For What It's Worth - Reporters Being Arrested in Minnesota

[ddeclue]

It's days like today that I'm reminded of that old 1960's war protest anthem "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield.

Remember this verse?

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid.
Step out of line
The man come and take you away.

Well now they're taking the reporters away for merely trying to report a story.

Yesterday, police in St. Paul arrested several journalists, including Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and an AP photographer as they were covering protests of the Republican National Convention.

Arresting journalists is the end of our democracy, YOUR democracy in this country and the beginnings of a fascist police state.

Who's next?

The Clergy?

Intellectuals?

The political opposition?

The distance between arresting reporters and killing nuns and disappearing dissidents like they did in El Salvador and Argentina during the 1980's is all too short.

We must remain a nation of laws.

Our Constitution must be honored or all we've lived, fought, bled and died for in the last 232 years is lost.

Even during the 1960's with the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights struggle, reporters were off limits.

Back then we still valued our Constitution which declares:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Yesterday it seems those words counted for nothing in Minneapolis/St. Paul.

I want to urge each of you to get involved by demanding that press intimidation cease immediately, and that all charges be dropped.

Doug De Clue
Orlando, FL

[stray cat]

1. Reporters?

[Kitty Herder]

9. You didn't hear about that? Get thee to http://www.democracynow.org/ !

It's horrifying. These reporters were arrested and mistreated all the while, telling the cops that they were press, and wearing press passes (which were confiscated from them without receipts).

This also happened to an A.P. photographer and a photographer (I think, may have been a reporter) with the New York Post.

So much for the First Amendment.

[valerief]

2. It's very scary.

[patrice]

3. Amy Goodman told her story on AAR yesterday. She and her whole crew were

harassed and detained in jail, but then released, regardless of their credentials.

She said others got much worse than they experienced.

[grannylib]

4. Go to the Democracy Now! website; there's video of Amy being

arrested.
I was in St. Paul all day Monday, and the reality of what I experienced and witnessed is light years away from what's being reported.

[Shanti Mama]

5. great song and very appropriate nt

[valerief]

6. Links here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=3917002

[stillcool]

8. thank you...

I was just going to go looking for that

[ddeclue]

10. I originally wrote this as an LTTE to the Orlando Sentinel today

and I copied it to every reporter or editor I've had contact with there in the last 4 years in my political connections with the Democratic Party and to every elected and candidate I know from the Democratic Party and to a Progressive blog owner (brainshrub.com) that I've written for before and to other reporter and media friends I have.

I urge you to do the same too.

Thanks,

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

[stillcool]

7. there is a post running around...

I'll try and find it, but this is an email addy to register complaints.

[e-mail]