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Nigel Parry wasn’t arrested, harassed or gassed during the RNC. But he was affected.
At the Tilsner Artists’ Cooperative, where he’s lived on and off over the years, he shared a room a friend was renting out to people working for Indy Media and the Glass Bead Collective. “I spent the week with extremely freaked out and justifiably paranoid independent media people.”
He was getting “fog of war” reports all week. It was difficult to get the big picture — it still is.
So Parry — a songwriter, photojournalist and web designer — started a paper archive of everything that happened outside the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. “I printed everything from Star Tribune reports to St. Paul City Council minutes.”
People he met during the convention who had stayed in town to work on a documentary about the RNC kept asking him about one document or another. “Finally I just decided to gather everything online.”
Parry has experience with this. He co-founded the website Electronic Intifada after his experiences in the West Bank. To this day, the site is an always-current archive of events in Palestine — often written by Palestinians themselves.
Parry’s current endeavor is RNC ‘08 Report. He calls it “a citizen’s archive of media reports, government documents and other resources.”
His collection, he insists, “is unprejudiced — it’s the widest possible range of sources because that’s what will be the most helpful. I’ve archived the Twitter feeds and I’ve archived Department of Defense press releases about the deployment of the national guard. I’ve got city press releases on the arrests of the RNC 8 and the press releases of the RNC Welcoming Committee.”
He’s still furiously adding to the site and wants people to tell him what he’s missing. His vision is nothing short of a total archive.
“The goal,” he says, “is clarity.”
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4 Comments »
Comment posted October 8, 2008 @ 8:50 pm
God on Parry. The RNC seems like so much ancient history now with the Presidential campaigns and the economic turmoil. Even the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan have been placed on the “back burner” in people’s minds. What happened in the Twin Cities in terms of revealing what a militarized, militaristic state we live in is important. The comments of many people that the brutality of the cops in St. Paul, the infiltration and the suppression of fundamental rights are just OK now with a sizeable portion of the population.
Comment posted October 8, 2008 @ 8:51 pm
“God on Parry”. That is: “Good on Parry”.
Comment posted October 9, 2008 @ 7:12 am
Thanks Nigel Parry for your valuable research.
Although you probably already have the story (have not perused all of Parry’s collection)…but, if not, check out ‘Axis of Logic’ website and the Oct.5,’08 entry …”Congress denied access to Martial Law Plan” by Congressman Peter Defazio and the accompaning videos…”Bush officials have denied Congressman Peter Defazio from his duty to review classified White House documents that describe how the Administration plans to conduct the US government if martial law is declared.”
While this nation is nervously counting its gold coins; or its pennies…this administration’s mice will play,maybe?
Should we be waiting for the next ’shoe’ to fall’…or is it a boot? Who knows if St Paul was but a trial run, a canary in the mine, whatever…at least it may be worth wondering about?
Certainly Wall Street crashing is more than a distraction…but it could only begin there…so what’s next folks?
Comment posted October 10, 2008 @ 4:33 pm
Every day the US seems to be coming closer to a classic Police State: most if not all `legal measures` are in place, the Congress has been rendered compliant and ineffective, executive power is paramount and combat troops have been brought back to `keep public order`. The Administration is using the financial crisis as a vehicle to massively transfer wealth from the population-at-large to the financial élite, and what we see are a few outraged comments in independent media and some scattered and desultory protests. This will not avert the REAL catastrophe for the people, because once the Police State is installed, it would be almost impossible for any effective counter action, one has only to look to the relatively recent history of the USSR, and without a mass protest movement, bigger than that during the Vietnam war, you are bound to repeat it, the history, that is! . .
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