In Minneapolis, the RNC Welcoming Committee – the protest-planning counterpart to Denver’s DNC-dissing Recreate 68 – recently released this hilarious, self-spoofy recruitment video as part of its efforts to draw comrades to the Twin Cities to screw with the Republicans next September.
Nationally, an umbrella group to these umbrella groups, Unconventional Action, has been putting out the call to anarchist and anti-authoritarian factions from across the U.S. to travel to both Denver and Minneapolis with hopes of disrupting the conventions with all forms of direct-action trickery. None of these groups has issued the requisite Gandhian call for non-violence, which has made municipal leaders and media observers a wee bit nervous.
Whether the huffing of these self-styled revolutionaries will amount to anything more than a few smashed Starbucks windows and ridiculously anachronistic media communiqués is yet to be determined. But it’s always great to find instances when members of the more-radical-then-thou crowd can let the air out of their homemade messenger bags and produce something truly clever and fun. Might we see Denver’s anarchists come up with something similar? Viva la YouTube! –- Jared Jacang Maher