12 DAY CONVENTION PHOTO RECAP: DAY 7 of 12 - SO MANY POLICE!!

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12 DAY CONVENTION PHOTO RECAP: DAY 7 of 12 - DENVER AND ST.PAUL POLICE SPECIAL!

It really was a sight to see in both Denver and St. Paul, and the Democrat and Republican Leadership should be ashamed of themselves. We’re talking G8 style Summit security perimeters that spanned a huge swath around the Pepsi and XCel Energy Center.

The hundreds of millions of dollars that were expended on such a useless venture was astounding. That SWAT, National Guard, Private Security, Secret Service, and out of state law enforcement’s sheer overtime and travel bills are staggering to imagine.

But that delegates at the DNC in 2004 were using the so-called Free Speech Zones as shortcuts to the Fleet Center hardly made me blink. The idea of a democracy in the U.S. is literally more laughable in 2008 than it was under Reagan, and the Constitution and Bill of Rights have been so trampled on that I was hardly flummoxed to hear delegates for both parties talk about the protestors in a derisive fashion. While it wasn’t as bad at the DNC as it was at the RNC, it was still palpable.

POLICE on 4th St, Day 4, St.Paul - Staging Area Just Around the Corner from Xcel Center:

The headlines I was greeted with when I arrived in Minneapolis on Sunday AM were all dedicated to the “preemptive action” that Ramsey County Sheriff’s Dept. had taken against so-called “anarchists”and “dissidents” and “protestors”. Needless to say, the media did a piss poor job of reporting what actually went on — even when, especially in St. Paul, MN, journalists were being targeted with equal zeal as were the protestors.

More Staging Area Action - They Just Keep Marching Around to the XCel Center:

The accounts of Police ‘rough play’ in the makeshift detention centers was well documented, even leaving the protest group RNC Welcoming Committe no choice but to go public with a Press Conference:

THAT piece of video was aired by TheUptake.Org, who did a truly fair and balanced job of covering things from all sides - whether in the RNC and DNC, or amid the protests, or even from the perspective of the police trying to “keep order.

Another Endless Phalanx of Troop-Soldiers Making Their Way to the Opposite Side of the XCel Center:

During the DNC, there were some interesting protest actions engaged in by the Iraqi Vets Against the War. Some viewed the action as a weak one, while others defended the action of delivering demands to the Obama people as a relevent and important one. READ HERE for some interesting perspective.