They will get away with it.
Glenn Greenwald has a couple of important reports up on Salon about massive police raids on -- well, not just protesters, but people only suspected of merely planning protests in St. Paul at RepubCon '08.
They'll get away with it because we still live in Nixonland.
In 1968, when the American media showed Chicago cops clubbing protesters, there were howls of wounded outrage. Not at abuse of police power, but at the protesters themselves.
The media learned its lesson. Walter Cronkite rolled over for Mayor Richard the First. America might have hated the Vietnam war, but it hated the protesters more.
Even knowing that, it's pretty astonishing to read this in Greenwald's 8/30 post:
Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets.
The videos accompanying Glenn's posts are surprising, too. Arrests and searches without warrants, massive shows of force, against people accused of planning -- well, not much, if anything at all.
You have to wonder what made the police think these nice polite young people are dangerous. At least in 1968 they had the excuse that Abbie Hoffmann was obnoxious, and much of the New Left rhetoric rather scary.
It's not justification for police violence, let alone the politicized show trials that followed, against "conspirators" who hardly knew each other.
It seems like a silly overreaction against today's antiwar movement, to the extent that one exists. Let alone dangerous tree-huggers or deadly vegans. It shows a fearful Republican party, a panicky government, and a cowed citizenry, if this can happen in 2008.
These are the voters John McCain wants. His base, if you will.
To state the obvious: You don't have to belong to or agree with these groups, or believe that protest at a national convention is a good tactic, or even like demonstrations, to see that this is not America. You don't even have to be a Democrat to see that this is wrong.
The message of this crackdown on next to nothing: stay home, be quiet. Greenwald again, from /31:
That is the point of the raids -- to announce to citizens that they best stay in their homes and be good, quiet, meek, compliant people unless they want their homes to be invaded, their property seized, and have rifles pointed at them, too. The fact that this behavior is producing so little outcry only ensures, for obvious reasons, that it will continue in the future. We love our Surveillance State for keeping us safe and maintaining nice, quiet order.
If anybody sees these raids reported on cable TV or a major newspaper, I hope you'll post the info. I'll be surprised there is much reporting, let alone outrage. Our brave Fourth Estate learned its lesson well in '68.
P.S. Updating:
DEQ54 points out a link to a New York Times story: Dozens Detained Ahead of Convention.
boingBoing has blogBlogged on this topic as well.