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RNC Welcoming Committee's Interests
General
On September 1-4 of 2008, the Republican Party is coming to Minnesota to celebrate their latest conquests in global domination and exploitation. We of the RNC Welcoming Committee want to make sure that this time the fear-mongers will be met with their own biggest fear: people mobilized, organized, and taking the future back into their own hands.
For those of you who abhor the rapid growth of racist militarized borders across stolen lands, the raids and deportations, destruction and commodification of our shared and living earth, police brutality and prison industry, fear propaganda and subjugation, exploitation and robbery of peoples worldwide, and all forms of injustice and oppression - we ask you to be prepared for 2008. This will require new alliances, strong networks, the awakening of those who’ve given up, as well as the mobilization of those who’ve never before taken action. Let’s use this opportunity to make the changes we thirst for manifest and take root before us, making the Republicans/Democrats (whatever you want to call them) obsolete.
Labor Day weekend of 2007, anarchists and anti-authoritarians from across the country gathered in the Twin Cities to develop goals and plans for the RNC 2008. This is what we’ve come up with:
What we want (the goals):
1. Build Our Capacity – A new reality will not emerge by simply stopping the 4 day spectacle of the RNC. We need folks with an alternative vision to come to the Twin Cities and turn their dreams into reality. Start something new, be creative, and come ready to build sustainable alternatives worth fighting for and defending. The new skills that we teach, learn, and put into practice here will allow us to return to our communities stronger, smarter, and more empowered.
2. Crash the Convention – We didn’t get an invitation, but we’re showing up anyway. This party will be what we make of it. We don’t want to confine our potential by imposing a single vision of what success will look like. We recognize that there will be a lot of people coming with their own agendas and carefully laid plans and want to be open to the diverse tactics that will be necessary to accomplish our many goals. Together, we can derail the purely ceremonial show of this repressive system and remake it with our own hands and according to our own visions.
How we get there (the strategy):
1. Start Strong – Throw all of our energy into the first day. We’ll kick this off right and stretch the militarized police state out so far that it can no longer contain and suppress our voices and desires.
2. Transportation Troubles – This includes blockades downtown (at key intersections), on bridges (10 bridges over the Mississippi River in the metro area), and other sporadic and strategic targets (busses, hotel and airport shuttles etc).
3. Respect, defend, and be prepared for autonomous self-sustaining alternatives – Lasting projects and spaces will be born out of our actions and will need to be protected. We also won’t knowingly bring the hammer down on existing long-term community projects. It doesn’t matter if we win the RNC battle, if the war for our lives is lost.
4. Be inclusive of local communities and respect alliances – We are all on the same side of the barricades and are trying to build lasting bonds for future mutual aid. We may not agree with each other on all of our tactics, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t venues for us to work together and build on the trust and community that already exists.
What the Welcoming Committee is doing:
1. Logistical support – We will organize legal support, housing, food, transportation, and a convergence space as well as anything else you may need to make our collective actions successful.
2. Framework coordinating – We will map out key points and layouts and gather intelligence to help you plug into the bigger picture. Let us know your needs, desires, and capacities.
3. Local outreach – We are building alliances with local groups and communities to help build our collective support. We encourage you to do the same.
4. Networking – We’re hooking y’all up with each-other so that you can work with people you might not already know, strategize, and share a glass of some good old mutual aid.
What we are calling for:
1. Get it together – Have regional consultas, organize in your communities, and form your affinity groups. We are expecting people to come with concrete plans for action that they have devised and the capacity to carry them through.
2. Lead up actions – Practice makes perfect. Use this entire year leading up to the RNC to develop and practice your own tactics and strategies that step things up a notch and build true alternatives. Resistance doesn’t start and end at ‘the next big protest’; it is a way of life.
3. Fundraising – We’re not saying to let your community projects flounder, but we’re going to need some serious cash to help arrange legal support (we’re still looking for a lawyer dumpster), a convergence space, and a thousand other logistical puzzles. Pass the hat at every regional consulta and meeting you attend, hold fundraisers, and send a chunk of it in our direction!
4. Communicate – Maintain strong security-culture values, but let us know your capacities and what you will need. If you want a single point person to communicate with, we can arrange it. What you say you can do and will need shapes the course that we take.
5. Come to the Twin Cities – Come early and come often! Take advantage of that “Minnesota Nice” and come long before the convention to help make things happen. Also, put May Day weekend (May 1st - 4th 2008) on your calendars to send a representative or two from your group to the Twin Cities for our next networking and strategizing event (more info TBA).
September 1st, 2008, we, the RNC Welcoming Committee, invite all anarchists and anti-authoritarians, all radicals and rabble-rousers, all those who are fed up with government lies and spectacles to show up ready for action and ensure that we leave no place for these expired politicians. What we create here will send the convention crashing off course into insignificance.
About me: This page exists to facilitate a broad range of radical activities related to resisting the 2008 Republican National Convention, scheduled for Sept 1-4, 2008.
Take Heed!(disclaimer): Myspace is corporately owned and thus is not independent, which is rather important to us. There are many positive aspects to a social networking site like this, but in this land of ad banners and the bottom line, can the truth flourish? &
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The RNC Welcoming Committee is an anarchist/anti-authoritarian organizing body formed to prepare for the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. The RNC-WC, composed primarily of Twin Cities-based anarchists and anti-authoritarians, will function as an informational clearinghouse and organize a spokescouncil for RNC resistance. We will coordinate logistics (food, housing, transportation), and engage in education and outreach.
Without falling prey to the centralized, hierarchical tendencies that have dominated such convergences in the past, we hope that the RNC-WC will maintain a unified, anti-authoritarian presence at the 2008 RNC. Our numbers are huge, and it’s time that our actions reflected that. Following are our points of unity. We invite all individuals and groups committed to these ideas to participate in the Welcoming Committee.
Those who work with the RNC Welcoming Committee must agree to:
1. A rejection of Capitalism, Imperialism, and the State;
2. Resist the commodification of our shared and living Earth;
3. Organize on the principles of decentralization, autonomy, sustainability, and mutual aid.
4. Work to end all relationships of domination and subjugation, including but not limited to those rooted in patriarchy, race, class, and homophobia;
5. Oppose the police and prison-industrial complex, and maintain solidarity with all targets of state repression;
6. Directly confront systems of oppression, and respect the need for a diversity of tactics.
Though the RNC-WC is focused on a specific event, we hope that our work transcends the convention by contributing to the development of anti-authoritarian movements and mutual aid networks both locally and globally. We are no more opposed to the Republican Party than we are to the Democratic Party. Affiliations and labels aside, we invite all who share our vision to join us in resistance.
Who I'd like to meet: Anyone who wants to resist the RNC, the 2 party system, and the State.
On May 30th - June 1st, 2008, folks from all over the Midwest will be heading to Minneapolis, Minnesota to flesh out solid proposals in regards to how we’ll work together against the RNC/DNC come September and August.
This three day event will include essential party-crashing workshops, networking, and intensive strategizing. If you have a specific workshop you’d like to see or facilitate, get a hold of us at the email address at the bottom of this release.
TO GET INTO THE STRATEGIZING SESSION YOU MUST BE VOUCHED FOR. If your planning on making it to the strategizing session, please send an RSVP (to the e-mail at the bottom of this release) specifying your willingness to be apart of it. At this point we’ll send you a form to complete and send back to us.
THE REST OF THE WEEKEND IS OPEN TO EVERYONE. Because of this, we ask that folks to keep security culture in mind to create the safest space possible for all parties involved. http://www. why-war. com/guides/2003/09/security. html
PLANNING EARLY. We are asking people to send their proposals and ideas for the strategizing session ahead of time so we can go into this organized. You can send your input to the email address at the bottom of this release.
CHILDCARE. We will be providing childcare for most (if not the entire) convergence. Please give the organizers a hand and RSVP ahead of time to the e-mail at the bottom of this release. We need to stock up on toys and supplies!
Please RSVP to the following email address well ahead of time so we know what we can expect for food, housing, numbers, ect.
Yo Welcoming Committee!! We'd love it if some of your people would come down and help us rock Mayslack's Music Lounge this Friday night!!! We welcome tables, petitions, etc. ! We support your cause, come out and support ours too!
Did you know that the West County Energy Center, a 3800 Megawatt Gas/Diesel power plant (it will be the third largest in the U.S.) is currently under the beginning phase of construction in the Everglades in Palm Beach County, FL? That’s right, it will be built less than 1000 feet from the Arthur R. Marshal Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, home to approx. 30 threatened and endangered species. The gas pipeline that is also being built to feed the plant will run through and disrupt dozens of wetland areas.
That’s right, that’s what I’m up to, just a little more infrastructure but don’t worry. Its just the Everglades, its not like it’s the only ecosystem of its kind, oh, wait, I guess it is. Well, that doesn’t matter because I’m getting rich. Ha ha ha. And you can’t do anything about it. So go ahead, tell your friends about this, cause they can’t do anything either.
