Anti-War Protesters Turn Violent In St. Paul

Posted on September 2, 2008

I find it incredibly ironic that as the Republican National Convention in St. Paul Minnesota had its opening day festivities curtailed due to hurricane Gustav, the radical left found it necessary to hold their extra-curricular activities without regard to those in Gustav’s path. As First Lady Laura Bush and Cindy McCain were making appeals for donations to a relief fund for Gustav’s victims, anti-war protesters were becoming violent in the streets of St. Paul.

From the Associated Press via My Way News:

Protesters smashed windows, punctured car tires and threw bottles Monday during an anti-war march to the site of the Republican National Convention. Police used pepper spray in confrontations with demonstrators and arrested five.

Instead of the single coherent march that organizers had hoped for, fringe groups of anarchists and others wrought havoc along the streets between the state Capitol and the Xcel Energy Center where the convention was taking place.

Police estimates of the crowd shifted during the event before settling on 8,000 to 10,000. The crowd was clearly in the thousands, many of them marching peacefully.

The arrests occurred in confrontations several blocks from the convention arena. Five people were arrested for lighting a trash bin on fire and pushing it into a police car, St. Paul police spokesman Tom Walsh said.

About 20 anarchists who had started the trash bin fire later tried to block the intersection of St. Peter and Exchange streets. Police quickly dispersed the group, then shot two tear gas canisters at the fleeing anarchists.

What I also find incredibly ironic is that anti-war protesters get violent. It seems awful oxymoronic to say the least. After-all, these people suggest that we, as a nation, shouldn’t resort to violence in order to compel other nations to do our will, but they will resort to violence for the sake of violence.

About 200 people from a group called Funk the War noisily staged its own separate march. Wearing black clothes, bandanas and gas masks, some of their members smashed windows of cars and stores. They tipped over newspaper boxes, pulled a big trash bin into the street, bent the rear view mirrors on a bus and flipped heavy stone garbage bins on the sidewalks.

One man who seemed to be the leader of the group carried a yellow flag with the motto “Don’t Tread on Me.” The group chanted: “Whose streets? Our streets!”

I hope Barack Hussein Obama is proud of his constituency. But there is nothing uncommon about these actions when we are discussing liberal hypocrisy.