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Last week some folks were reenacting the Days of Rage in Grant Park, but the reenacting of significance was happening in Minneapolis/St. Paul, where cops were using charges of conspiracy to commit riot–rarely seen since the Chicago 7 trial–to raid homes and jail protesters. Now that windows are being broken and protesters are being gassed you might start to see media coverage, but more disturbing, to me at least, were the pre-convention raids, which have gotten very little attention outside independent media and the blogosphere. Conspiracy to riot/commit riot is a rare charge because it’s flimsy and easily abused; at its worst it’s an efficient combination of First and Fourth amendment violations. (In the case of the RNC Welcoming Committee, one of the targets of the raids, Orin Kerr argues that the raids were lawful and sensible, at least in purpose.)
It’s hard to say whether the Minneapolis protests will take in the same way the Chicago siege did; ultimately, it’s a broader cultural question. If they do, expect to hear about them the next time someone gins up a casus belli.
