Some of the RNC 8 and support crew will also be in Ashland, WI on February 6. Also below, check out the article about Nathanael Secor recently published in the Ashland Daily Press.

Friday February 6th, 5-7pm
St.Andrews Episcopal Church
620 3rd St W
Ashland, WI 54806
RNC 8 fundraiser - film showing of portions of “Terrorizing Dissent” and discussion of how this case pertains to all activists on the left; firsthand accounts from one of the eight about his experiences organizing before and since his arrest; and what can be expected as this case continues to unfold. Snacks will be provided. Recommended donation $5-10 - no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

from the Ashland (WI) Daily Press:

Northland grad faces charges in connection with RNC
By KAREN HOLLISH
Staff Writer

When he lived up north, Nathanael Secor was known as an avid community gardener who cooked up big batches of vegan soup to share, a devoted bicyclist who pedaled from Ashland to Odanah every day for work, and an unflinching idealist who waged a campaign against the sale of Coca-Cola products on the Northland College campus.

So it may have surprised his former friends and neighbors when, on the eve of last fall’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., Secor –along with seven other members of a radical anarchist, activist circle to which he belongs — was arrested on felony conspiracy to riot charges and branded a would-be terrorist in national media accounts.

Secor became one of the so-called “RNC 8″ after his former residence in South Minneapolis was targeted in a series of pre-emptive raids that happened in late August, just before the start of the four-day convention.

The authorities have singled out Secor as a “leader” of the RNC Welcoming Committee, an activist group that formed shortly after St. Paul was selected as the convention site. Secor said his designation as a leader is ironic because the anarchist group was “anti-authoritarian,” rejected hierarchies and operated on a consensus-based model of decision making.

According to a criminal complaint obtained from the Ramsey County Attorney office, Secor and his co-defendants have each been charged with four felony counts: Conspiracy to Commit Riot in the Second Degree; Conspiracy to Commit Riot in the Second Degree in Furtherance of Terrorism; Conspiracy to Commit Criminal Damage to Property in the First Degree and Conspiracy to Commit Criminal Damage to Property in Furtherance of Terrorism. Two of the four counts contain the “terrorism-enhancement” charge, which appears to be the first instance of authorities employing a state anti-terrorism statute that was adopted after 9/11, said Minneapolis-based attorney Robert Kolstad, who is representing Secor.

Kolstad said under the statute, terrorism is defined as being a premeditated act involving “violence to persons or property” with an intent to “significantly disrupt or interfere with the lawful exercise, operation or conduct of government, lawful commerce, or the right of lawful assembly.” Secor said he has figured that he could realistically face up to 12 1/2 years in prison, although the criminal complaint says each of the four felony counts is punishable by up to five years in prison, a $10,000 fine or both. Kolstad said at this point it’s not “100 percent clear” how much total
prison time Secor could face, though he acknowledged Secor could certainly spend more than a decade behind bars if he’s found guilty.

While the sight of Secor’s bedraggled-looking mug shot on television and in print media may have seemed strange to some who knew him here, the unfolding legal battle and negative media spin have also surprised Secor, who maintains his and his cohorts’ innocence and awaits a trial expected to take place in the fall.

Secor’s time as a Northland College student who majored in fine arts and as an AmeriCorps volunteer on the Bad River Indian Reservation gave him a great deal of community organizing experience that he took with him when he moved
to Minneapolis and became a preschool teacher several years ago. But, he said, his formative years in the northwoods only prepared him so much for what’s been happening since his arrest.

“It didn’t prepare me for the shock of dealing with four felony charges or having to talk to family about why I’m being called a terrorist on TV,” Secor said in a telephone interview Thursday. “Not much can prepare you for that.”

*Charges under dispute*

Secor, his co-defendants and their supporters maintain that the RNC Welcoming Committee was only working to organize all of the disparate groups of protesters who were going to be in St. Paul for the convention — not directly planning any protest actions themselves.

For over a year before the convention the Welcoming Committee provided “logistical” support for other activist groups, Secor said. “We helped facilitate others to come in to protest,” he said. “We helped people figure out how to get around, communicated with groups that were protesting so that they would know where they are and where there were appropriate places to protest.”

Beyond having a commitment to consensus-based decision making and anti-authoritarianism, the members of the Welcoming Committee “rejected capitalism and the state,” Secor said. But during their more than a year-long convention-preparation process, they provided support to all sorts of activist groups, some that merely wanted to
march and other, more radical organizations that planned to conduct acts of civil disobedience and potentially risk arrest, Secor said. Their support for these groups included preparing meals, shelter and bicycles for the visiting protesters and creating a centralized “convergence center” in which they could gather and share resources, he said.

But the statement of probable cause from the Ramsey County Attorney paints a different picture of the Welcoming Committee, one in which its members planned to “crash the convention” by blockading streets, disabling delegate
buses and, according to pamphlets the committee purportedly distributed, creating and deploying homemade bombs.
The account alleges that between July 31 and Aug. 3 the Welcoming Committee co-hosted an “action camp” in Lake Geneva, Minn. in which attendants participated in direct-action training exercises that included tossing mock
Molotov cocktails at an Xcel Center model, throwing rocks at a simulated delegate, slashing tires and attempting to overturn a delegate vehicle. According to this account of the action camp, the Welcoming Committee also presented workshops on several methods of what they called “non-violent protesting,” which included “sit-ins, demonstrations, vandalism and graffiti.”

Some of the items confiscated in police raids upon the convergence space and the co-defendants’ residences include police scanners, caltrops (”a device with nails or other sharp objects protruding from it used to disable vehicles,” according to the police statement), slingshots and “ninja foot spikes.”

Of Secor in specific, the account says he attended more than 65 Welcoming Committee events over a nine-month period. It claims that at an Aug. 17 meeting, he discussed creating a street barrier by “getting a paper barrel, binding it with metal wire, putting timbers in wax paper and then setting it on fire.” The account also reports that officers from the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department confiscated numerous printed materials from Welcoming Committee
locations — a point Secor emphasized when he recalled the raid upon the convergence center, a space that he said attracted all sorts of peaceful people.

“(The authorities’) stated purpose was to find weapons and confiscate weapons,” Secor said. “It’s interesting that primarily what they seized was educational materials. They seized all of the literature, which doesn’t even
fit the loosest definition of weapons.”

Despite the allegations made in the probable cause statement, Secor maintains that the Welcoming Committee did not plan any direct protest actions. He said they even knew they had been infiltrated by an FBI informant, but they never closed their meetings because they weren’t doing anything illegal.

“So, did we conspire?” Secor asked. “We conspired to help feed people, and we conspired to try and create a safe environment by making sure there were enough medics out there, and making sure that there was a space where people could come and be in the calm.

“There was lots of violence in downtown St. Paul, but from our perspective, it was perpetrated mostly by the hands of the police.” Not that Secor or his co-defendants were able to witness first-hand much of what was going on in downtown St. Paul; by the time Secor was finally released from jail at 2 a.m. on Sept. 4, the convention was almost over.

*Reliving the arrest and incarceration*

On the morning of Aug. 30, Secor was sound asleep in his South Minneapolis residence. But at about 7:30 a.m. the peace broke as members of Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department battered down the unlocked door.

“So I woke up to this big bang of the door breaking, and immediately I sat up in bed and was completely frightened,” Secor said. “I wasn’t sure exactly what was happening, but in a moment I realized this was a raid situation, so I got up and started moving downstairs, and an officer threw me on the floor.

“They were treating us all really roughly, shoving my hands behind my back really roughly, and handcuffed each up us with zip ties, which they pulled really tight.”

Present at this particular pre-emptive strike was Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher, who held a series of post-raid press conferences denouncing the Welcoming Committee as a dangerous, criminal element and displaying seized
items.

Police were at the house — known around the neighborhood as the Food Not Bombs house, for its residents’ role in the grassroots food-distribution program — in specific search of Secor and his roommate Rob Czernik, one of the other RNC 8 members. The other people staying at the house were detained but released.

Secor said he asked to go to the bathroom and was refused, and he was also not permitted to put pants on over his underwear. He was escorted to a police van outside where he waited for an hour and was then transported to the Hennepin County Jail. He was eventually taken to the Ramsey County Jail, where, over the next few days, he found lots of company: The Associated Press reported that more than 800 people were arrested in Minneapolis and St. Paul during the course of the convention.

“Essentially all of the people in the Ramsey County Jail were on a 23 hour lock-down for the duration of the RNC,” Secor said in an e-mail message. “We received two twenty minute breaks/day to make phone calls and stretch our
legs.”

A few recollections from his arrest and the days immediately after have proven traumatic, Secor said.

“One horrific memory from jail is the brutal assault of one fellow RNC arrestee who was beaten bloody, put in pain-compliance holds, Tasered and pepper sprayed after supposedly talking after he had been ordered quiet for asking to see the nurse and requesting vegan food,” Secor wrote.

The scene of his arrest and raid on his home also occasionally plays itself out when Secor sleeps. “It was a very scary situation, and I’ve been having nightmares,” he said. “To this day, I still have dreams about it.”

*Looking ahead*

For the time being, Secor is still working as a substitute preschool teacher but has put his future plans on hold as he waits to see what happens in the courtroom.

“I’m sort of going at it day by day,” he said.

The judge originally assigned to the case recused himself, and a new judge is being sought Ñ a step that will further drag out the already-protracted legal process, he said.

All eight co-defendants are being supported by Friends of the RNC 8, a group that has pledged to raise the estimated $250,000 the group will need to pay its legal fees, Secor said.

“While we have seen an amazing show of support throughout the country, we have a long way to go,” Secor said.

To that end, Ashland resident Devon Cohen is helping to plan a benefit for Friday, Feb. 6 at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. The event is tentatively scheduled for 5 to 7 p.m., and there will be food, discussion and a documentary showing, she said.

Cohen knows Secor from Northland, where they both worked on the Rethink Coke campaign. “I think that this is a really important case about criminalizing dissent, because these were organizers who were working to coordinate a mass protest, and they were arrested before it even started,” Cohen said. “It’s a pretty big deal because it’s the first time (the anti-terrorism statute) has been used in that context.”

And, Cohen said, she wants to help keep her friend out of jail.

Kolstad defended the Welcoming Committee’s goal of trying to accommodate the large influx of protesters that would be swarming the Twin Cities streets, saying that nobody else stepped up to do that work. And he noted that if Secor is found guilty on the felony charges, he could be kept from working with children — which he said would have serious
effects on not only Secor, but also for the community at large.

“Nathanael as an individual is very well suited for that kind of work, OK? And the people he works for, as far as I know, are very happy with the work that he does,” Kolstad said. “He’s a very gentle person, and he’s just the kind of person that should be working with kids, because he’s very nice, and gentle and loving.”

“So there’s sort of a not only an individual loss to Nathanael that’s possible here, but there’s a loss to society,” Kolstad continued. “Truthfully, there’s a potential loss of whatever contributions that he might be able to make.”

*Editor’s note: Reporter Karen Hollish worked with Secor for nine months as an AmeriCorps volunteer over the course of 2004-05, but has not maintained miclose contact with him in recent years.*

Tags: ashland, Nathanael Secor, northland college, RNC 8, RNC Eight, RNC Welcoming Committee, RNC8, robert kolstad, Terrorizing Dissent