On Friday morning, local advocates and independent journalists will deliver petitions with 50,000 signatures to St. Paul City Hall calling on Mayor Chris Coleman to drop all charges against journalists arrested while covering the Republican National Convention, the Free Press announced today.  

Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now, was arrested when she inquired about the arrest of two of her producers as they were covering a demonstration on September 1.

(Goodman is scheduled to speak in Chicago next Thursday, September 11, at a Public Square forum on   on “Race, Gender, and Economics in the 2008 Election” to be held at UIC.)

Her arrest and the arrest of her colleagues and other independent journalists has sparked protests from the Free Press, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and others. 

Among the incidents were repeated raids of the I-Witness Video collective, which provided videos that exposed police misstatements regarding alleged criminal conduct in trials following the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York.  In New York, defendants were acquited or charges were dropped in about 400 cases where I-Witness provided video documentation, according to the group.

The ACLU has called for an investigation of possible First and Fourth Amendment violations by law enforcement agencies at the RNC in response to the arrest of journalists trying to gather news, the mass arrest of hundreds of peaceful protestors, and surveillance and raids against protest groups.

 Just last month New York City paid $2 million to settle a lawsuit charging its police with scores of false arrests at protests during the 2004 Republican National Convention. 

Eight Minneapolis activists belonging to the RNC Welcoming Committee have been charged with “conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism” (based on Minnesota’s version of the Patriot Act), Democracy Now reports.