396 people involved in Thursday’s Anti-War Committee protest were arrested after the group’s protest turned into an attempted march on the Xcel Energy Center when the group’s permit expired. A heavy, and highly-organized tactical police response anticipated the protesters, perhaps as a result of a press conference last July where Katrina Plotz of the AWC promised a more militant, less family-friendly protest for September 4. Strangely enough, Plotz also had a speaking part in the Strib’s account of yesterday’s action:
“They’re trying to steal our protest — we have to ignore the police intimidation,” Katrina Plotz, an organizer with the Anti-War Committee, hollered from a stage in front of the Capitol steps.
The AWC came to St. Paul in the grandiose hopes of stealing or shutting down the RNC through violence and intimidation, only to be out-maneuvered and out-intimidated. How did that song go a few years back — “Isn’t it ironic?”
