Spirit in Action

The RNC 8 - Anarchism And Reprisals for Welcoming the Republicans to St Paul

Garrett Fitzgerald is one of the anarchist & anti-authoritarian RNC 8, on trial for activities leading up to protests in the Twin Cities of Minnesota during the 2008 Republican National Convention. John Bachman was a legal observer at the demonstrations and is 1 of the 11 lawyers for the defense of the RNC 8.

Broadcast on:: 02 May 2010
Audio Format:: other

[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we will make here as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world home ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action, my name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world home ♪ To many people, the events of the 2008 Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities is long dead history at this point, but to today's Spirit in Action guests, there are still powerful reverberations in their lives. Garrett Fitzgerald was part of what was called the NRC Welcoming Committee, and they worked long and hard to prepare to host protesters coming to the Twin Cities to make their voices heard on matters of national policy. Shortly before the Republican Convention was to open, police busted down doors, held and released many people, but they eventually charged Garrett Fitzgerald and seven other anarchist activists with conspiracy to incite terrorism. Garrett and the others are now known as the RNC-8, and they're still winding their way through the court system with the trial tentatively scheduled for November of 2010. There are eight co-defendants represented by 11 lawyers, one of whom is also with us here in the Northern Spirit Radio Studios. John Bachmann was present on the streets as a legal observer throughout the Republican National Convention, and thus brings some first-hand experience to his role as one of their lawyers. Garrett Fitzgerald and John, as one of the defense lawyers, will be in court this coming Monday in St. Paul, Minnesota in hopes of getting the charges dropped. Follow the saga on their website, RNC8.org. Garrett and John, thank you so much for joining me for Spirit in Action. Thank you, thank you very much for having us. Glad to be here, thank you. I know that your life has perhaps been more exciting than you counted on a year and a half ago at the time of the Republican National Convention. How are you doing right now, Garrett? It's been a long process, follow-up. I want to hear about the details of how you got to the upcoming court case, but give me an idea of just how you're doing right now. Level set us, please. You know, I feel like at a pretty sustainable place, it's been a lot of work and it's not always easy and it's not always fun, but that's what it's about to be in a struggle and to be working to better the world. It's hard sometimes and full of heartbreak, but I feel like at an okay working place. Garrett, I think you're one of eight people who have been joined for this court proceeding. Are these eight people that you knew before, that you know well, they're part of your community? Who is the community that supports you in this work and that's helping you with all the lawyers and everything that are involved? Well, there's a lot of support that comes from obvious sources, like family and close personal friends and things like that. We also have a lot of support in the neighborhoods that we live in. I live in South Minneapolis and a lot of people around there know about the case, our neighbors and our very supportive. Most of my co-defendants and I are from Minneapolis, St. Paul, or live in the area, I have lived in the area for a while. We mostly met doing this work. I didn't know any of my co-defendants before the organizing for the RNC began, and so that was sort of how those relationships formed. That was almost two years before the convention began, was when that organizing began and over that period of time, I met and got to know several of my co-defendants. Now, for the most part, we all live in, the majority of us all live in South Minneapolis, where a lot of people who also worked on the RNC or who are familiar with our struggles, share in the struggles and are part of the movement are definitely very supportive of us. Well, let's flesh out Garrett what the background is, two years before the Republic National Convention is going to happen in Minneapolis, you're banding together. I assume there's all kinds of policies of the Bush and the Republican Party in general that you are opposing. What were the concerns that got you involved that you were speaking out against? Well, first of all, the people that I worked with that came together on the RNC were predominantly bringing an anarchist and anti-authoritarian analysis to the table, which was really important to us that we wanted to, in our organizing, go beyond just saying the Republicans are bad, or we need to stop the war. Yes, we need to stop the war, and yes, we'd rather not have the Republicans in our city, but how do we tie that into a larger systemic analysis of oppression by the government, by corporations, of people of color, and other minorities, transgendered folks, women, classism, that sort of thing. How are we going to work, what's happening with the RNC coming to town into this larger analysis? So, Garrett, what would you say was the objective of the people you're working with? I assume that there's a message you want to get out there to the world. I want to be clear what that message would be, and what would have been a good outcome from the political witness that you were attempting to make? Well, the group that I worked with, which was called the RNC Welcoming Committee, we viewed ourselves as informational clearinghouse and as providing logistical support. So, we really actually didn't bring forward a national message because we wanted to avoid posturing a false sense of hegemony, I guess would be the way that I would put it, that we wanted to acknowledge that there's a lot of different people that are going to be coming for a lot of different reasons. And so, in that way, we actually deliberately sort of quieted our own voices in order that we could support greater multitude of voices being heard. So, what we did was we worked on providing a lot of logistical support like food and housing and things like that for people who are coming to protest. We also had a website that we set up where we gave people updates on what was happening in terms of, you know, I spent my days in the lead up to the convention, culling through news reports, looking at the city's blogs and things like that for any talk of the RNC. And when things came up, we would discuss them and a lot of that stuff would get posted on our website. So, the point was hoping that we could help facilitate other people's protests or demonstrations or what have you, and through our presentation or through our presence being there, would help make everyone else's voices stronger and louder. So, can you give me an idea, Garrett, of what happened? The government, I think, brought a sledgehammer down on your head to somehow charge you, I guess the original charge, was terrorism enhancement, whatever that means, and now it's something less. So, what physically happened at the time leading up then to the convention? Well, a little over a year before the convention, the RNC welcoming committee was going to host a national gathering that we called the pre-NC for other folks around the country to come and talk about what they wanted to see happen at the RNC. And to publicize this meeting, and to get the word out about it, a comical video was created. This video depicted someone dressed in black in a sort of like stereotypical anarchist style, is what I would say would be like a cliched sort of like a hyper-cliched stereotype of an anarchist in black block that is running around this town, but instead of wreaking havoc is helping the neighbors, an anarchist in black block gets handed a bolt-cutters, and instead of cutting a chain, they are pruning a hedge, things like that. But Ramsey County clearly did not get the joke, and they used this video, said it was inciting and encouraging criminal acts, and that was sort of the springboard for their investigation, which lasted up until and after the RNC, and before the RNC even began, had cost the taxpayers of Ramsey County over $300,000. There were four individuals who were either informants or undercover officers that were all paid, there was surveillance done, a lot of taxpayer money went into following us. I believe in large part less because of what we were actually doing, and less because of anything that we were advocating, but because of this analysis that we brought that wasn't saying, "Oh, we're just against the war," it was saying, "Actually, we have like these larger systemic problems of which the war is a symptom, and we need to be sure that when we're talking about the war or poverty or what have you, that these larger systems of oppression are addressed." And I would say that that analysis is what I found in anarchism and why I became an anarchist several years ago, but that sort of creates a flag for the state, and they automatically think anarchists and criminal are one and the same, and therefore, much like I imagine law enforcement looks at the mafia, it's not like, "Oh, are these people breaking a law? These people are criminals, what can we get them for?" And so they approached us with these informants, with this hostile intent, to try to find what they could get us for essentially. So they had informants embedded in trying to catch you, find you doing something wrong. What happened in the days then immediately leading up to the national convention for the Republicans? One of the things that the welcoming committee did to help facilitate other people's voices being heard was that we rented a convergent space, where people could come and meet and get a bite to eat or work on a computer or what have you. The Friday before the convention began, that night there were people watching a movie upstairs and people downstairs talking and using the computers. A law enforcement team led by Ramsey County Sheriff's Office drove up and jumped out of their cars and stormed the convergent space with guns drawn, you know, assault rifles pointing around at people, and basically detained over 60 people in the convergent space, seized a bunch of literature, computers, other things of that nature, detained people for several hours, eventually let everyone go without an arrest and used the pretext of a blocked fire door to board up the convergent space saying there was a fire code violation and not letting people back in. Eventually people did get back in several days later, but I was in jail at that time, so I don't know quite as much about that process. So I got, I was at the convergent space during that raid and I got out of the raid or out after the raid and, you know, had a debrief and talked to some people about what had happened and we put together a press conference for the next day. I went home, went to bed around 4 a.m. with a plan to get up at 8 a.m. for the press conference, but before my alarm went off, I heard our door getting smashed in and our house was raided again, again by Ramsey County. They broke down the door, broke down my bedroom door, detained everyone in the house and arrested myself and two of my housemates and now co-defendants. So they detained everyone in the house and they arrested myself and two housemates which are now two co-defendants in this case. And that was the Saturday morning before the convention, which began on Monday. In the Twin Cities, they have a law where they're allowed to hold you for 36 hours on what they call a probable cause hold, which means a judge does not have to approve it. They have 36 hours to charge you, to get you in front of a judge to have you formally charged with this probable cause hold. During the RNC, they moved it from 36 hours to 48 hours. That doesn't include weekends and that doesn't include holidays, Monday being Labor Day, a holiday. So they were allowed to hold me without having me charged in front of a judge that whole weekend Saturday and Sunday, all of Monday. And then that was when that 48 hours started was on Tuesday, so then all of Tuesday and all of Wednesday at the zero hour, an hour before midnight on Wednesday, when they would have had to let me go. I was finally in front of a judge and I was formally charged. The original charge was conspiracy to riot in the second degree and furtherance of terrorism. Then it took some time to work through the bureaucracy to get my bail posted and do all of those things, so I was held in jail until Thursday night. The last night of the convention, I spent the whole convention in jail. Everything I knew about what was happening outside the convention, I heard listening under the door of my jail cell to the television that was always on, set to CNN in the middle of the pod. So yeah, that was my experience on the RNC after spending two years organizing and was being locked up for the whole thing. So Garrett, did you want to confess right here and right now that you're an evil terrorist seeking to bring down the government of the US? What was so bad about what you were doing? Were you wearing black pajamas so you look like an anarchist? Why did they grab you and a couple other people? Evidently there's lots of people they just let go. Is it just because you're shifty looking or having family in them off yet? What is the reason that they picked on you? I think that myself and my codefendants were singled out in large part because we do openly identify as anarchists and anti-authoritarians and that that's threatening to the state because it is an analysis that renders them moot, that says we don't need the state or the government meddling in our affairs. We also, we didn't take a strong stance one way or another on what sorts of tactics people should or shouldn't use during the RNC. I think that there's a general understanding that people are going to be mindful in what they choose to do and that everyone who's there is thoughtful and bringing these intentions to that space. We did create what became dubbed or helped create what became dubbed the St. Paul principles which asked for respect amongst demonstrators essentially. But beyond that we didn't say you should do this or you should do that or you shouldn't do this or you shouldn't do that and so I think those two things combined, the state likes to pretend that are not sane. I think it's something that actually needs to be thought about in movements for social change is that so much has been made of doctrines of non-violence that now to come straight out and say well I'm not going to denounce property destruction because I think that it's irrelevant to this discussion. The point is that the larger destruction is being done by the US government every day, I'm not going to get worked up about someone tipping over a dumpster. I didn't tell you I wanted to tip over a dumpster but I'm not going to get worked up about it and I think that that combination of things sort of set us apart from a lot of the other groups that were out there and made us brighter targets for state repression. How it's played out, however, is that I think that we demonstrated with the other local groups that were organizing that we weren't crazy, that we were actual human beings trying to better our communities and that the people that worked with us understood that and that's why we now have such huge support amongst people who are organizing for the RNC for so long because they recognize that we played a major important role in making RNC demonstrations as successful as they were. If you just tuned in this is Spirit and Action. I'm your host Mark Helpsmeet for this Northern Spirit Radio production. Our website is northernspiritradio.org and my home radio station is here in the Chippewa Valley, Wisconsin. It's WHYS LP O-Claire. I have with me here today Garrett Fitzgerald who is one of eight co-defendants charged in the Republican National Committee welcoming committee. They were I guess too welcoming for the Republicans I guess. Also with us here today is John Bachmann. He's an attorney here in O-Claire and he's one of 11 attorneys helping the eight co-defendants in this case. John do you have some comments on your perspective about why they came down particularly on Garrett and the other seven co-defendants? Well beyond what Garrett said Republican National Convention was a what they call it special national security event. So the FBI the Secret Service Homeland Security all those alphabet soups of agencies get involved. There is this general atmosphere in the country to fight terrorism. That's a very loose term. It's very ambiguous and it's used in general or a handful of real terrorists and also to squash political dissent. Now the Ramsey County Sheriff and I believe the D.A. is an officer in Ramsey County had a huge amount of money from the federal government for security in this. So they have a financial interest in finding somebody and doing something. There's also the general atmosphere of police machismo. I was on the streets for most of the Republican Convention and I've never seen so many cops in any place in my life all looking like they're going to fight some kind of war like there's some guerrilla army out in the street much more than even with the WTO protests in 2000. Much heavier than even in Washington D.C. Also there's there's some careerism in it too for the people running the show and the Ramsey County Attorney was running is well is running for governor of state of Minnesota. So you know if she can prosecute these people she can show that you know she's tough on crime and she's really out to protect everybody you know get up for the sheriff he's running for a reelection in St. Paul. That's a way to get votes. Yeah I would add to that also or maybe echo that in saying that part of these events there is a need to create an enemy in order to justify the money spent and the money needed 50 million dollars in security funding for the RNC for what no one was flying planes into any buildings in downtown St. Paul they need to have someone to justify keeping the people of St. Paul safe from right and so the aid of us amongst a handful of other people who are charged with being in downtown St. Paul are the ones that get to play that role in their narrative of the evil bad guys you know. Needles to say Garrett it doesn't sound like you're much of a bad guy what should I as a peace loving Quaker fear about anarchists like yourself? I don't think you have anything to fear I think that the primary values of anarchists are of mutual aid you know people working in cooperation with one another to directly meet their needs the word direct action gets touted around a lot by anarchists and that's another one of those words that like the police here and they equate with smashing windows actually what direct action means is empowering yourself in your community to go out and solve your problems yourselves I think that that's something we can all get behind. I would also say on a side note that there were Quakers who were members of the RNC welcoming committee who identified themselves as Quaker anarchists also co-defendants of mine who were raised Quaker and went to Quaker schools so definitely I don't see that as it as any sort of point of conflict I see it actually more a point of commonality. I have to admit that I know relatively little about anarchist beliefs in general of course they've got you know the anarchists started World War I or something is as part of the history and there was a period where the government was coming down very hard on anarchists I mean like killing them because anarchists were also involved in killing I understand in the early 1900s it seems to me like you're a bit different species that you're not so focused on violent revolution or whatever it is but you do have a serious critique that says the governments on our back what makes you different from libertarians from Ron Paul from other people who would just say you know we don't want big government on our backs. In Europe libertarianism is often looked at as more on the leftist spectrum as a actual synonym for anarchism here in the US libertarianism is looked at as more of a right-leaning value some people who have anarchist tendencies choose to refer to themselves as libertarian socialists which other libertarians say is a contradiction in terms I think what sets anarchists apart from or how anarchism differs from libertarianism as it's understood in America is that a lot of libertarianism in America is about having less government but still having enough government to protect corporate interests to protect property rights and things like that which is it is my minimal understanding of libertarianism and everything that they believe in I'm sure is a lot more intricate than my understanding but I think that generally as a conservative value it sort of it ignores a lot of like social responsibilities that I feel like come along with asking for and expecting that individual freedom that for me having less government does not mean I'm going to selfishly amass as much wealth as I possibly can on the backs of whoever it means that my conscience can help me decide how to help my community and how how to elevate life for everyone as opposed to asking a government to take care of that for us and we see all the problems that we have with even the social services in this country that may have been implemented with the best of intentions get bogged down in their own bureaucracy I think there's a lot of organizations that are run predominantly by anarchists or at least in an anarchist fashion I'd mentioned in a conversation before this interview a group called food nap bombs that does free feedings of people has free meals in south Minneapolis the RNC 8 we also do a monthly free dinner at uh local church in south Minneapolis I think that that speaks to the anarchist value of direct action saying I'm not going to petition the government to spend more of our tax dollars in social services because I see people going hungry I'm going to pool resources with my community so that we can have a free meal and feed the people that are hungry we don't need the government involved in it so I think that that would be a big a big part of where my analysis diverges you mentioned Garrett that one of these meals is hosted in a church in south Minneapolis does that mean that anarchists are not across the board anti-religious that they can't get along with religious folks I think some people assume that anarchists are parallel to godless communists or something like that I think there's a lot of different feelings amongst a lot of different people and I certainly on none of these issues where we're talking about anarchism broadly could I hope to speak for every anarchist out there because every anarchist you ask is going to give you a different answer and you know a lot of the work we do is about fighting the idea that we all agree on everything all the time and we all have to agree on everything all the time but I believe that a lot of the critiques of organized religion come from the ways that religions have historically been used to oppress religion has also been used as a tool to liberate and I think that that's where I can stand in solidarity with those various spiritual and religious practices is when they're used to liberate not to oppress I think you know even people who engage deeply in spiritual practice can understand the difference between those two things and appreciate that also you know the difference between sort of like theoretical dogmatic analysis as separate from also any sort of distrust of religion being trumped by love for my community and love for the people that I'm surrounded with and the people that I'm surrounded within live amongst our people from all sorts of religious backgrounds and I care about them and I want to see what's best for them in this church that we we have an office in and we do our feedings in is in our neighborhood with our community members who support us and who you know we like to support and we feel great affinity with that respect is really important to me so it is wonderful Garrett that you have this kind of support that's holding you up in this difficult time brings a great anxiety with it now it was a year and a half ago or so that you were arrested as part of charges of terrorism or of conspiracy to create terrible destruction john can you tell me what the exact charges are now and what the court system is doing with these charges a year and a half ago he's arrested there hasn't been a decision there hasn't been a trial yet that decided they're guilty what is the process and where are they going with this well part of the reason it's taking so long is that the discovering materials the materials the police reports and videotaped pictures what not are enormous there's something like 20,000 pages of various materials about a hundred CDs full of photos documents it's taken a long time just to get a lot of that stuff even more time to go through it there was a hearing in February basically to set up the next hearing so it's been a very very slow process we're sent for trial in october end of october anybody wants to come you're certainly welcome to come we'd appreciate it uh trials expected to last anywhere from a month to two months i don't know how many witnesses there are there could well be a hundred witnesses it's a very complicated case it's much more complicated than anything i've been involved in up to this point there've been civil lawsuits over some of the things that the police did separate from those things continue to trickle in that we didn't know about so it's been a long process just for preparation and it's going to be very tangled we have hearings starting next monday challenging the search warrants all the search warrants challenging the probable cause there's at least one motion to get some more discovery that we believe exists when we believe that the police actually set up a fake group and actively intervene to try to disrupt any protest that would happen we also have bond reduction motions we'll see what comes out of these hearings next week how if i'm hoping that everything is just going to get tossed i'm hoping that the grab the county attorney will give up on a race for governor and then she won't have any reason to keep this going anymore we'll see um but it's it's just part of it's just the size of the case and also there's a lot of important issues here Garrett and the other people involved many people involved were spied on probably daily for a year and a half and all that stuff's recorded so you have to ferret it out one of the major issues is do you have freedom of speech do you have freedom of assembly do you have a right to get people together and express their disappointment disagreements with the you know republicans or the democrats or whoever part of Garrett's critique and i would agree with it is that civic engagement is just not is not voting inviting is part of it but it's a very small part and that you shouldn't have a right to directly petition the government you know it shouldn't just be a major corporation that can go into washington and have their voices heard Garrett and the other people what they did was provide a space for people to express their disapproval in their own way what Garrett and the other people did was basically give you here's your space here's what st. Paul looks like here's a place you can meet we're not telling you what to do we're not telling you where to go or when to go or what to do but if you want to be there here's what it's probably going to be like you know they organize medic teams not because they expected that they would deliberately go out and get hurt by the cops but that based on their experience in many many different places it's quite likely they're going to be attacked by the cops pepper sprayed or tear gas or beaten or something like that i mean that's they're charging them that's part of the conspiracy that they actually had medics trained to help demonstrators get to tear gas out of their eyes i don't see what's wrong with that that's something that you're probably going to expect in any large demonstration it's not something that's set up in the belief that we're going to deliberately provoke the police and then need this as you said john people are welcome to attend the trial and to be supportive to the rnc welcoming committee website is rnc and then the digit 8.org so it's rnc8.org you can go there and find out help follow and support these people who are after all looking out for the good of the community i was going to ask you john i think that the original charge was around terrorism that you're going to be encouraging terrorism and they like to throw in this word conspiracy which i think is more than one person gets together so you have two or three people and they talk about something so therefore there are conspiracy that one has been dropped i understand replaced by two other charges talk about what the charges are what they mean and what they imply conspiracy to cause criminal damage to property in excess of a thousand dollars means that people got together and they had an agreement to do something that would cause more than that amount of property damage what the state is alleging in this case is that the rnc8 had an agreement to do things like make molyta cocktails or smoke bombs take cars and install them on the freeway so the delegates couldn't get from their hotel to the convention center and most of the delegates were actually not staying in st. paul so they had to be bused in there's an allegation that they were going to use caltrops which are it looked like jacks uh the metal the kids game the metal pieces except they're much larger you throw them on the ground and there's always one spike that sticks up and they're alleging that they're going to throw those in front of the buses and ruin the tires on the buses there's a whole bunch of things that they were supposedly going to do serial chemical bombs uh and block the air vents to the convention center disrupt their computer network so it's all those things they're using anything that anybody talked about and a meeting is proof that they agreed to do this thing now the rnc welcoming committee was somewhat loose organization there were a lot of public meetings people came there and said stuff that didn't necessarily become the policy of the welcoming committee but they're using that to try to show that oh god yeah you know they're going to burn down Minneapolis and they agreed to burn down Minneapolis the other charge um conspiracy to riot well it's based on the same things that they were organizing people to get together to try to shut down the convention by violent needs that they were organizing blockades that they were going to throw change across the road and throw marbles in front of the police forces so the police forces would stumble around they were going to get dump trucks and jump sand in the road many many meetings there was many discussions where many ideas were floated but from our point of view the rnc welcoming committee didn't endorse anything there was groups uh there were coming in from outside the rnc did not direct those groups about what to do they didn't tell them that you should go to this place and you should set these things on fire or you need to have you know bamboo spears or anything like that in fact it was you know by the time of the convention that was impossible because all the rnc members were in jail anyway so they're alleging that the rnc8 were the masterminds the sort of central committee that was telling everybody what to do and where to go and how to kidnap delegates and all this other nonsense so Garrett or john can you tell me what actually did happen what did the protesters do did they bring st. Paul did they burn it down all the way did they bring marbles with them i don't know what was actually done and also what was the government response did the government beat people up did they arrest you know thousands of people for the entire week what actually was done by the government yeah Garrett was in jail and i was on the street during the whole time of the convention as i said before there was overwhelming number of police there all dressed in riot gear police on bicycles police horses there were lines of riot cops if i recall right there was also heavy equipment like dump trucks and stuff and blocking the roads people had started to disperse they started going home over a particular bridge then the police blocked off both ends of the bridge and anybody that was on the bridge was arrested and detained and then ticketed in fact i think all of those people were eventually the charges were dismissed against those people there's several incidents of reporters with clearly with credentials hanging around their nags who arrested on the street there was an incident where i was involved in there was a march it was not a permitted march but we went anyway you went down to the convention center and then you had to turn around and there were several lines of very high wire fences between where you could go in the convention center but you would have had to go over about a 10-foot wire fence and then run through some riot cops and then go over another fence and then get through another bunch of riot cops to actually get to the convention center i'd walk down there with some people we were walking back mentioned the people were three or four blocks from the convention center by that time i was sort of at the tail end of the line and the police just started shooting concussion grenades and tear gas for no reason that i could think of at the time it turns out later from the police reports that i read that they believed that there might be some people who might do property damage at the end of this march nothing had happened to that point i didn't see any evidence of any black blog people or anybody that looked like they were going to do anything but they just started firing as far as i can be called nobody was arrested in that particular incident it was just harassment just get out of here there was a lot of that stuff i would also just add that i wasn't on the street and i don't know everything that happened i know that after the rnc the sheriffs and police were toting around this case of a sandbag being dropped off an overpass as sort of like the thing that was like the most horrible act that a protester could have possibly done and could like that took place and i'm not going to take a stance on like that specific act at this point in time but i think that we all could stand a little perspective it's like at what point does you know breaking a window weren't getting shot at you know i mean i just really i think that we as a society the idea that we would value property over people's well-being i mean it wasn't the none of the protesters brought guns and pointed them at people that was only the police only the police brought guns and shot them at people so i think like you know people talk about violence at protests and when there's violence at protests it's the police it's the state bringing its violence to bear on the protest any vandalism that takes place in my mind you know whether right or wrong is inconsequential the greater injustice is the fact that people are getting beat up and hurt pretty severely by the police assistant police chief matt bostrom touted after the rnc that no police officer was hurt during the rnc severely that's not an accident i don't think and it's not just about good police training it's about the fact that in spite of what the egomaniacal law enforcement want to believe people weren't first and foremost coming to the rnc to fight police so yeah just some perspective on what these different acts what's like a warranted response for these various acts that take place i think is uh an important concern again i want to remind listeners that the website you might want to go to to check out information and to help support the rnc welcoming committee the eight people who have been charged is rnc8.org have with me here today gert fits Gerald who is amongst the rnc8 and one of the 11 turnies supporting the rnc8 john bachman in october of 2010 you can possibly meet them in st paul and support them although by the time you hear this one of the court decisions i guess is going to be made about whether to throw out this stuff for all we know we could have it all dismissed before that trial even happens and that would of course be a happy outcome for you gert obviously this takes a lot of wear and tear on you are you building up hundreds and thousands of dollars of debt to all these lawyers or people like john uh how much is he demanding per hour because i understand these lawyers they always want to charge you 600 bucks an hour well you know i will say that we're lucky that we have analogy attorneys who are fairly generous with their time but it is also still very expensive to fight a court case and i think that's one of the important things to understand about the judicial system and how it works is that if you don't have the money to put on a good defense you might not be guilty but you're as good as guilty just like a lot of things in america it takes money to get your point across originally the lawyers were saying that it was going to cost about a quarter million dollars to defend the aid of us and so that's what we've been shooting for with fundraising and things like that we've been really lucky that there's been fundraisers all over the world for us all over the country both coasts Iceland and New Zealand it's really been an overwhelming amount of support but yeah definitely the economic part of it is is a burden and garret what about the emotional part of it i think you said you've come to a pretty much a steady state i somehow think that time in jail and the time just following i mean can you get a job now because you're after all you're a person who's patriotism and how much of a danger you are is at question are you able to work now i think you aren't allowed to travel very far because they have to keep a short leash on you people who are out on bail well you know technically other than remaining law abiding there aren't a lot of conditions on our release except you know that we had to put up ten thousand dollars a piece to be out of jail but that doesn't mean that there's not other restrictions trying to travel out of the country you have to have another country that's willing to let you in you know and when you're on these lists or what have you that can be difficult as far as jobs are concerned at this point without being convicted i don't officially have a felony on my record but i need to disclose when i'm being hired at a job but this case has been so high profile that a simple google search of my name will come up with all this stuff about me being a terrorist and all these horrible things and definitely my experience and especially like talking to my co-defendants there's been several instances of people like trying to get jobs and getting a phone call after an interview saying hey are you the so-and-so from the RNC eight oh what's what's going on with that you know and being more reluctant on the other hand you know being in a supportive community where people in the twin cities lived through the RNC know sort of what happened it's not as difficult as it probably could be because there's a community of people who support us and have our back and we'll go to bat for us is there other fallout for you or for others who have been involved in this does it follow you in other ways yeah there's actually a case that's still going on right now a federal case that is um the primary so-called evidence is from the raids of the homes and the lead up to the RNC a man by the name of scott demuth is being charged under the animal enterprise terrorism act because some journals and things of his were allegedly seized during these raids his computer and they're making a ridiculous claim that in 2004 while he was in high school he participated in animal liberation that took place down in davenport iowa his case is still ongoing it's largely based off of the RNC he lives in south minneapolis and also a person was summoned to a grand jury investigating that carolyn feldman who's also a south minneapolis resident and she resisted that grand jury and was held in jail for contempt for four months for resisting that so i think it's important to understand that there's uh long history of state repression you know people think about the chicago eight in 1968 more recently uh group called the shack seven part of the campaign stop hunting ten animal cruelty six people and one website make up the seven and they were convicted of conspiracy to commit animal enterprise terrorism for running a website and served a lot of jail time for that or moderate amount of jail time but they all they went to jail for it now scott demuth is facing similar charges and as long as people are struggling to fight state repression the state will continue to push back and try to imprison people for their activism i think i'd like to end my visit with you garret on a positive note and again i want to ask you the work that you and the other people with the rnc welcoming committee did the overall views that you have as anarchist and as a person with a different view for the world what would be a positive outcome what would be a movement in the right direction we have barak obama as president at the moment and some of us think that was a positive step what would be an even better step for the world what's the vision that you want to help move us toward well you know whether or not i end up going to jail what's going to make me feel better is leaving having had this experience and with the world community in the movement that i see myself a part of in better shapes than it was four years ago when i first started organizing for the rnc in large part that means you know more skepticism of the judicial system of these events like the rnc which was toted when it was first coming to st paul has been this great thing that was going to help everybody you know that businesses were going to make a bunch of money and citizens were going to have their city put on the map and all this great stuff and it didn't work out that way and so the next time the rnc wants to go somewhere people think oh man but i saw what happened in st paul you know i saw how you turned your own city into a police state i don't want that to happen here and you know i think that a lot of the things that we did there were hundreds of people in the country organizing resistant to the rnc some anarchist some not that aren't facing charges and that's great i'm glad they're not facing charges what's important is that they were doing a lot of the same work that we were doing which is hard work and often really thankless and a lot were kind of thrust into the spotlight because of these charges but i just want to acknowledge that there's a lot of people who did a lot of amazing work that's really important in their communities and continue to do really important work in their communities now and what we did isn't that special in that regard so hopefully beyond being inspiring i want people to feel capable of being able to make change in their communities and make change in the world that they want to see i want people to look at our case and think oh wow a bunch of people in a community got together to challenge something and put their minds to it and worked at it and struggled and actually like did something worthwhile and and fought for what they believed in and i could do that so if a group of people heard about our case or heard about our case in conjunction with other cases and other instances of people standing up to state repression and moved to make a change that they felt compelled to make in their community that's what that's what keeps me going and what just like keeps this important for me every day it is good work and john i want to thank you you've been a relatively silent visitor for most of this interview but you've got decades of experience working as a supporter advocate for those and helping work on that interface in the court system which is very intimidating to a lot of us you care to mention some of the kind of things you've been involved in why did you get involved in this one of course you were on the streets there as you mentioned i was on the street in st paul as a legal observer i also did jail support legal observing means that you watch the watch the cops essentially and you take down notes get badge numbers things like that in case somebody gets beat up and uh they want to follow the lawsuit later you are essentially a witness and there was a place where all that information was collected a lot of that turned out to be very useful and because there's a lot of lawsuits civil lawsuits for money against the city of st paul my own activism goes back a long ways i mean i refuse to cooperate with the selective service when i was 18 years old in 1970 i've got three federal convictions for criminal trespass that we're choosing to leave various military sites i went to law school with the express purpose that um i was going to do this this kind of stuff i enjoy it much more than the everyday things i have to do to make money but it keeps me going thank you again john for the work that you've been doing for many decades and are doing in this case with the rnc8 and garret thanks for being in there and for the long haul and for the good of the community i wish you well in the court case i do hope people visit your website rnc then the digit 8.org rnc8.org they support you help come up with the money to cover the court costs and that they send out their intentions prayers and do the work in their community thanks yeah uh we really appreciate all the support that we've gotten and hopefully we'll see some of you in court today spirit and action guests we're garret fits Gerald one of the rnc8 and john bachman one of the 11 defense attorneys representing them the theme music for this program is turning of the world performed by sarah tomsen this spirit in action program is an effort of northern spirit radio you can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website northern spirit radio.org thank you for listening i am your host mark helps me and i welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit may you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light this is spirit in action with every voice with every song we will move this world along with every voice every song we will move this world along and our lives will feel the echo of our healing