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Workers Vanguard No. 919 |
29 August 2008 |
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Cops Attack DNC Protest, Arrest 100 Drop All Charges Now! Free the Arrested Protesters! At an August 25 protest outside the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Denver, riot police wearing gas masks surrounded 300 protesters and others on the street, detaining them for nearly an hour before arresting some 100. Protesters, bystanders and journalists were blinded with pepper spray and struck with batons. Those arrested face charges including obstruction of streets or public passageways (i.e., jaywalking!) and interference and disobedience to a lawful order. We demand: Free all those arrested! Drop all charges now!
“Unconventional Denver,” an anarchist group that called the protest, as well as “Recreate ’68” and others have been ludicrously smeared in the bourgeois press as provoking the cop attack. On the contrary: Denver cops, courts and prisons were prepared well in advance for a crackdown, in order to keep the DNC “clean” for Barack Obama, the Clintons, the Kennedys, Biden, etc. A warehouse was converted into a mass detention center for DNC protesters. Equipped with metal cages and stun guns, it has become known as “Gitmo on the Platte.” The roundup of harmless, liberal activists at the DNC comes at the same time that brutal repression is carried out against immigrants, such as the detention of nearly 600 at a factory in Laurel, Mississippi, also on August 25. Free the detainees! No deportations! Hands off the DNC protesters!
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