Inside an RNC Raid; Video of Raid on house hosting journalists

VIdEO OF ST PAUL POLICE RAID ON HOME OF NON-PROFIT BOOKSTORE MEMBER
(INTERVIEW W/HOMEOWNER AFTER VIDEO LINK)

> http://the-uptake.groups.theuptake.org/en/videogalleryView/id/647
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5ju0Xn6xsc
>

Mike Whelan is the peaceful leader of the Arise Bookstore
Collective in Minneapolis. During the three years that I
knew Mike, he was always committed to nonviolence.

http://www.arisebookstore.org

Inside an RNC Raid
by Lindsay Beyerstein

> http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2008/08/inside-an-rnc-r.html
>

Thanks to the miracle of cellular technology, I was able to
talk to a homeowner while his home was surrounded by police
conducting an RNC-related raid. At approximately two-thirty
this afternoon, I reached Mike Whelan, a waiter and army
veteran, at his duplex at 951 Iglehart Ave. in Saint Paul,
Minnesota.

Whelan said he'd invited independent observers from the
group LegalWatch stay in one half of his side-by-side duplex
while they monitored RNC protests.

Whelan described himself as a supporter of the RNC
demonstrations, but said he is not affiliated with any
particular group. "I want to build a country that's based
on good social values," he explained.

When I spoke to him, Whelan was waiting in one half of the
duplex with his roommates, Dan and Julian. The three were
afraid to go outside because the police were still there.
Whelan said he thought that the police were inside the
opposite side of the duplex, where the legal observers were
staying. "I think they are detaining people," he added.

Whelan, who seemed remarkably calm for a guy whose flower
garden had just been trampled by police with drawn automatic
weapons, said he'd just returned from a morning of garage
sale shopping when the commotion started. That would have
been about one o'clock local time. He described what
happened:

"About an hour and a half ago 20 to 30 heavily armed police
officers surrounded the house," Whelan said. "One of my
roommates said, 'I want to see a warrant,' and she was
immediately detained."

"Are they still outside?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, they're still outside," Whelan replied cheerfully.
"The streets are blocked off."

"How you did figure out there was a raid going on?" I asked.

"It sounded like people were falling down on my porch," he
said. "Cops were running up both sides of the house onto
the porch.

Whelan says his roommate, Erin Stalmaker, went out to talk
to talk to the police. She asked the officers why they were
there. The officers asked why people were running away from
them. Erin reportedly told the officers that their drawn
automatic weapons probably had something to do with it.
She was detained after asking to see a warrant.

"Are you scared?" I asked.

"No, I'm a veteran," he said. "I was in the army. I was a
military police officer. I wouldn't have done this."

Whelan said it was especially perplexing that the police
would target his home.

"There's nothing here," he said. "These are the 'checking'
people. They're not even going to be in the demonstration.
Some are lawyers."

Whelan was watching a large crowd of legal observers
gathering across the street, many wearing red or green hats.
The police officers he could identify were from Saint Paul,
but he thought there might be other forces on the scene as
well. The officers were wearing black uniforms. Their
vehicles were "non-descript" vans, not police cruisers.
TV cameras were also on the scene. Whelan couldn't be sure
because a tree was blocking his view, but he thought City
Council member Melvin Carter had arrived. Whelan called
him when the raid started. (Talk about constituent service.)

"You figure this would be going on in South Africa, or
Russia, not in Saint Paul," Whelan said, marveling at the
incongruity of it all. "Saint Paul is nice."