Got home from a great time visiting the folks back in Iowa, and was welcomed by a pretty shitty development in local politics. Minneapolis, following Bloomington and likely preceding St. Paul, has recently passed incredibly restrictive measures for staging a public protest. Amongst the new additions to the law citizens must get permit more than 15 days prior to the event (thus eliminating the possibility of any emergency protests) and it gives the police the right to on-the-spot amend any of the provisions of the permit as well as revoke the permit at any time for any reason. Or in other words, to effectively eliminate the possibility of any protest ever taking place that the city of Minneapolis does not want to take place. You know, the government needing to approve all forms of political expression. When the Soviet Union did this, we called it "censorship" and and a "dictatorship," but I'm sure this is completely different.
While this is clearly in preparation for the upcoming Republican National Convention, these laws will be permanently on the books, crippling all forms of political resistance for the foreseeable future. Please take a moment to contact the Minneapolis City Council members and disagree with them, while it's still legal:
Don Samuels: don.samuels@ci.minneapolis.mn.us
(612) 673-2205
Paul Ostrow: paul.ostrow@ci.minneapolis. mn.us
(612) 673-2201
Diane Hofstede: diane.hofstede@ci.minneapolis. mn.us
(612) 673-2203
Barbara Johnson: barbara.johnson@ ci.minneapolis. mn.us
(612) 673-2204
Cam Gordon:
cam.gordon@ci.minneapolis.mn.us
(612) 673-2202
Gary Schiff: gary.schiff@minneapolis.mn.us
(612)-673-2209
Mayor RT Rybak
rt@minneapolis.org
1 comment:
Wow, this is horrendous. I will certainly send this info on to my Minneapolis friends.
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