FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 8, 2008
Contact: Christopher Childs, Sierra Club North Star Chapter, 651-312-1216
STATEMENT OF THE NORTH STAR CHAPTER OF THE SIERRA CLUB
REGARDING POLICE CONDUCT DURING THE
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION IN ST. PAUL, MN
The Sierra Club and all its constituent chapters have always used and endorsed, and continue to use and endorse, exclusively lawful means for the achievement of environmental and social progress. We have respect for the tradition of peaceful civil disobedience, but we have not chosen to employ civil disobedience ourselves. With and for the aims and tactics of the violent few, however, we offer no sympathy and less support.
It is simultaneously true that the Sierra Club also has always cherished and defended the freedoms granted to all Americans by the Bill of Rights -- notably including the rights of freedom of speech and assembly, freedom of the press, and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.
The Executive Committee of the North Star Chapter of the Sierra Club therefore wishes to express its profound disappointment with and profound disapproval of the excessive and, in certain cases, legally questionable measures recently taken by security forces under the presumed control of the City of St. Paul and of Ramsey County during the Republican National Convention.
Specifically, we decry the arrest of prominent professional journalists including the host and producers of the award-winning public radio program "Democracy Now" and the Associated Press photojournalist Matt Rourke; the violent, guns-drawn raid in St. Paul -- on private property -- on the journalistic team from the I-Witness Video Collective; the patently excessive use of force, again with guns drawn and with the smashing in of doors, in the raid led by the Ramsey County Sheriff's Department on citizens peacefully watching a movie and sharing a meal at the old theater on Smith Avenue; and the violent manhandling and personal injury done to innocent citizens who during the RNC exercised their right to deny consent for warrantless searches of their personal belongings.
These are not tactics to be expected from a representative democracy governed under a constitution whose first duty is the protection of its innocent citizenry.
We also decry the absence of any statement of support, by either the mayor or the police chief of the City of St. Paul, for the protection of the legitimate rights of citizens. The security forces of the city and county are not franchised for the exclusive protection of the delegates to the Republican National Convention; their duty is in fact the protection of every citizen and every visitor to St. Paul. To praise the actions of the police in confronting the tiny minority of assembled citizens who manifested a violent intent, while utterly ignoring the violations of the rights of innocent bystanders, of the legitimate press, and of legal, peaceful protesters is to offend against democracy and to cheapen the reputation of the capital city of the state of Minnesota. The toll of these various violations of decency, of common sense, and in all probability of law by the security forces are likely to dog St. Paul for months and even years to come.
We lament the city and the county's failure to limit the use of force to those proportional, foresighted, and appropriate measures that could have preserved the rights of citizens, the integrity of property, and the general peace and welfare.
This is America. We are a nation born in legitimate protest against an unjust government.
Our country's founding is based on the the right of its citizens to engage in protest, and the right of the press to observe and report on anything and everything connected to the political process.
To employ excessive tactics with either the deliberate or the collateral aim of dampening legitimate protest is to insult the memory of those who gave birth to this country, and those who have defended it from generation to generation against the undermining or erosion of its most basic liberties.
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