Protesters and police clash at RNC; CODEPINK members safe

Posted by CODEPINK Staff

All of y'all out there have been calling and e-mailing to CODEPINK members out here in St. Paul at the RNC, wondering what's going on with reports of police, riots, tear gas and more on the news.  We're all fine. But we came very close to a crazy scene just about an hour ago, on our way home from a beautiful, massive anti-war march.

Four of us in one car (an old awesome Lincoln), while driving down a main thoroughfare in St. Paul about an hour ago, suddenly noticed hundreds of young people running up the sidewalks alongside us, and then right in front of us, in the road, we noticed a huge force of police coming toward us. In a panic, cars in front of us began driving up and over the concrete road divider to turn around, drivers honking and shouting to one another to move out of the way. So, that's what we did. We turned around and saw some officers spraying tear gas from these long-nozzled gun-like devices at a couple young kids, only about two feet away. It was horrifying. We rolled down the window to ask one guy what he saw; he said some activists had tried to cross a street that had been blocked off and the police pushed back, and sprayed them with tear gas.

Then driving back to a cafe, we noticed police battling down everywhere, standing outside their vans to strap on more equipment and consumed into Robo-cop mode. Since we arrived here, we've since heard mixed reports of the clashes. We heard Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now, was arrested in the mix.We also heard reports that activists smashed police car windows are false, and no windows were smashed, mainstream media outlets have the story wrong. Stay tuned....