Hello Police State!

A number of raids have been carried out over the last couple of days on various houses, sometimes referred to as "hippie houses" by neighbors, in St. Paul/Minneapolis ahead of the the Republican National Convention. Some raids seemed to have been authorized by warrants and items such as personal journals and computers were confiscated. A few people were arrested for "conspiracy to commit riot". Some raids were done without warrants, check out this this video of an interview with a Democracy Now producer from the local Minneapolic group theuptake. Also, the group, theuptake, stream their videos live which should be very interesting in the coming days during protests in the streets outside the convention. They also have a number of videos from the last couple of days involving police intimidation.

By the way, Democracy Now is going to be essential viewing/reading/listening over the next week. Another great resource is I-Witness Video.

Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com has been on the scene and published this video from outside a house that is under a raid. The video contains an interview with a National Lawyer's Guild member who gives a good lay of the land of the RNC police state.



This is intimidation.

Glenn Greenwald's running reporting is here and its extensive. It is full of links to various videos and accounts of other raids.