I’ve just been reading up on the ‘RNC 8‘–you familiar with these folks?
These 8 ‘radical protesters’ were part of a group, the ‘RNC Welcoming Committee’, put together in advance of the Republican National Convention, around the beginning of September 2008.
They’ve been charged with four felony counts each, and two of those are terrorism(!) related charges. What did they do at the convention that was so awful, so violent? Nothing. They were sitting in jail because they’d already been arrested, in part because of what at least one FBI informant said they had planned to do.
The Saturday before the Republican National Convention, Trimmer was sleeping upstairs in his two-story home in Minneapolis’s Powderhorn neighborhood when he was awakened by a clatter. Within seconds, armed officers burst through his bedroom, guns drawn, and arrested Trimmer, his live-in girlfriend Monica Bicking, and their roommate Garrett Fitzgerald.
Five more RNC protesters would be rounded up during that weekend in advance of the RNC. Dubbed the “RNC 8,” the defendants—seven of whom were members of anarchist group the RNC Welcoming Committee—stand accused of “conspiring to riot,” a second-degree felony.
What had they planned to do? Protest, they say, that’s it. The informant said they’d planned to kidnap delegates and sabotage the convention center.
Well, what did their buddies, other associates of the ‘RNC Welcoming Committee’, end up doing? Nothing terrorist as far as I remember, or as far as television, journalism or history remember. Yet they’re being charged with ‘conspiracy to commit riot in furtherance of terrorism’ and ‘conspiracy to commit criminal damage to property in furtherance of terrorism’.
So even though no terrorism occurred, and they were sitting in jail while the convention was going on, they could end up doing 12 years in jail each.
I just nabbed a video, I’m uploading it now, back in a moment…
