Love & Rage: An RNC Reportback

Noah Balloon, 06.10.2008 01:00

We agree to: a rejection of capitalism, imperialism, and the state; resist the commodification of our shared and living Earth; organize on the principles of decentralization, autonomy, sustainability, and mutual aid; work to end all relationships of domination and subjugation, including but not limited to those rooted in patriarchy, race, class, and homophobia; oppose the police and prison-industrial complex, and maintain solidarity with all targets of state repression; directly confront systems of oppression, and respect the need for a diversity of tactics. Our solidarity will be based on respect for a diversity of tactics and the plans of other groups. The actions and tactics used will be organized to maintain a separation of time or space. Any debates or criticisms will stay internal to the movement, avoiding any public or media denunciations of fellow activists and events. We oppose any state repression of dissent, including surveillance, infiltration, disruption and violence. We agree not to assist law enforcement actions against activists and others.

Late on August 29th, I reached the Twin Cities after a thirteen hour drive with a group of what I would grow to consider my best friends. For the purposes of protecting the innocent, they will be referred to as Throwaways, Redpatch, Babycakes, and ENB. We left Denver together early in the morning, and drove through Nebraska and Iowa discussing the finer points of resistance, meanwhile receiving word that our comrades already in Minneapolis-St. Paul were being slowly snatched up by plain clothes cops in unmarked vans. We had heard that the St. Paul Police Department (SPPD) raided the convergence center on Smith earlier in the night, pointing guns and the elderly and infants who had just settled down to a movie. Everyone present was detained and forced to identify.

We woke up on August 30th and made our way to the convergence center to meet with our affinity group. Through the rest of the 30th, and all day on the 31st, we underwent meticulous planning to determine what our role would be on Labor Day. At one point, we converged upon a park with our cell phone batteries removed and everyone vouched for, for fear that we were being tapped. Through the corner of my eye, I watched as middle aged man gave his daughter and ice cream cone and then left her standing on a bench as he walked past us, peering at our maps. He went to the dock as if to denounce his position as an informant, and then immediately walked back to his daughter. Before I could get a word out, we were evicted from the park by a park ranger.

We determined that we had done enough planning for now, and we would meet after the final spokescouncil with any lingering concerns. The spokescouncil lasted four hours, and involved the final consensus on jail solidarity. Our affinity group carefully made our way from St. Paul back to Minneapolis to meet at the home Throwaways, Redpatch and I were staying. Included in that last group were Green Falcon, Sewer, and Chad. I didn't know it then, but those three would be arrested with Throwaways, Redpatch and I the next day.

Due to the ongoing status of Minnesota v. Noah Ho'aka Jacobs, I cannot publish too many details about what happened on Labor Day. I will say the following things:

1) On three separate occasions, a group we were affiliated with who had engaged in a lockbox were alternately threatened with tear gas, billy clubs, and, scariest of all, tasers.

2) No formal dispersal orders were verbalized at any arrest site I passed, when police protocol demands three before engaging in pain or chemical compliance. Instead, our supposed protectors chose to evoke phrases such as, "Don't fuckin' do it," and, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way."

3) I was sprayed - without warning - in the mouth, nose, eyes, and all over my cheeks with what the SPPD calls an aerosol subject restraint, or pepper spray. I could not open my eyes for a full 45 minutes, and had no visual concept of where I was for the duration of my detention and booking until I returned to St. Paul earlier this week for court.

4) I still don't have full feeling in my left thumb from the zip tie handcuffs. When asked if they were too tight, I responded in the positive and the cuffs were immediately tightened. Later, a prison nurse would tell me that this is normal.

5) We fucking showed them.

Throwaways, Redpatch, Sewer, Green Falcon, Chad and I were placed in a paddy wagon and taken to Ramsey County Jail. On the ride, we continued our participation in jail solidarity that we had started by refusing to identify ourselves. We composed a song entitled "The Twelve Days of Protest," prompting our ride to endanger innocent civilians by speeding to jail.

Once in jail, we were separated despite requests that our core group of six remain together. In response, we sang songs and played games. Throwaways and Sewer were separately placed in solitary confinement. After a lengthy booking process, during which I was incredibly moved to see friends like Babycakes making hearts with their hands through their cell windows at me.

The police asked who in the jail was vegan. Thinking on our feet, we remembered text messages we had received from the Tin Can Collective relaying that the SPPD had been denying Erik Oseland vegan food and we all raised our hands. It was peanut butter and jelly three times a day for the next three days.

We were finally placed in maximum security cells sometime in the middle of the night. My first roommate was named Noah, an incredibly funny and articulate young man. He was taken from me around four in the morning. I would see him when I was released from jail, and no longer under the assumed name of John B. Doe I was able to tell him that I was a Noah too.

I spent the next few days in my cell with a man whose name I never learned. He was an out-of-towner, but not here for the protests. As such, he was not participating in the sing-alongs or wild animal noise contests, nor did he declare a hunger strike with us when Spoonboy was denied vegan food.

I was released from my cage for a total of thirty minutes over the next two days, and received five minutes to talk to the Coldsnap Legal Collective. I was never given a chance to shower the pepper spray off of my face. At some point during this time, I also witnessed the beginning of the brutal torture of Elliot Hughes.

We were playing the animal noise game, when an officer approached Elliot's cell. He told Elliot, "You're going to fucking get it," and called for back-up. Three or four more cops entered our cell block and opened the door to Elliot's cell. I could see him on the ground tying his shoe. Then I saw the cops push his head to the ground. Fifteen to twenty more officers converged on our cell block and rushed Elliot's cell, blocking the security camera. Through the pounding of our cell doors and chimpanzee noises, people with better views than I were spreading word that he was maced and tased. The last I saw of Elliot in person, he was being dragged by his arms and legs out of our cell block, crying and bleeding from the back of his head.

The rest of Elliot's story is his to tell, not mine. As seen on Digg, here is the most chilling and thorough account of Elliot's time in Ramsey County:  http://futurenewstoday.blogspot.com/2008/09/elliot-hughes-american-hero.html

On my last day in jail, I spent most of it in a transfer cell with Redpatch and Green Falcon. We ate our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, flushed apples down the toilet, played a version of The Village involving police, protesters, and legal observers, and bowled with our water bottles and an orange.

I finally spoke to a lawyer from the National Lawyer's Guild, Jordan S. Kushner, who represented me in front of a judge. The judge agreed to release me on my own recognizance on the grounds that I identify, I obey the law, and I return to St. Paul for my trial. Eight hours later, at around 11:30pm, I was released from Ramsey County Jail alongside Babycakes. Waiting for us outside were hundreds of friends we had and hadn't met in the streets, with blankets and cigarettes and food.

Soon enough, Green Falcon, Sewer, Chad, and Redpatch were released. Spoonboy and ENB came from somewhere and explained that Throwaways was arbitrarily being held on $1,000 bail. The next morning, we finally got him out of jail, feasted, licked our wounds, and I embarked with Throwaways, Redpatch, Babycakes, and ENB to the next leg of our trip: Chicago.

RNC08 will probably never be Blockbusterized in the way that WTO99 is right now. It will probably never register as anything more than a failed demonstration by the fringe, wingnut group that the media likes to call us anarchists. But for some of us, like me, it was a very important week. I can now say without stuttering that I am an anarchist, I am proud of it, and I am willing to sit down with anyone who will take me and talk through the mass media's misconceptions on what our society will one day look like.

We sat down in St. Paul and we focused on tomorrow. We sent a message to McCain, Palin, Bush, Cheney, Rice, the delegates, and the growing police state. NO PARTY FOR THE WAR CRIMINALS. NOT IN OUR CITY. NOT ON OUR PLANET. NOT IN OUR NAME. And more importantly, we set the foundation for future protests. One day, the St. Paul Principles will replace the Ten Commandments.

As for now, I await trial on December 15th. I can plead guilty by mail at any time, but that would be perjury. I don't believe in my heart that what we did in the Twin Cities was a crime. And one day, I hope to offer RNC08 as a bedtime story to our posterity, but only if they agree by consensus to hear it.

Love and rage,
Noah Balloon

e-mail:: noahballoon@riseup.net

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Thanks! 07.10.2008 - 16:49 Thanks for featuring this! Noah Balloon> e-mail:: noahballoon@riseup.net Homepage:: http:// thankyou 10.10.2008 - 08:06 thankyou. i am going to re-post your story to our local newsletter. Michigan> Homepage:: http://