Redstate

The rent-a-mobs should be there, anyway.

By Mark Kilmer Posted in Culture — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Get ready for the riots! When the GOP convenes in Minneapolis-St. Paul next summer, the lefties promise to be there. Katherine Kersten of the Minneapolis Star Tribune has a look at the situation over at RealClearPolitics, and it is a cross between "it isn't pretty" and "it's pretty pathetic."

Before New York City in 2004, we are told, the mobs used to be a bunch of aging and gentle hippies rolling their own, carrying placards. But now…

Kersten quotes Annette Meeks, a delegate to the '04 Manhattan convention:

"In New York we saw a professional class of protesters, with an angry, violent mob mentality. Their goal is not to be heard. Their sole purpose is to create anarchy in our streets."

Meeks saw protesters use burning trash bins in an effort to shut down Manhattan's theater district. Swarms of bicyclists blocked traffic, crowds of protesters harassed delegates at their hotels.

"They screamed obscenities -- any way they could conjugate the F-word," she said. "Then they grew weary of yelling and started spitting and throwing things at us."

It sounds as if they are borrowing tactics from the more serious protesters of the European left. Remember the Genoa G8 summit in July of 2001?

Read On…

Anti-globalization protesters flooded this hilly, Mediterranean port city -- with many of them turning violent. An unknown number hurled cobblestones and Molotov cocktails, smashed windows, set fires to cars and trash bins and looted storefronts.

Police responded with water cannons, tear gas and nightsticks, clubbing some protesters into submission and arresting dozens.

Of course, that is from the serious, European left. They were anarcho-syndicalists, to a large extent, protesting the threats of globalization. The American lefties, on the other hand, seem to have no real common cause. Some protest Halliburton, some ChimpyMcBushHitlerNeoConMan™, others Meat being Murder and the New Coke. And they pay a few pro's to come in and bust things up.

Kersten again:

In such a situation, our first impulse is Minnesota Nice. Twin Cities lawyers are signing up in droves to aid what they may naively view as old-fashioned protesters. St. Paul is reportedly exploring the possibility of helping protesters find campgrounds.

But Minnesota Nice isn't likely to dissuade determined anarchists. When demonstrators converged on Seattle in 1999 to protest a World Trade Organization conference, the mayor welcomed them and police backed off. Protesters trashed the city so thoroughly that, within hours, the mayor declared an emergency and asked the governor to call in the National Guard.

There were 37,000 police officers in the Big Apple to take care of 400,000 ne'er-do-wells. Kersten puts the Minneapolis-St. Paul number at 3,000.

Well, last week, the Star Tribune published news of the American lefties getting "a tuneup [for the '08 protests] on Sept. 15 when they will stage an antiwar march from the Cathedral of St. Paul to the Xcel Center and then to the State Capitol, a route protesters hope to use again on the opening day of the convention."

Besides a local anarchist group that is hinting at confrontational tactics, some civil disobedience protests are expected that could result in arrests.

These are anarchists. That is a catchall term for people with issues, it seems. And they want to match the detritus which falls from the rotting carcass of an Old Europe which might be starting to wake up. They'll get headlines, but they are not a threat. They are not an angry movement gaining currency in Bush's America, or whatever they might want to call themselves.

Heck, for aught we know, these unserious cretins could be holding out for Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Ryba to pull a Mike Bloomberg and give them shopping sprees if they promise to behave. It's good that some of these freaks can be purchased, but it's a shame it has to be at the taxpayers' nickel.

I am looking forward to covering this drama from afar. Sort of.