Women's Pentagon Action vs the RNC Protests

Gary Thompson of St. Paul had a letter in the Star Tribune on Sept. 9 I wish I'd written:

How can news reporters agree with local authorities that the "show of force was purposeful and appropriate" on anti-war protesters near the RNC, who were nonviolent and civil disobedient? Not long ago, nonviolent, civil disobedient protesters were not tear-gassed by the police if they refused to move, but were just picked up and carted away. Nonviolent civil disobedience is what the Martin Luther King Jr. taught us and still is a useful and heartfelt response, for many very truly outraged and caring citizens.

These police and other security forces appeared to go even beyond their orders and kept tear-gassing some protesters over and over. The tear gassing of a nonviolent citizen even once, I feel is unlawful and probably unconstitutional. I believe the security forces were led by someone or organization other than our local police. An investigation of this terror-like behavior is definitely in order and should be done by an outside group.

Gary's letter made me think back to the first big protest I attended: the second Women's Pentagon Action. I believe it was in 1981, not long after Three Mile Island, and just after Reagan was elected and began the escalation toward the cruise missile deployment in Europe. If you're old enough, you probably recall that in the early 1980s, we all really did think the world was going to end any time.

I went down to D.C. on a chartered bus with a bunch of other women from my college. After our bus driver got lost in the city, we finally got to the assembly area, which was at a large civic building of some type in Northeast Washington. It was filled with women making signs and puppets. That night, we slept on the floor in the basement of St. Stephen's church along 16th Street NW.

The day of the action, we rode the Metro over to Arlington for the march to the Pentagon. Some of the women I was with had planned to do a piece of street theater on the train; I recall it involved holding gray balloons wrapped in baby blankets, pretending that they were missiles. But the balloons didn't work out, so they bagged the idea.


My memory of the march itself is mushy on the details, but I remember the huge puppets (made by Bread and Puppet Theater), and that a number of women wove the doors of the Pentagon shut with yarn. Some women had planned to carry out civil disobedience such as this (and there may have been some blood thrown on the building as well). Those who planned to do C.D. were all in "affinity groups" who would support them -- some members of each group were not going to be arrested, and would deal with the legal system for their arrested group members.

None of the women from my school were part of that, though, and none of us were arrested. Afterward, we got on our bus and went back to college.

Now, let's see. If that protest had been managed the way the city of St. Paul and its law enforcement brethren (and I do mean brethren... I didn't see a single woman cop at the Labor Day protest) managed the protests at the Republican National Convention, here's what would have happened:

• The staging area in Northeast would have been busted and shut down on conspiracy to commit riot, all of its signs and flyers confiscated, and its leaders imprisoned on felony charges
  
• The church we slept in would have been raided, its doors broken in, and we all would have been at least questioned if not arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit riot or throw biological materials
• The large puppets would have been barred from the march because they might be a place where we could hide biological materials or bombs
• Everyone would have been arrested if they didn't immediately leave the public streets when it was demanded by 3,500 police in riot gear
• We would have been tear-gassed, percussion grenaded and shot with "baton rounds" to corral us into an area where they could arrest us more easily

I'm sure some of the actions we took that day in 1981 would have been arrest-worth offenses if they had taken place in St. Paul in 2008. As a case in point, Nick Coleman's column in the Sept. 9 Strib tells the story of one young man, acting as a medic at the march on Labor Day, who was shot in the back with a baton round and arrested for no reason while treating a tear-gassed protester. He was wearing clothing that clearly labeled him as a medic (you know, those little red crosses that are generally recognizable).

Coleman points out that, given the $50 million spent on security for the convention, each arrest cost $61,125, and that the cost per conviction is likely to be a lot higher (I predict they'll be lucky if they come out of it with a million dollars per, and that's not counting what will be paid out in wrongful arrest lawsuits).

Yeah, I'm still mad about what they turned my city into. And I've seen protests where it wasn't that way. Maybe someone could learn from the past, hmmm?