11/25/09 – Robert Czernik – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
Our first guest on the show today is Rob Cernick from Defend the RNC8.
It's rnc8.org.
Welcome to the show, Rob.
How are you doing?
I'm wonderful, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
What is an RNC8 and what's your role in it?
Is that broad enough to start us off?
Yeah, I guess so.
Well, the RNC8, which I'm actually one of the RNC8, we're eight people who were arrested prior to the 2008 RNC in St. Paul.
We were arrested in house raids and preliminary arrests the weekend prior to the RNC.
We were originally charged with conspiracy to commit damage to property and conspiracy to riot in the furtherance of terrorism.
We were charged under a very little known provision of the Minnesota State Patriot Act that made it a terrorist act to commit any sort of felony in order to coerce government or business.
Basically, sort of a photocopy of the U.S. Patriot Act.
Had you gone to Afghanistan to train in the Al-Qaeda terrorist camps?
No, nothing like that.
We were basically with the RNC.
What's your connection to international terrorism then?
That's what I'm trying to figure out.
There isn't one.
There's nothing like that.
There's nothing like that.
The Patriot Act being used as a way to suppress political defense, not only on a federal level, but here we see it being used on a state level.
We were organizing with a group called the RNC Welcoming Committee, which were anarchists and anti-authoritarians.
We were a public group basically trying to facilitate demonstrations that were going to be happening around the RNC.
The Friday before the convention, our Convergence Center was raided in St. Paul, and then 12 hours later on Saturday morning, our homes were raided.
Several people were arrested, a couple of us were swept up later, and here we are almost 15 months later, the terrorism charges have been dropped.
Hold on just a second there.
Before we get to the current state of all the charges, which that's good news, I think I read on your website that these were, I don't have all the calendar in front of me or anything, but these were basically preemptive arrests.
You guys were arrested before the actual major protests that we all saw, the arrest of Amy Goodman and all these people being beaten over the head by guys in Darth Vader costumes and all that.
But you guys were arrested in a preemptive fashion before the actual police riot took place.
Exactly, and this is part of a larger attack that they do around the country.
I mean, preemptive arrests, it's thought crimes.
They're basically rounding people up before they had a chance to participate in the protests or see the protests that people had been planning for over a year.
All right, now I guess if I was like a right-wing AM host, I would have to assume that you were going to have a black thing over your face, hiding your identity, and then you were going to throw newspaper stands through Starbucks windows or something like that, and that's why they stopped you, because you were going to start a riot.
Well, I know I wasn't going to do anything like that, but I think they were scared of the fact that there were close to a thousand people from around the country coming to St. Paul to participate in this structure that had been created by people from all around the country.
The people that were coming to participate had actually created this structure under the call of Crash the Convention.
There was never any talk of any sort of violence or property damage or anything like that happening.
Well, as far as the footage I've seen, and by the way, for any listeners who aren't familiar with this story, it's really the story of the Democratic and Republican Conventions of 2008, and it's all over the YouTube, you can find a lot of footage, and there's clearly every kind of federal and state and local police on the streets, and I think imported state police and local police from other states who got paid extra to come in, as well as military involvement, at least at the National Guard level, maybe more than that.
But as far as I can tell, and I wasn't there, but as far as I've seen from all the footage, this wasn't a thing like Seattle, where there was even the slightest excuse for saying that it was the people who started it.
This was basically just the police arresting reporters and arresting anyone they wanted.
You can watch a hundred different YouTubes about it.
It's a really important story, just in that larger context, I guess, for people who aren't aware.
And right during the political conventions, where we're picking our president and the world's greatest democracy and all that stuff.
Yeah, and you're starting to see this more.
We saw this at the G20 protests in Pittsburgh.
We're seeing it happen at all kinds of other mass demonstrations, where the police are coming out in full force and basically going at it as if we're in a battle zone, and they're very indiscriminate and trying to squash things before they can even begin.
Well, so I'm curious as to, I guess, and you started to talk there about the court case, what level this is at.
Apparently, you're out of danger enough, you can do a radio show about it.
Can you tell us what you've learned?
I guess, first of all, tell us how much trouble you're still in or not, or the rest of your associates there as well.
And then also, what you've learned through the discovery process.
Because if you were preemptively arrested, I'm interested to know what kind of surveillance had gone on, as far as how it was, what sort of investigation they had done in the first place that led to the preemptive arrest.
Well, Scott, through a lot of really great outreach and a lot of great public outreach, we managed to get the terrorists dismissed.
We are still facing one count of conspiracy to damage property and one count of conspiracy to commit riot.
Two major felonies right now.
We're waiting on a ruling regarding a hearing to have our cases all tried together.
The state is trying to charge us together, so we're trying to get it all together, all eight of us.
A lot of this stuff has come to light.
A lot of this stuff has come out, but I want your listeners and you to remember, we were a public organizing body.
We advertised our meetings on the Internet.
We were very deliberate about being transparent.
As anarchists, we were trying to really sort of remove any sort of curtain around the kind of work we do.
And because of that, we had people come in, people from the Ramsey County Sheriff's Department, a person from the FBI who were coming to our meetings.
And frankly, they didn't get much out of it.
We weren't at these meetings discussing any sort of violence.
We weren't at these meetings discussing any sort of conspiracy to destroy St. Paul.
If you look at a lot of our discovery, it talks a lot about getting food for people and where to house people and how to provide bikes, basically how to create an infrastructure so that people could come to Minneapolis-St. Paul, stay safe, and still be able to protest and participate.
Well, so are your lawyers still sweating about this?
Are you guys actually going to face prison time?
Well, I guess first of all, address the Patriot Act part.
You say that the terrorism part has been dropped.
Was there a specific reason because your lawyers won a certain motion on that?
Or what happened there?
No, that was because when they created those charges, people were outraged.
And they know who I am.
They know who my co-defendants are.
I've been a long-time activist in the Twin Cities.
And because of public outrage and public pressure about those charges, the Ramsey County attorney basically said, well, the terrorism charges will just confuse the jury.
And so they dismissed them.
And so that was a major, major victory for grassroots activism.
You know, we had call-in days.
We had petitions.
We had protests at the county attorney's office.
I mean, we were very visible.
We continue to remain very, very visible in the public eye about the work we do.
And the only reason we were able to successfully dismiss those charges, it was political maneuvering on their part, for sure.
Yeah.
Well, and I guess it's sort of a test, right?
If you have a new terrorism law and it's as vaguely written that it can include basically anybody who they think might throw something through a window or whatever, even if it's based on nothing, then you're going to want to test that out and see if you can get away with it.
And it sounds like what you're saying is the other activists in town there, in the Twin Cities, they had your back.
And they said, oh, hell no, this is not going to work at all.
They tested it out and they failed because you stopped them, at least so far.
Right.
So what about the rest of this?
What are you still charged with?
Well, like I said, we're still being charged with conspiracy to riot and conspiracy to damage property.
You know, I was in jail when any of these things happened, when people were actually, you know, the minor property damage that happened, we were all sitting in jail.
And if, again, you look at the discovery, if planning to feed people and planning to provide housing for people, if that's a conspiracy, well, that's what we were doing, trying to house people and trying to feed people.
Well, I mean, see, here's the thing about this.
Obviously, this is your position, too.
But this is really troublesome that, I mean, what we're basically talking about here is simple American grassroots activism.
Doesn't sound as far as I can tell.
And obviously, this is only one sided, but I don't believe anything the state says anyway.
So, you know, I think we anarchists got to stick together, whether socialists or capitalists.
But, you know, I just I think that people getting together and saying we want to protest at the Republican Convention for that to be criminalized and actually not just criminalized, but to have, you know, a very militarized riot force out to have this kind of preemptive arrest and terrorism charges leveled.
This is a major story.
This is a major turning point, it seems like.
You know, when I grew up, I'm sure you learned when you were a kid about the convention in Chicago, the Democratic Convention, where all the hippies got their heads busted in by the Chicago police and how the news cameras went outside to film it and the American people sided with the hippies, I think, or at least mostly or something.
But now this whole thing is just buried.
I mean, this isn't does Brian Williams cover this?
Does anybody even care about this?
Hell, I hadn't even heard of it until a few weeks ago.
Somebody said, you've got to talk to these people.
You know, I hadn't heard of it or, you know, this specific part of it.
Right.
Well, that's how we're able to keep, you know, that's how we're able to keep this going, is by keeping it in the media and keeping it alive.
All right.
So what do your lawyers tell you?
Are they going to get you off or do you have a fund for people to try to donate to to help you?
Yeah, all that information can be found on our website, which is RNC8, the number eight, dot org.
You know, it's going to cost us lots of money to have a really good defense.
And, you know, we're only over a year into this already.
And I haven't even pled yet.
I haven't even been able to go in front of a judge and say guilty or not guilty regarding these charges.
So we have a long battle ahead of us.
And hopefully before the next RNC, we'll know what's going on.
But you have.
Am I reading this right?
Because I'm just scanning through here.
Forgive me.
I didn't really put the work into research in this that I should have before this interview.
But am I reading this right?
We have some people from the national lawyers field working with us.
Yeah, but I would.
Well, I mean, that's that's hopeful, right?
That you have experts in fighting and litigating civil liberties cases.
For sure.
And that's what this is going to be.
This is going to be a long, long fight.
All right.
And now give us a word about your co-defendants here.
Who are these people?
Are they do they ever train in Al Qaeda terrorist camps and you just got caught up with them or what?
What's the deal?
They're very public spaces, very public organizers here in the Twin Cities.
Right on.
OK, well, thanks a lot for your time.
And I guess we'll try to keep in contact.
Yeah, for sure, Scott.
Thanks for having us.
Feel free to call us anytime.
OK, right on.
Well, everybody, that's Rob Cernick.
The website again is rnc8.org.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks, Scott.
Bye.