Katherine Kersten: The pinstripe brigade lines up to defend convention scoff-laws

A phalanx of Twin Cities lawyers is laying the groundwork for what may become the legal equivalent of the Super Bowl.

A campaign is underway to ensure that protesters at the 2008 Republican National Convention -- to be held here Sept. 1-4 -- will get a warm Minnesota welcome.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota is leading the charge. It's lobbying St. Paul and Minneapolis officials to smooth the way for parade permits and considering lawsuits if necessary, while trying to arrange for demonstrators to protest as close to convention venues as possible.

MCLU staff members are contacting an array of local groups, offering to represent them if they demonstrate and making sure that they "know their rights," according to Chuck Samuelson, the organization's director.

The MCLU is recruiting lawyers -- many from top-dollar law firms -- to lend their clout to this many-pronged effort. They've been dubbed the "pinstripe brigade." When the convention rolls around, Samuelson hopes to have 300 lawyers on call -- in large part to defend demonstrators who are arrested.

"We're not experts on protest demonstrations," Bill Pentolovich of Maslon Edelman Borman & Brand told the Star Tribune.

"Some of the best trial lawyers" are "sitting in this room," Pentolovich added.

"We're experts on civil litigation in the Twin Cities. We know this town, and we know the judges."

Typical lawyerly modesty, this.

The pinstripe brigade may see lots of action. At the 2004 Republican convention in New York City, police arrested more than 1,800 people, though a smaller crowd of protesters is expected here next year.

The MCLU's volunteer lawyers will go to bat for any demonstrator arrested at the convention, regardless of conduct or offense, says Samuelson.

What sort of protesters are likely to benefit from these legal eagles' skills? Earnest grandmas who wave signs outside the Xcel Energy Center aren't likely to get in trouble with the police. Arrestees will probably disproportionately be anarchists and other self-proclaimed rabble-rousers who are eager to flout the law.

One such group is Unconventional Action, an "emerging network" whose national membership advocates "militant direct action." At a recent planning conference, members listed goals to "shut down" Minneapolis and St. Paul, and "to deter [other] cities from wanting to host [political] conventions in the future," according to an anarchist web site.

Unconventional Action lauds the strategy of an organization that helped create havoc at World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999, another website says. In Seattle, according to published accounts, a relatively small group of activists used weapons like Molotov cocktails and ammonium-nitrate bombs with nails to provoke violent confrontations with the police. Millions of dollars in property damage and numerous injuries resulted.

According to Unconventional Action, the Twin Cities have "strategic vulnerabilities unique to any trade summit or party convention of recent years." The group is considering blockading traffic on narrow highway interchanges, bridges and key intersections and conducting other kinds of civil disobedience.

This weekend, the so-called RNC Welcoming Committee, a local anarchist group, is hosting activists from across the country -- including Unconventional Action -- to strategize. The committee has urged people to march through St. Paul to "gather information, take measurements, check drain covers, etc." At a news conference on Monday, the group showed a video featuring masked figures and hinting at violence. "There exists no 'peaceful' option," it said in a news release.

Samuelson says that protesters have no "license to riot." But he expressed little concern about anarchist threats, and said that serious problems -- if they occur -- are likely to arise spontaneously.

But the threat is real, as Seattle's harrowing experience makes clear. Anarchists apparently planned similar mayhem at the 2004 Republican convention, but were largely deterred by careful police planning and a massive show of force.

In a Wall Street Journal article this year, Judith Miller, a former New York Times reporter, described some of the anarchists' plans after reviewing confidential police documents. They ranged, she said, from mounting a "Day of Chaos" at Madison Square Garden, to closing down Wall Street, disabling delegates' charter buses and vandalizing retail stores.

Anarchists have vowed to learn from their New York experience. Next year, we Minnesotans may discover exactly what they've learned.

For a critical mass of protesters at the 2008 convention, the goal will not be to exercise their free speech rights, but to obstruct the rights of others.

Apparently, these folks may be represented free of charge by some of the Twin Cities' top legal talent. Way to go, guys.

Katherine Kersten • kkersten@star tribune.com Join the conversation at my blog, Think Again, which can be found at www.startribune.com/thinkagain.