An appeal would mean another return trip to the city, an expensive proposition that already has cramped her campaigning style in the final weeks before the Nov. 3 election. Hill was set to fly in and out of Pittsburgh today so she could be back in Minneapolis for a Ward Three candidate debate Thursday at the University of Minnesota.

Pittsburgh was the site of a September meeting of leaders from the G-20 group of nations that drew sizable street protests — protests that Hill says she was only trying to cover as a journalist for Indymedia when police arrested her, damaged her camera and confiscated a video cassette.

Hill is on the Minneapolis ballot as a “Civil Disobedience” candidate. She was also arrested outside the Rage Against the Machine concert in downtown Minneapolis during the 2008 Republican National Convention (charges were dropped), and has coordinated several “End the Fed” demonstrations at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank.

Vain Mainstream (left) with attorney Robert Kolstad. Photo: Paul Demko, MnIndy

Vain Mainstream just wanted to go to work. The 23-year-old Minneapolis resident was employed by Avalon Security on the opening day of the Republican National Convention last September. His assignment: to keep watch over a parking lot in downtown St. Paul and make sure that the thousands of protesters coursing through the streets of the city didn’t do any damage.

“I was notorious for being late,” Mainstream recalls. “So I figured I better show up early and find the best way to get to work.”

But as Mainstream headed down Shepard Road along the Mississippi River on his way to work, he suddenly found himself surrounded by dozens of police officers. Some were clad head-to-toe in riot gear. Others were on bikes or horses. Next thing Mainstream knew the cops were announcing that everyone in the riverfront park was under arrest.

Mainstream was transported to the Ramsey County Jail, where he was held for almost three days. He was initially charged with unlawful assembly and felony conspiracy to riot, but the charges were eventually dropped.

“What baffles me about the whole thing is I was working for the man,” Mainstream says. “I was supposed to be keeping protesters off the street and I was arrested as one.”

Mainstream is one of 27 plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court Tuesday charging that the St. Paul Police Department violated their constitutional rights on the opening day of the convention.  The lawsuit alleges that police officers illegally detained more than 200 people and suppressed their free speech rights. The case is intended to be a class action on behalf of everyone arrested along Shepard Road and was filed on the one-year anniversary of the opening of the convention.

“The city has admitted that people were arrested preemptively in this park,” said attorney Robert Kolstad at a press conference held on the site of the mass arrest today. “They arrested them because they were afraid of what they might do in the future, which is a dangerous path for our government to take. Taken to its logical conclusion, what it means is that the government now believes that they can come to our houses and arrest us because they think that we might do something wrong. Our constitution simply doesn’t permit that.”

Some of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege that they were subjected to tear gas and flash-bang grenades for no apparent reason. They also maintain that police officers never ordered people to disperse prior to making the mass arrests. According to Kolstad, none of the named plaintiffs in the case were convicted of any crimes stemming from activities on the opening day of the convention.

“We do not believe that any of the people who were herded into this park had done anything illegal,” he said. “If there was evidence that these people had actually done something wrong, some of those cases would have stuck.”

Kevin Hundt. Photo: Paul Demko, MnIndy

Kevin Hundt, another of the plaintiffs in the case, came to the RNC from Madison, Wisconsin in order to protest. The self-described anarchist arrived in town roughly a week prior to the gathering to help plan activities. He too got caught up in the mass arrest along Shepard Road. While they were being detained, Hundt said, a fellow protester wet her pants because she wasn’t permitted to use the bathroom.

“It was really depressing to see,” he says. “It just made us feel pathetic.”

But unlike Mainstream and dozens of others, he wasn’t taken to jail.  Neither was Hundt ticketed or charged with any crime.

“Here I am, actually an anarchist, and they didn’t arrest me,” he recalls. “But hundreds of people, not anarchists, got arrested. Where’s the rhyme or reason here?”

After Mainstream was finally released from jail after three days, he returned to work at Avalon Security. His assignment: help with security outside the Xcel Energy Center. Among the tasks that Mainstream says he performed was letting Newt Gingrich into the convention.

“It baffles me that they would try to say that we’re dangerous people,” he says. “If we were so dangerous why would they let us get back to our jobs protecting the convention that we were apparently protesting.”

Police face off with an RNC demonstrator. Photo: Paul Demko, Minnesota Independent

The Republican National Convention opened in St. Paul at the Xcel Energy Center exactly a year ago. Repercussions from the gathering — and, more significantly, the corresponding protests in the streets — continue to be felt today.

The St. Paul Police Department initially vowed that the city would present a welcoming face to Republican delegates and protesters alike. But on the opening day of the convention the streets of downtown St. Paul were lined with hundreds of cops clad head to toe in riot gear. The first day witnessed the most violent clashes of the gathering — with protesters shattering downtown windows and slashing tires, and the cops responding with the liberal use of pepper spray and flash-bang grenades — but the confrontations and arrests would continue throughout the four-day gathering.

By the time John McCain accepted the Republican nomination for president more than 800 people had been arrested, the vast majority of them in mass sweeps. So how many of these people were actually engaged in prosecutable criminal activities? A year later the answer is clear: not many.

Ultimately 676 of these cases were referred to the St. Paul City Attorney’s office for possible misdemeanor charges. But almost immediately the cases began collapsing. It was initially announced that 39 journalists who had been detained would not face criminal charges. Then in February St. Paul City Attorney John Choi let it be known that more than 300 people swept up in a mass arrest on the final night of the RNC would not be prosecuted. Ultimately more than 80 percent of the cases handled by the St. Paul City Attorney’s office didn’t result in charges.

“The overwhelming majority of arrests clearly didn’t have any basis,” says Jordan Kushner, a defense attorney who is handling several RNC-related cases.

Chuck Samuelson, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, argues that the heavy-handed police tactics and large-scale arrests were simply designed to quell dissent. He notes that in 2004, when the RNC was held in New York, there were roughly 500,000 protesters and 1,600 arrests. By contrast, in St. Paul there were an estimated 10,000 protesters and nearly 800 arrests — a strikingly higher ratio.

“The First Amendment is messy, because it allows people to speak their mind,” Samuelson says. “You need to be prepared for messy.”

But Choi maintains that the low rate of successful prosecutions isn’t necessarily indicative of wrongful arrests. He notes that the standards for making arrests and prosecuting charges are very different.

“What we’re looking at is whether we could actually obtain a conviction at trial, prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt,” Choi says. “That’s a really high bar. When you have situations involving First Amendment issues, mass arrest situations and a confusing fact pattern, it’s really difficult to get to believing that we would have a likelihood of success at trial.”

While the misdemeanor charges handled by Choi’s office have largely evaporated, many of the more serious criminal cases continue to work their way through the courts. On Monday, for instance, the trial of two defendants — Christina Vana and Karen Meissner — began in Ramsey County District Court on charges of aiding and abetting second-degree assault. The pair are accused of throwing a metal sign off the Marion Street bridge onto Interstate 94.

Other high-profile felony cases have resulted in guilty pleas. Bradley Crowder and David McKay, activists from Austin, Texas, eventually pleaded guilty to federal charges related to manufacturing molotov cocktails. In May, Crowder was sentenced to 24 months in prison. That same month McKay, whose initial trial resulted in a hung jury, received a 48-month sentence.

But the most conspicuous criminal charges, those involving the so-called RNC Eight, look to still be a long ways from trial. The eight defendants are charged with an elaborate, nationwide criminal conspiracy to disrupt — and ultimately bring to a halt –  the convention. In a series of raids during the days leading up to the convention, Ramsey County Sheriff’s deputies seized seized smoke bombs, sling shots, bottles of vinegar, buckets of nails and other purported evidence of this conspiracy.

The eight activists alleged to be behind the criminal plot — Erik Oseland, Eryn Trimmer, Garrett Fitzgerald, Luce Guillen-Givens, Max Specktor, Monica Bicking, Rob Czernik and Nathanael Secor — were initially charged with felony counts of conspiracy to commit riot in the second degree in furtherance of terrorism. In March, however, the more incendiary terrorism aspect of the charges was dropped by the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office.

But attorney Larry Leventhal, who is representing Specktor, argues that the terrorism designation has already damaged the reputations of the defendants. “Everybody’s against terrorism,” he notes. “You use words like that for inflammatory purposes.”

The cases were slated for a hearing last month, but it got postponed owing to a scheduling conflict. Two thorny issues must be settled before they can proceed to trial: whether all the defendants will be tried together and exactly what evidence will be deemed admissable. No trial date has been set. The defendants have stated repeatedly that they intend to fight the charges.

“I am not going to take a plea bargain,” says Rob Czernik. “I want to fight this. I want to see it through to the end. If I get found guilty I get found gulty. I’m not going to go down without a fight.”

Czernik and others largely blame the prosecutions on the strong-arm tactics of the Ramsey County Sherrif’s Department, which conducted the undercover investigations that led to the RNC Eight arrests. In particular, they believe Sheriff Bob Fletcher was guilty of fear-mongering with regards to the aims of anti-RNC activists.

“I totally think this is a creation of Bob Fletcher’s mind,” Czernik says of the investgation.

But Fletcher says the strength of the evidence will ultimately be weighed by a jury. “That’s why we have a court system,” he says. “The facts will speak for themselves at trial.”

Even less settled than criminal matters is the civil litigation resulting from RNC activities. Many cases are just now entering the court system. In February, for example, seven cases were filed in U.S. District Court by plaintiffs charging that their civil rights were violated.

On Tuesday a class-action lawsuit is expected to be filed on behalf of individuals who were arrested during a mass sweep on the first day of the RNC. According to Robert Kolstad, one of three attorneys handling the  case, there will initially be two dozen plaintiffs attached to the case, but the list of litigants could grow to as many as 200 individuals.

The City of St. Paul (or any other government entity involved in RNC security) won’t likely be on the hook for a dime from such lawsuits. That’s in part because the city negotiated with the Minneapolis-St. Paul 1008 Host Committee — the nonprofit group charged with organizing the event — to purchase a $10 million insurance policy to cover any legal liabilities. Some have argued that this allowed officers to behave with impunity when facing off with protesters.

“It was carte blanche for the police to do whatever they wanted,” says defense attorney Kushner. “They didn’t have any financial liability to face so they had no disincentive for violating people’s rights.”

But Choi states that this theory is “fatally flawed.” He points out that the city is always covered by an insurance policy for police actions. The only difference in this instance was that the RNC host committee picked up the tab for the plan. “No matter what we would have had insurance,” he says.

How much will ultimately be paid out in lawsuits likely won’t be known for years. But the damage to the credibility of the cops is likely irreparable in the minds of many activists.

In part that’s because the expectation created by the St. Paul Police Department of a relatively benign security presence during the RNC hardly gelled with reality. This was among the criticisms voiced by former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger and former federal prosecutor Andy Luger in an 82-page report on RNC policing that was released in January. It’s a viewpoint that’s also shared by Fletcher.

“It was a flawed attempt to keep everyone happy,” he says. “What was needed was more honesty about the type of enforcement that was gong to occur.”

The Minnesota chapter of the ACLU is currently suing Fletcher’s office over the seizure of literature in the days leading up to the RNC. But Samuelson agrees that Minnesotans were misled about what to expect during the RNC and weren’t prepared for the heavy presence of law enforcement.

“The people of this state believed what they were told by law enforcement,” he says. “I think maybe a lot more skepticism might be in order the next time we entertain one of these events.”

The murders have come on the heels of a widely criticized report by the Department of Homeland Security, which described potential violence from people with extreme anti-abortion, anti-immigrant and white supremacist ideologies. Was the report accurate? And is the labeling of entire political groups and ideologies — such as the DHS report and the profiling of RNC protesters — an effective counterterrorism activity?

“There have been a lot of mistakes and problems with the way the so-called war on terror has been run domestically since 911,” former FBI agent Coleen Rowley said in an interview with the Minnesota Independent.

Rowley said the DHS report on right-wing extremism was wrong, but not for the objections that Republicans have raised.

“The reports contain almost no specificity but instead, make generalizations and stereotyped comments about large political or interest groups,” she said. “It’s true that individual loners or duos may be inspired by the extremist ideology stemming from any group, to include the ‘pro-life’ groups, but you need specific facts identifying the individual instead of stereotyped characterizations about the group.”

In a press briefing Thursday, Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano said the recent murders didn’t vindicate the report and said it was problematic.

“I don’t look at those murders as anything other than terrible crimes and tragedies,” Napolitano said, according to Washington Independent’s Spencer Ackerman. “I do think, as I’ve said before, that the so-called right-wing extremist report was not a well-produced product,” she said. “It could and should have been done better. We’ve already taken steps within the department to improve that situation.”

Rowley said the overly broad efforts such as the extremist report exacerbate the difficulties in identifying those loners or small cells of extremists.

“When looking for a needle in the haystack, massive ‘intelligence’ collection about the members of the groups only adds hay to the haystack and also chills exercise of First Amendment rights,” she said. “Members of the larger, mainstream group, if not alienated by being smeared, will be in the best position to identify the ‘true terrorist.’”

Indeed that was the case with the recent shootings In Arizona committed by members of an off-shoot of the anti-illegal immigration movement, the Minutemen. Shawna Fordes has been arrested in the murders and anti-illegal immigration groups say that they had forwarded information about Fordes to law enforcement after kicking her out of the Minuteman organization.

Rowley said that alienating these groups could prevent them from going to law enforcement when a troublemaker is identified.

Minnesota saw its share of generalized profiling at the Republican National Convention in September 2008.

“The worst recent example of this overbroad targeting, as well as surveillance and infiltration, would be that directed against the RNC Welcoming Committee and other peace/social justice protesters,” she said.

Eight members of the Welcoming Committee were charged with “furtherance of terrorism” under the Minnesota Patriot Act because of damage to property of over $1,000. Rowley said that this new definition of terrorism is wrong.

“‘Acts dangerous to human life’ is supposed to be the definition of domestic terrorism not just ‘property damage,’” she said. “The use of the looser definition in the ‘Minnesota Patriot Act’ which includes mere ‘property damage’ of $1,000 or more contributed to the misdirection of resources by law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the lead-up to the RNC.”

Attorney Jordan Kushner, who represented members of the RNC8, said charges were politically motivated. The terrorism charges were dropped, but not before having a chilling effect at the RNC protests.

“The fact that they were filed in the first place and pursued for a period of about eight months does show how much ‘terrorism’ is a political label,” he said.

Elko noted a then-staggering number of RNC-related tweets: 17,000. Last week, one estimate pegged the number of tweets related to Iran’s election and the subsequent protests at nearly a billion.

A MnIndy sampling of RNC tweets showed that St. Paul’s protests had some of the same confusion and enthusiasm, if not the gravitas, seen in recent demostrations in Tehran:

Police: “You must go to the left.” Protester: “Your left or ours?” 6:31 PM Sep 4th from web

Overheard at May Day cafe: “Dude, I totally got tear gassed. It was fucking awesome.” 11:57 AM Sep 3rd from web

Overheard from excited Mpls policeman, “So I shot him with impact round a[nd] he just fucking dropped!” 6:51 PM Sep 1st from web

Here’s one area in which St. Paul exceeds Tehran, for now. The roster of arrested journalists in Iran is as yet not quite half as long as those arrested during the RNC — though with much more serious implications for the people detained.

The document lists physical descriptions, phone numbers and other identifying information about activists in Iowa City.

Despite the infiltration, only one Iowa protester was arrested, activists say, and those charges were later dropped.

At least three other people connected to the Ramsey County Sheriff’s office were involved in infiltrating groups in Minnesota. “Norma Jean Johnson” also known as Ramsey County Deputy Sheriff Marilyn Hedstrom, infiltrated the RNC Welcoming Committee.

Rachel Nieting, a Ramsey County jail guard posed as Norma Jean’s niece, and Chris Dugger, was a confidential paid informant who now aspires to be a deputy.

Photo: stpaul.gov

“Shaken.” That’s one word Mayor Chris Coleman used to describe St. Paul during his State of the City address Monday. He said “a near-collapse of financial markets” has already forced him to make “significant cuts” to city services.

Coleman also had words of encouragement, but he cautioned that “there are no shortcuts to economic prosperity” — and said those who claim otherwise are either “lying to you … [or] fooling themselves.”

Still, he reminded citizens that St. Paul’s CIty Hall was built during the Great Depression and promised that even in “excruciating times,” the city would “refuse to be ordinary.”

Signs of hope Coleman cited ranged from the quaint to the depressing: downtown flower baskets, “dozens” of people who shovel their neighbors’ walks, and a tally of vacant houses that held steady — at 2,000 — from June 2008 to March 2009 (”arguably the housing market’s most challenging period”).

Coleman stressed that transportation infrastructure investment would be the big-ticket item that could pull the city through.

Coleman characterized the Central Corridor light-rail transit line as “crucial to future of city.” Without tooting his own horn for brokering a dispute over train noise between the Metropolitan Council and Minnesota Public Radio, he said, “One by one, obstructions to the Central Corridor have been removed.”

And Coleman called a proposed high-speed rail link from Chicago to St. Paul’s Union Depot “an opportunity we will seize and we will make a reality.”

Although the mayor was a late supporter of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, Coleman said the city is lucky to have the former Illinois senator in the White House. “We are fortunate to have a president who understands the importance of cities.”

The setting for the annual address — at one of St. Joseph’s Hospital’s ongoing expansion projects — was meant to show off the health sector as a backbone of the local economy. And he called education a “cornerstone” for St. Paul since its founding to the present day.

“Not only will our children be ready to work,” Coleman said, “… they’ll be ready to work in a global economy.” He bragged that St. Paul’s public school students speak 70 languages — a talent, he said, that employers increasingly value.

The health sector, education and the global economy were also themes for Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak in his State of the City address last month. By comparison, Coleman’s speech was shorter, generally lacked lofty policy rhetoric and was less a laundry list than Rybak’s speech. (True to its bigger-twin stereotype, Minneapolis claims that about a dozen more foreign languages are spoken in its public schools.)

Both mayors are running for re-election this year, but both have also shown interest in running for governor in 2010, using other occasions to show off their grasp of statewide concerns. But such ambitions weren’t evident at either speech.

Also not highlighted was the St. Paul’s hosting of last year’s Republican National Convention — a point of pride and shame for St. Paulites. City and Ramsey County officials have had to drop most charges that arose from mass arrests and pre-emptive raids, which dominated local news coverage.

“Safe we are but not naive,” was one standout line from a poem composed for the event that St. Paul Poet Laureate Carol Connolly recited before Coleman’s address.

Coleman had a new initiative to unveil that aims to promote greater involvement of residents in their community. The Volunteer-Inspire-Prosper Web page offers a comprehensive list of volunteer opportunities. Among them, the St. Paul Police Reserve, a group of reserve officers typically have duties like traffic control and barricade erection.

The video, taken by Twin Cities Indymedia, documents tour stops with cops-on-bikes in tow, a luncheon at a Minneapolis church with a parking lot full of police vehicles, and a musical (but “awkward”) petition-presentation to Ramsey County District Attorney Susan Gaertner with someone the TC Indymedia identifies as a plainclothes officer making his own video recording.

The events were in support of the RNC8, the eight individuals who face felony terrorism conspiracy charges from arrests made at pre-emptive raids before the RNC took place. Friends of the RNC8 are asking Gaertner to drop the charges.

In the video, famed FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley presents Gaertner with an appeal from famed Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, among others. Don Olson, a member of the Minnesota 8, a group who vandalized a Vietnam War-era draft office, told Gaertner, “We actually did something, but they didn’t do anything.”

TC Indymedia said 50 riders (not “rioters,” as it sounds like on the video) took part in the Tour de Fletcher, named for Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher, the man behind much of the law enforcement at the RNC.

After estimating the post-luncheon contingent at seven or eight remaining bicycles, a St. Paul police officer is shown issuing a radio message: “They’re not very forthcoming on information so I guess they don’t want to be safe on their bicycle ride.”

Police made one arrest for disorderly conduct, according to the video.

In a letter to Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan, bike-tour participant Nigel Parry wrote:

You are making the Cities a scary place to live. We should be able to go about our Constitutionally-guaranteed business, our political associations, and our vegan potlucks without this kind of—frankly—pervasive and fascist intervention.

The overwhelming majority of these — roughly 85 percent — have since been dropped owing to insufficient evidence. This includes the cases of 323 people who were picked up in a mass arrest on the final day of the convention and 39 journalists who were detained. In addition, as of last month, another 52 defendants had either pleaded guilty or paid a fine.

But of the small number of misdemeanor cases that have proceeded to court, the city attorney’s office has yet to secure a single conviction. The latest setback occurred Thursday when a jury acquitted two RNC protesters — Ilana Radovsky and Gracia Logue-Sargeant — of seven charges, including unlawful assembly and fleeing police, as reported by the Pioneer Press. In addition, two of the four charges facing Sean Patrick McCoy were dismissed by Ramsey County District Court Judge Edward Wilson owing to insufficient evidence. He was slated to be back in court today on the remaining counts.

In January, charges against seven protesters were dismissed after the prosecutors completed their case. Ramsey County District Judge Michael Fetsch determined that no jury could reasonably convict the defendants based on the evidence presented.

Here is the court schedule for the RNC8 hearings. All will take place at the Ramsey County Courthouse, 15 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul (courtroom assignments listed on screens in the lobby).

Max Specktor: Feb. 24, 1:30 p.m.
Monica Bicking: Feb. 24, 2:30 p.m.
Luce Guillen-Givens: Feb. 27, 9:30 a.m.
Eryn Trimmer: Feb. 10:30 a.m.
Erik Oseland: Monday, March 2, 9 a.m.
Rob Czernik: Tuesday, March 3, 9 a.m.
Nathanael Secor: Tuesday, March 3, 10 a.m.
Garrett Fitzgerald: Tuesday, March 3, 1:30 p.m.