Our man in St. Paul updates us on his arrest at the RNC
October 12, 2008 at 3:13 am by Kelly Benjamin(Editor’s note: here’s the latest from our RNC correspondent and Tampa Bay political activist and past candidate Kelly Benjamin)
— As of now, I’m still being charged with three ridiculous misdemeanors by the St. Paul City Attorney’s office: Unlawful Assembly, Obstructing Legal Process, and Disorderly Conduct — all of which I’m pretty confident I’m innocent of. I was all set to fly back to St. Paul and defend myself at my arraignment last week when I finally got a call back from the city attorney who is prosecuting my case. Reeking of “Minnesota Nice,” she advised me to hold off on flying up there so she could have more time to review my case and maybe even drop my charges. That was sincerely nice of her but I wish she would have told me that BEFORE I purchased another $350 roundtrip ticket. She didn’t have much to say about that. (Minnesota niced out I guess.) I postponed my court date and somehow managed to get a credit for my flight. Then I sent the prosecutor the video I was shooting right up to my arrest so she could see for herself that I was just sort of milling about peacefully when the cops chased me down and beat me up. She watched it and agreed that it didn’t look like I did anything illegal…”BUT“, she said, “you paused the tape.”
“Um, yeah, I think I pressed pause for a second or two by accident.”
“Aha! And how am I supposed to know that you didn’t break any laws while the tape was paused?”
“Well, I’m just not the kind of person that would do that…”
“Uh huh.”
(NOTE: This is not verbatim, just the gist .)
So now it’s a waiting game for me to see if the cops can come up with any evidence whatsoever to support their claim that I acted disorderly, obstructed their legal process, and/or assembled with others illegally (which I find particularly hilarious, seeing as Freedom of Assembly is one of those constitutionally guaranteed rights we supposedly enjoy).
But the most beautiful irony of the whole debacle, the one that puts a pretty red bow on top of this whole ugly mess, is that the court rescheduled my hearing in Minnesota for Nov. 4. Election Day.
— During this summer’s political conventions, the most interesting news and commentary to come out of Denver and St. Paul came from independent journalists.
Folks from small underground outfits like Submedia.tv, The UpTake, Mobile Broadcast News, and others, risked getting shot, gassed, and having the living shit kicked out of them by police for simply trying to get the word out about what was going on down in the streets. This has led to some interesting debate regarding the validity of this kind of journalism as compared to, oh say FOX News, and whether these kind of “citizen journalists” should have the same rights and be held in the same regard as “official” credentialed journalists working for corporate media outlets. After dozens of media folk were arrested while filming or recording events during the RNC (including Yours Truly), The Society of Professional Journalists held a panel discussion to examine just how it all went down during the protests in St. Paul and why they kept fucking with the journalists. You can see an interesting excerpt from the panel here and watch the first 30 minutes of the discussion here.
— Speaking of indy media, a new documentary cleverly entitled Ground Noise and Static was recently released that chronicles what happened in the streets outside the political conventions this summer and uncovers some of the things America didn’t get to see on their televisions. This film is a snapshot of American dissent during this historic election year and is definitely worth a check out here.
October 28th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
just a friendly reminder that the less you speak and post about the details of your case, the safer you and we all are.