I've been upset as hell all day long. It's been a rough day for me, having survived the first day of the "Battle of St. Paul." Now it appears as though we'll have problems with the Republican's militarized riot squads all through the convention.
I didn't head over to St. Paul tonight, as I'm struggling to get caught up on blogging (which is funny, really, because the Sarah Palin fiasco is crumbling so fast). I did catch the nightly news on KARE 11, which miraculously enough, had a cameraman with the protesters tonight against the stormtroopers (and, no, there really is no better word to describe them). The footage showed night two much harder and heavier than day one, with far more tear gas and concussion grenades. I don't know if any stormtroopers were armed with M-16's.
Oh, didn't you know that? The armored riot squads were armed with machine guns yesterday. I was ten feet away from one of those squads. So you can appreciate why I've been so upset. I'm pretty f'n far from alright.
What we're witnessing is nothing less than a full-scale militarization of a major American city. Don't let the nightly news reports scare you about tales of endless anarchist arsons. We are overwhelmingly peaceful, and we have no way of defending ourselves should the riot squads start cracking down. But we cannot allow our citizens to live in fear of the Republican Police State. We are not living in the Soviet Union. We are not protesting in Tianamen Square. We are Americans, and we need to preserve the freedom of all our citizens to peacefully assemble to protest their government.
We must proceed with great caution. This is a very tense situation, and I fear the tension will rise to explosive levels by Thursday night. I fear there will be a violent crackdown. I have a real bad feeling about this.
The eyes of the world must descent upon St. Paul, Minnesota. We need witnesses to these events. We cannot allow violence and fear to rule our streets, from any side or any party.
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