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Gallery: Fanning the Flames of Rage

Photos from protests following the Rage Against the Machine concert during the RNC.

All photos by Roe Pressley,
except where noted
9/10/08

Wednesday, Sept. 3:

It began as a regular night, aside from one insignificant detail: because First Avenue had a permit to stay open until 4 a.m. during the RNC, the Get Cryphy DJs would be playing into the wee hours of the morning.

It wasn't until I got there that I remembered another tiny detail. This was the same night Rage Against the Machine was playing across the street. Just as I was entering my destination, thousands of angry young Rage fans began to trickle out of the Target Center.

More people bottlenecked out onto the sidewalk, and soon the entire block on which the Target Center sits was saturated.

Slowly the porridge of people thickened until the entire intersection was clogged up, undermining any hope of controlling the flow of traffic.

Within 20 minutes, news crews were on the scene, and the mob had broken off into semi-organized factions of protestors.

Then out came the cavalry. Though a team of officers mounted on mighty steeds formed a blockade halfway down 7th Street, the bulk of riot police seemed to be most concerned with keeping the protestors out of the Hard Rock Cafe, where a murder of delegates sat drinking expensive cocktails in their polyester suits and watching with their beady little crow eyes as the instruments of chaos poured into the streets.

Soon all the protestors were out in full swing, all the police and National Guardsmen were out in full gear, all the journalists stood on the sidelines taking notes and flashing cameras, and you could almost taste the volatility in the air, like right before lightning strikes.

Yet as far as I could see, this little chapter in the RNC protests waned and dispersed without incident. I saw no tear gas, no flash grenades, no tasers, no flying bags of dog shit. Hell, there weren't even any burning flags. Maybe all these folks had used up their energy rioting the night before after St. Paul police pulled the plug on Rage Against the Machine, moments before they could hit the stage, at the free concert on the State Capitol.

Yet when it was all over Friday, and the Republican'ts had mostly all retreated to their respective gutters, sewers, and S&M dungeons, over 800 people had been arrested. Police claimed that many of the pre-emptive arrests the weekend before targeted members of an anarchist group known as the RNC Welcoming Committee, who allegedly wanted to shut down bridges and kidnap delegates. Regardless of the validity of these claims (which have been seriously called into question by members of the National Lawyers Guild), the vast majority of suspects were picked up during the week at, or near, protests in St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Many were just caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, like when police warned protestors to disperse or face arrest while occupying places where roads were blocked off and immediate dispersal was not possible.

Others, such as journalist Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, were simply doing their jobs.

How many of the arrests were warranted and how many were part of an aggressive campaign of instilling the fear will be a subject of debate for months to come. All I have to go on is what one cop told me as I entered First Avenue. I stopped to bid good day to a group of bicycle police, poised and ready at the edge of the parking lot just behind the nightclub.

"You guys be careful, all right?" I said with good will. Then, referring to the hordes trickling out of the Target Center: "They're a rowdy bunch."

One cop just smirked at me. "You're the one that should be careful if you're gonna be out here."

Still not sure if that was a warning, a threat, or both.

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Roe Pressley

See related article on Take Back Labor Day.

Got your own photos from the convention or the protests? E-mail them and we'll put them up.