Campaign Silo on Thursday's RNC Protests

Lindsay Beyerstein reports from Campaign Silo early this morning on the final night of protests and arrests at the RNC in St. Paul. We're starting to get a bigger picture on what happened yesterday, and the week's events in general. Again, the central conflict is over which was the true expiration time for the march's permits: 5:00pm or 7:00pm or later.

Riot police held approximate 300 people, including journalists and observers for nearly an hour on an overpass spanning Interstate 94. Police instructed the crowd to get on the bridge, then announced that everyone on the bridge was under
arrest.

The Joint Information Center offered conflicting accounts about the status of the assembly permits for last night's gatherings. When I called at 4pm, a spokesman told me that the organizers of the March were slated to march from the capitol, through downtown, around the xCel Center and back to the capitol and that the protest was set to go until 7pm.

By 5pm, CNN was reporting that the cops on the ground were telling protesters that their permit had expired. According to some reports, Sheriff Bob Fletcher announced that he was rescinding permits at news conference late Thursday afternoon, but when I called to confirm, the Joint Information Center told me that no permits had been revoked.