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Antiwar march planned for last day of RNC
2008-09-04
ST. PAUL, Minn. - As John McCain accepts his party's presidential nomination Thursday night, protesters calling for an end to the Iraq war plan to march outside the Xcel Energy Center. The Anti-War Committee, which is organizing Thursday's march, urged others to join in and denounced the increased presence of police in riot gear and acts of "intimidation" in the streets of St. Paul. Tracy Molm, a member of Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Minnesota, urged students to get involved. "Students in this country are angry. We're angry because it's us that are asked to fight and die in this immoral and unjust war," Molm said Wednesday. "Bring that anger to the streets, because that is how social change in this country happens." Police arrested 102 protesters in downtown Minneapolis early Thursday following a concert by the political rock group Rage Against the Machine, according to the Joint Information Center. Of those arrests, 100 were for misdemeanors and two were for gross misdemeanors. Eighty-seven of those arrested were tagged and released; 15 were booked. Police earlier had expressed concern about the possibility of trouble after the concert. A couple hundred people lingered outside the Target Center after the concert. Police eventually ordered them to leave. A smaller group chanting "Whose streets? Our streets" then headed toward the main part of downtown. A downtown Minneapolis intersection was blocked off as police processed those arrested. Young people sat on a sidewalk, their backs against a building, or stood quietly in line, their hands in plastic cuffs behind their backs. Including the Minneapolis protest, police have arrested 422 people since Saturday in pre-emptive raids and at protests in downtown St. Paul that were marred by violence. St. Paul was quieter on the convention's third day, when four women from the peace group CodePink were arrested after crawling under a fence a couple blocks from Xcel. They were released. ___ Associated Press writer Jeff Baenen contributed to this report.
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