truth is sacred and justice honored. The counterculture should wear suits more often.
There were dozens of RNC arrestees in the Courthouse. The resounding consensus was that almost everyone would stick it out and fight their charges. A group of volunteer court watchers from the Community RNC Arrestee Support Structure had been assigned to our courtroom. It was their job to take notes on how each case was handled, in order to check for inconsistencies in rulings from case to case. They had at least one court watcher taking notes for every RNC-related case that day and have had someone for almost every case since. Their work has been instrumental in our collective defense, and I and many others owe them a great thanks (http://rnc08arrestees.wordpress.com/).
The judge was running late, and I began to get irritated that those in control of due process could be so cavalier with the power it had over our lives, without risking any real repercussions themselves. After returning from a short conference with the prosecutor, my lawyer explained that the deal being offered to us by the State would guarantee no jail time in exchange for a guilty plea, fines, and probation. My charge, “Gross Misdemeanor-Riot 3rd degree,” was punishable by up to $3,000 in fines and/or up to 1 year in jail. In terms of “degree,” the severity of a crime decreases as the number goes up - Gross Misdemeanor Riot 3rd degree is sequentially less severe than 2nd or 1st degree. The charge alleged that I was at or around the scene where a crowd of people may or may not have been gathered in a disorderly fashion and that, although I was not involved in any disorderly action directly, I was perceived by an officer on site as someone who might potentially be involved at some point. My attorney made it clear that I wished to maintain my complete innocence, and the prosecutor did not come back with a counter offer.
Finally, the session was called. We walked up to the mic - the prosecutor officially offered the plea deal and we officially said NO. The Omnibus hearing was set for the end of October, and we were out the door. I had flown all the way out there and spent all that money just to stand up and say “Not Guilty.” The whole thing felt inexplicably gross.
I returned home and immediately bought another plane ticket for the next court date. I continued talking to folks who might be able to give testimony on my behalf, and poured over footage from the mass arrest on Shepard Road, looking for any clip that would prove my innocence. The editor of The Agenda wrote to the court explaining the nature of my assignment and offering to testify. Strange Famous Records set up www.ConspiracyToRiot.com to raise awareness about my case. Donations and emails of support poured in from all over the U.S., Europe, Canada, and Australia. Over the next month, some RNC cases were dropped; but though the St. Paul police hadn’t released its footage from the RNC and the prosecutors hadn’t entered any evidence into the record, they were still going forward with most of the cases.
What the cops never tell you is that, even though the odds are with the prosecution during the Pre-Trial process (as it is very hard to disprove that a police officer believed they had legitimate “probable cause” at the time of an arrest), the odds shift quickly into an innocent person’s favor once the actual Trial begins. At that point, the prosecution has to prove to a jury that you are guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Trials are expensive; more so when the State is paying for both a prosecutor and a public defender. In addition, states have an annual budget for the number of cases they can bring to trial per year: “X” amount for Misdemeanors, Gross-Misdemeanors, Felonies, etc. We learned that Ramsey County had already been on pace to exceed its allotted amount of trials for Gross-Misdemeanors before all the mass arrests. So, if all the arrestees stood their ground and fought through the whole process, it would be very difficult for the State to pay for it all. The goal of the prosecution was to get as many of the arrestees as possible to enter into a plea deal so the state wouldn’t have to pay. The longer a defendant maintains his or her innocence, the better their chance of winning, but the Pre-Trial process is lengthy and may require many appearances. The prosecution knew this and set out to frustrate and demoralize as many out-of-state arrestees as possible with the prospect of a multi appearance Pre-Trial, knowing that most couldn’t afford the time or travel expenses to return to St. Paul. Much to their surprise, the majority of arrestees refused to take a plea deal at their first appearance.
Between work, staying on top of information regarding my case and the RNC court battle in general, October went by pretty quickly. Before I knew it, I was flying back to St. Paul for the first part of the Omnibus Pre-Trial. The prosecutor offered us the same plea deal in the conference before session began and this time handed over a DVD of RNC footage (my lawyer had been asking for any footage they had of me at all, let alone footage of me doing something illegal). When the judge called our case, the prosecutor referred to the official Police Complaint against me. My lawyer aggressively motioned for dismissal on the grounds that there had been no evidence admitted to back up the Complaint. The judge denied the motion, stating that at the initial Omni-bus hearing we could not refute much of what the actual Complaint asserted, only its procedural aspects - had the Complaint somehow been filed about the wrong person, was the wrong arresting officer listed, etc. Unless either the prosecutor was willing to drop the case, we were willing to plea deal, or there was a clear procedural error with the Complaint, we would have to return for the next phase of the Pre-Trial: the “contested Omnibus” hearing. My lawyer motioned again that a contested omnibus date not be set unless we had access to any evidence against us with a fair amount of time to study in advance. He held up the DVD and explained that in the two months since my arrest, this was all the proof the prosecutor had given him and that it had been submitted moments before the session began. He also explained that I was from Rhode Island and had to fly out for each hearing; that I was committed to defending my innocence and that we deserved ample time with the evidence to make the best argument for dismissal. The judge seemed perturbed with the prosecutor at that point. He said that it was very disappointing that no footage had been turned over in the past 60 days and that he wouldn’t have me flying back and forth across the country only to be told that evidence could not be provided. He set the date for the contested omnibus for nearly 3 months later - February 26th - making it clear that if evidence had not been provided by that time, he would not be happy about it.
On December 5th, my friend Zach (who was also arrested with Rheanna and I) beat his case. It was wonderful news, and we celebrated with a joyful phone call. More and more accounts began coming over the RNC support list-serve of arrestees beating their charges; and of cases where arrestees who’d been handed a ticket upon release and then told that their court date would be coming in the mail, had found that they had never even been called. As February 26th drew closer, I began to wonder if maybe we hadn’t made the right move in asking for our date to be pushed back. Maybe it was better to have had an earlier date without the prosecution having any hard proof, which would’ve forced them to show up to another date with no evidence. People kept asking me how things were with the case and it was nerve-wracking, because there was no way to know. Rheanna, who had decided to go with a St. Paul public defender, beat her case on February 9th; and though it was a huge relief that she was safe, I was emotionally worn down and distressed that my case was taking so long.
Then out of nowhere, just before noon on February 12th, we received notice that the State was dropping its case against me! The prosecutor submitted a letter to the court stating that there was not enough evidence to go forward and that my case was dismissed without prejudice. I called Strange Famous and the official announcement went out at ConspiracyToRiot.com shortly after. After 6 months battling anxiety, stress, and a nauseating state of perpetual not knowing, I breathed a deep sigh of relief.
Thanks to the help of the many CTR contributors (especially Sage Francis and Slug of Atmosphere) and some successful benefit shows, we were eventually able to raise enough money to cover the travel costs, lawyer fees, and other expenses needed to fight the case. Out of the 800+ people arrested, over 200 fought their charges and had them dropped before they ever went to Trial. Another 450+ had their cases dismissed without stepping foot in a courthouse. Of the 10 cases that have gone all the way to Trial so far, every RNC defendant charged with less than a felony has won, and those charged with felonies have either beaten their cases or successfully fought for significantly lower charges - including the State withdrawing its 16 ridiculous charges of “terrorism” under the Minnesota PATRIOT Act. These are remarkable victories which would not have been possible without the Coldsnap Legal Collective, the National Lawyers Guild of Minnesota, and the Community RNC Arrestee Support Structure/RNC Courtwatch. We were up against a premeditated and coordinated operation of surveillance and suppression; the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department, St. Paul Police, Minnesota FBI, Minnesota Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, Federal Department of Homeland Security, and several other government agencies all had boots on the ground at the RNC. Undercover officers had been spying on anti-war organizers around the country for over a year before the Convention even started! These were enormous odds to face; and logistically, our chances of fighting and winning were slim. But we did it.
The facts of this story did not change with the inauguration of our new president, nor has the dangerous and excessive protocol by which para-military police forces are used to brutalize and intimidate citizens at rallies, protests, concerts, and even sporting events. We’re on course to becoming a nation where large numbers of militarized police are deployed more and more often - and may even become permanent public fixtures. This fundamental shift is happening around the country, and it’s a direct attack on our sacred First Amendment rights to peaceably assemble, document, report, and petition the government when the authorities are the ones actually breaking the law. I’m astounded when I consider that if we hadn’t organized to fight back, RNC police forces might have gotten away with this vulgar display of unconstitutional policy; in the process, manipulating over 700 innocent citizens into validating those abuses by pleading to false charges in court. I and many others are now involved in a civil suit against the State of Minnesota. It will probably take years to process, but the important thing is that we continue to hold accountable whoever supervised (or failed to supervise) those responsible for the human rights violations perpetrated. Those in charge of para-military riot police may not have been affected by the recent personnel changes in Congress or the White House, and they might not care that most citizens of this country believe in peace and equality. But with organization, persistence, and education, we can defend ourselves and win. Citizens’ rights to peaceably express dissent and to practice independent journalism must be protected.
Get in touch with your local ACLU and Lawyers Guild, know your rights, and challenge unlawful police tactics whenever and where ever you face them. Millions of citizens feel the same way you do. The ACLU is with you, the National Lawyers Guild is with you, and so am I.
You are not alone here.
My deep and sincere thanks go out to everyone who donated or helped spread the word about ConspiracyToRiot.com, to everyone who fought their charges, and to all the people who supported us through this process.
Yours in solidarity,
~Jared Paul
For More Info:
www.rnc08arrestees.wordpress.com
48 Comments
fuck man… george orwell 1984 shit… i gotta get out of this country…
You’re most beautiful words never fail to spark a fire in my heart. I’m sorry to hear about the troubles. Will there ever be a way to stop this injustice ?
Way to hold it down. I don’t think anyone knows what they’d do in a situation like that until it actually happens.
You are in jail homie.
Sage Francis has your back. He put up a website with the purpose of doing the following, listed in order of importance, according to Sage Francis:
1. GIVING AWAY MY SAGE FRANCIS MP3
2. telling some story about some dood who got arrested
3. taking donations, i guess. for some legal fund.
With friends like these, you’ll be out in no time.
wow, thats insane. Good job JP
Jared-
I wanted to present a project about these circumstances (with your approval, of course) for a Political Science class I have. This is a profound and provocative story that needs to be heard by the masses. Sage and Slug are proving their loyalty, I’m working to make sure Ann Arbor, and now Detroit, are on your side too.
I’d like to get in contact when you’re available (and free)
Be well brother, hang in there. You’ve got a huge support nationally (HipHopDX just posted an article), and I hope to see you soon.
- Ben
fuck man that shit sounds insane ima try 2 donate something bro crazy story fuck the system corrupted and fake man
Damn, bro - I’m in Texas and I heard you.
Keep it all together, mate.
Wow. It boggles my mind how much of an injustice this country can place on someone. The bit about the singing gave me goosebumps.
Amazing words
Gotta luv that Patriot Act, thnx alot Bush and all you other fuckin dip shits. Big ups JP, Imma through down next pay check bro. this is Billy’s old roommate, i remember your late night bike rides by the house…
What an amazing story so far, Jared. It makes me feel sick to my stomach. I wish you the best of all possible outcomes on this horrible journey you’ve been on. I’m so sorry you and many like you have been put through this. What an eye opening experience to read about.
-dilly
even though this is an appalling display of the US govt. and a shame it happened to innocents - Jared included. in a way I reckon it couldn’t have happened to a better person. Jared is strong and smart enough to take this story worldwide, especially having you Sage as his ally. And Jared is such a great writer too. looks like the seed is spreading on the winds already. keep up the good work…
you seem to be keeping your wits despite abysmal circumstances. good for you. i’m clutching the edge of my seat waiting for part 3!
Giving support from Denver, CO.
I’ll spread your story - it needs to be heard. I hope all works out well in the end. Keep us posted.
Holy living crap, Jared. What the hell is next? In general, I mean, not just the blog. Outrage has not gone out of style, hopefully.
Oh sweetheart… I am so glad you’re ok. I had already seen some coverage on Youtube about this, but it’s NOT being talked about in the media AT ALL.
I love you, kiddo. Lots.
This is crazy Jared. You’re telling the story well and I look forward to the next installment.
J Paul,
I’m stunned. Incredible reporting from the front lines of the police state. Truly already worse that I thought it had become. Shocking. Hang tough compadre.
-Thompson
The saddest thing about this story is how little the behavior you’re describing is surprising to me.
We’re out here for you, bro. Wanna come to Austin and do a fundraiser for the legal battle?
that sucks man
now i know our court system is made to fu*ck
pepole like us over
be safe good luck
please do not forget that we shall overcome some day! you go young people
That’s a great account, Jared.
My son, Max, is one of the “RNC 8,” charged with CONSPIRACY TO RIOT in furtherance of terrorism. They’re going through the legal process in Ramsey County and facing 7 and a half years in prison, if convicted.
You can get all the details at: rnc8.org
There’s a lot of sorting out to do in the aftermath of the Republican National Convention … it’s not over
thank you for your strength, jared. don’t stop telling this story. tell it everywhere you can. i will spread the word.
Jared, you are a great example of strength and courage every patriot will need to possess in this brave new world. Your story needs to get out to the masses. Go to every news outlet. You tell it well and kept me reading to the end. Try getting on the Alex Jones show. This needs to get out. We can’t shrink back. We must shine the light of day on the evil and tyranny every where it casts it’s shadow or our children and theirs will only know of liberty through second hand stories.
Glad you’ve got a good lawyer. The commander of the police department
were given something like $5M dollars insurance to (order their staff ) to do
this to you. That’s a motive.
Seeing all the families and innocent people getting attacked and
arrested ..and I can only imagine how horrible it must be right now for
the innocent families in Iraq and Palestine and Afghanistan to have these
same people with this same agenda actually killing us, and those wou are
fortunate enough to survive have to witness the their beloved country,
and brothers and sisters, murdered, raped, tortured and and harmed
terribly . just for innocently existing. Now we can begin to imagine what it
must have been like for them. at the same hands we suffer.
~~~~~October11, man. It was great to have you there.
Happy birthday Dad I’m in Jail….I like it here…..Jail….
Reading this gives me chills buddy. It brings forth a lot of “If only s”.
Hey Mister,
I’m glad to see you’ve got all this up- I’ve been checkin’ up on the site every couple of days, figured I should leave something.
Hey Everyone,
I’m one of the cats that got arrested with Jared on that fine September day. I’ve been talking to my Minnesota folks (I’m a native of Minneapolis, myself) and we’re launching a campaign demanding the jobs of the St Paul mayor and head of the Sheriff’s Department.
Keep fighting the good fight, keep spreading the word, and know that we’re working hard to make it known that these gross violations of civil liberties do not go unnoticed and will not go unchecked.
Peace,
Rhe
Thanks for the support yall! Don’t hesitate to forward these blogs via Myspace, Facebook, or Live Journal if the mood strikes. Fwd the blogs and a link to this site. WE’RE OFF TO A STRONG START: Let’s keep bulldozing this small noise into a BIG BANG! I’ll be posting more soon.
FIGHT THE TIDE.
Thank you for telling your story. I really don’t think I would have held it together as well as you. I will be telling everyone I know, including my 7th social studies students. Let see if the state can stand up to the fury of middle schoolers…
respect for staying strong through that shit storm man
stories like this make people afraid to voice their opinions
and last time i checked America was built on the foundations of free speech and equality not Fascism and fear.. last time i checked this wasn’t nazi germany
While I am enraged at what has happened here (with all of our tax dollars), I am glad that this story is getting out. Americans have been fair too trusting of our government for too long. Only recently have people started to take notice of what is going on. I’ve been a bartender for years and never before have I heard so much dissent among the working class. Accounts like these need to get out. People need to hear what is happening. Fuel the fire. All it takes is telling a few people. Don’t let this fire die out.
JP-
Mad respect for holding it down and documenting this atrocity.
Will do everything I can do to raise awareness about this.
Above all, know that change is just around the corner… radical, unavoidable change, and that this old-style fear mongering is on its way out! This isn’t just because of changes that could happen within the political system, but I believe it’s reflective of larger changes in the cosmos, and in the collective mind.
It seems that organisms always reach a point of utter chaos and disambiguation right before they re-form into a new, more evolved structure…it is imperative that we CHOOSE to be active participants in spiritual evolution, and in order to do so we must NOT be compliant with backwards-thinking solutions to threats to the dominant order.
The problem seems to be that lots of folks are afraid to let go, they cling, to this shell of a democracy as if it is Just. We must let go and find security in community, not in government. That’s one of the most resonant points in your story so far, to me.
Hopefully we can all learn from this and come out more evolved…instead of turning to violent revolution, we can learn to evolve spiritually and mentally and see through the bullshit!
Yeah, i had a similar experience after the Minneapolis Rage show during the RNC. (not as bad as yours though) It was a bullshit night that led me to lose my faith in the police system and the government as a whole. The next morning I was let out, charged with disruption of vehicular and pedestrian traffic, and unlawful assembly with a failure to disperse. Funny thing is I just happened to leave the show and run into a buddy that didn’t even go to the concert. We decided to go take some pictures of the protesters marching down the street and all the war zone style police. The protesters were chanting “peace in the streets” and “Who’s streets our streets,” but being really calm and peaceful. Then the cops boxed us all in, said hands on your head, zip tied the shit out of our hands, shoved us on a bus, and sent us off to jail. Bullshit! Funny thing is my buddy got out of it. Some cop asked if anyone didn’t want to be arrested, he raised his hand and they actually let him go. Me, my court date set Dec 19th… Any chance you still got that number of the ACLU lawyer you called?
as much as id like to say this does not surprise me, the SYSTEM never ceases to amaze me with how much they get away with. I have been through almost everything you hve described here. the shock, confusion, degradation(”this guy gets to see my balls, and he didn’t even buy me dinner?”) hope and hopelessness and the all consuming question of ” WHEN THE FUCK AM I GETTING OUT OF HERE?!?!” well, it can’t rain all the time and keep your head in the game. And as far as the asshole cops that arrested you go, well, we all know “p” stands for, right?
yo jared, thank you for sharing the hard truth of how injust the system is and how we have a long way to go before were free. bang on the system!!!
A few years ago while in the Harris county jail (Houston) for a traffic ticket, I was being yelled at by one of the guards when another HUGE guard clotheslined me from behind so hard it lifted me off my feet, my arms flew backwards with the force from behind, and I was sent flying face forward into the corner of a concrete bench. My jaw was broken in four places and I was pouring blood from the severed arteries in my mouth. They yelled at me to turn over cause, “Your makin a mess on the floor.” they said. I begged them not to turn me over but they did and i began choking on the blood. They finally took me to the hospital where I was shackled to the bed until one of the nurses was nice enough to call my girlfriend who went and paid the bond. When they took the cuffs off one cop looked at me and said, “Maybe next time you’ll have a better attitude.”
I then had my jaw wired shut for a month and a half and surgery to put titanium plates in my jaw. Then a second surgery to remove the wires and one of the plates which my face rejected. cost all total $40,000
Then I tried to sue and it took 3 years and my attorney’s $50,000 to finally get into court. First of all they claim that all the cameras that were trained on the area where this happened just happened to be turned off at the time. So the cop told the story of how for no reason whatsoever I just managed, at 5′6″ mind you, to fall and break my jaw in four places. And he had another brother in blue who lied on the stand and corroborate this BS.
Verdict NOT GUILTY. The jury afterwards admitted that they believed the cops were lying but that they could not agree that it was “willful and malicious” meaning they didn’t know whether he actually meant to do the damage he did. But the way I see it is that cops are trained to be deliberate in their actions and to know how much force is too much. Now I have been hit by a car before and I have never experienced the kind of hit I took in that jail that night. It still disgusts me but mostly it makes me sad that I tried to make a difference by standing up and holding them accountable but it doesn’t work. The system is flawed and it scares the hell out of me.
I’ve forgiven the man who assaulted me. But I condemn the system that threatens Liberty.
Vote For Change Please
http://www.myspace.com/AlcaPWN
I submitted this article to digg! lets get the word out and do damage!
The thing that disgusts me most is the silence over this event. No one can be held accountable if the public isn’t outraged, and few will be outraged unless the story is broadcast to a wide audience. I think it’s clear that the corporate media have failed us in this regard. Mass protests of the most visible kind are long overdue. Peaceful demonstration so widespread and loud that it cannot be ignored. Fuck asking nicely for change, this shit has gone over the top. The government and the media won’t do shit for us, it is up to us to shape the world into the way it needs to be.
in st tammany parish, louisiana they switch us between holding cells for weeks. its a regular thing and its fucking devlish. I’ve only been there once and i was lucky enough to use the corrupt system to my advantage and get out in the middle of the night. but my friend who got arrested with me stayed for 3 weeks in HOLDING, never made it to general population at all.
You story is amazing. I and all the victims of the louisiana police state feel for you
Power to The People.
I put a bunch of RNC 2008 coverage on my blog in September, and my videos can be found on YouTube under my user name, JohnnyHoffa.
Today on my blog, I put out a call for individuals to donate their “artifacts” of RNC 2008 to the Minnesota Historical Society. (If the items are not needed by your lawyer, of course)
Can we get a update? Or are you guys all in jail?
Come to Canada man
Wow. You should probably write a book about this. You’re pretty fucking good, to put it in Laymen’s terms.
i read this and it made me cry some, i fear that one of these days they will revoke our amendment rights, and use find any excuse to use Marshall law.
Yes please go to Canada. They are ok with people implying a gun was pulled on a innocent person with out actually anyone witnessing it.
Worst Article ever. And I am a democrat.
Regarding 1st sentence in Part 4, “Yesterday we’d heard rumors that one of the RNC arrestees held in another pod had been beaten severely by correctional officers in his cell. ”
His is name is Elliot Hughes
You can Google it for further details.
you guys are seriously a bunch of douche bags.
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