Terrorizing Dissent - US and Kenya

The account below, of the state-sponsored violence enacted upon peaceful US protesters during the Republican National Convention in August, is written by Brendan Rogers, a student at Macalester College, Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the RNC was held.

There are dramatic parallels to the police and state-sponsored violence against civil society in Kenya. It highlights the fact that our struggle for peace, justice and constitutional rights in Kenya does not take place in isolation. It is linked to a much larger global movement.

Terrorizing Dissent

by Brendan Rogers

Friends, Teachers, Family, Loved Ones,

As I write this, it is late on a Tuesday night. It is the end of October and I am contemplating where I was two months ago, at the end of August. As I recall, I was frantically trying to find places for some 300 students from around the country to sleep and be safe as they prepared to descend upon the Republican National Convention in St. Paul to protest. Those days in late August were hectic and crazy, and I remember thinking "If this much work is going into preparing for the protests, they're going to be great!"

Then Friday, August 29th rolled around and the protesters began coming into town. Over the weekend, an occupying army of Secret Service, Homeland Security, and out of town police agencies invaded my town and plucked people I knew off the streets in unmarked vans. It was a terrifying experience, knowing that I could be next. I remember not being able to sleep for hours, checking the window every time a car passed by, assuming it was they were coming for me and reaching for my cell phone to make my final goodbye call to my mother.

At the time, we didn't know what was going on inside the jails to political prisoners, but we assumed (correctly) that they were being tortured.

It was, in short, a police state. Now, I do not use that word frivolously, as is often the custom on the left to throw the words "police state" or "fascist" on anything we don't like. I use the phrase with its meaning intact. What is actually so remarkable about this "police state" is that it is not at all remarkable.

For communities of color and poor communities all over our country, this police state is everyday life.

The RNC simply brought home that reality to those of who benefit from our white skin and/or class privilege enough to not have known it before. It made us realize that our state is a police state, insofar as:

1) citizens' daily interactions are governed most prominently by interactions with the police, and

2) that these officers have nearly unlimited license to act upon our bodies and spirits.

On Monday, the protests began and, predictably, the police attacked with unprecedented ferocity all those who chose to demonstrate outsidethe narrow confines of the law. All those who didn't get a permit, all those who showed their resistance in unusual or new ways, many who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, were brutalized and/or arrested.

I say all this not to provoke "liberal sympathy" or make myself out to be someone important in this. I was not. It's probably good that I wasn't important, or I may have ended up in 23 hour solitary confinement or with terrorism charges like others did. I was just like any other young Midwestern rebel. I took to the streets to stand with my people and demonstrate against not only the Republican Party, but the entire monstrous system of violence that upholds it.

If you have the time, I'd encourage you to check out a film made by the Glass Bead Collective, a group of filmmakers from New York. They were apparently deemed so dangerous by the authorities in St. Paul that they had cameras confiscated by the police without reason on Aug. 29th, were detained without cause for hours the Saturday before the RNC, and were again raided on Wednesday of the RNC. After watching this film, I hope you can see why the authorities considered their eyes to be so dangerous.

Their film is called Terrorizing Dissent and the first part can be found here. The rest will follow in the next week or so. I should warn you that the film does have some graphic images of people being attacked with chemical weapons.

The film has some pretty powerful footage of my brothers and sisters being brutalized and arrested on the streets. I was attacked by police early in the day and needed medical care. So I was unable to get back to downtown St. Paul during the worst of the violence. I wish all the time that I had been able to get down there. If only to hold someone's hand while they had internationally-outlawed chemical weapons applied to their body by armored police officers and Homeland Security thugs.

I frequently replay the feeling of the pepperspray hitting my eyes. It no longer feels like the worst pain I've ever experienced, like it when it happened. But I do believe that we were fighting a just battle, a battle that must be undertaken so that one day no one will feel the baton, tear gas, or bullet again.

Dreaming of a new world,
Brendan Rogers