It’s going to be a powder-keg in Tampa at the RNC if George Soros has anything to say about it. Soros bankrolled the 69-page ACLU report titled Rights and Wrongs at the RNC after the 2004 Republican Convention in New York City which detailed the extensive legal campaign the ACLU waged to suppress the police’s ability to keep order during anti-RNC protests. This was nothing new for Soros, who has been a major donor supporting the ACLU’s wars against law enforcement.
Now that very same report has become the blueprint for the tactics various leftist groups mean to employ in disrupting the RNC through intimidation and violence. Among the leftists protesting will be hordes of motley Occupiers, political puppeteers, Teamsters, Code Pink activists dressed as giant female body parts, open-borders extremists, vegan Marxists, and tattooed anarchists.
One plan is to erect a tent city called “Romneyville” alongside protests against any companies assisted by Bain Capital. These attacks mean to portray Romney as a heartless capitalist.
Democrat mayor Bob Buckhorn, a loyal Obama supporter, has joined with his city council to “negotiate” with the ACLU and the protestors for several months because the ACLU and protestors are demanding permits and special restraints on the police. While RNC is limited for security reasons, Buckhorn chose to use $57,000 in taxpayer money to rent an empty lot for protesters to “occupy” 24/7 in sight of it. He even approved distributing leaflets written by the city and the ACLU advising protesters of their rights and offering them access to an official hotline. Of course, Buckhorn is a leftist scumsucker; when he heard that a local strip club was featuring a Sarah Palin look-alike who would strip and sell her body, Buckhorn sneered, “I wonder whether the look-alike will be able to see Russia from the stage.”
Because of the left’s use of the tactics outlined in Rights and Wrongs at the RNC, cities that dare to host economic summits or try to restrict illegal Occupy encampments find themselves and their police virtually held hostage. The incipient threat of violence is never far from the surface. The ACLU and protest leaders repeatedly insist that they have nothing to do with any violence that may occur. But if the police act to protect themselves or others, leftist lawyers file police brutality charges, and brazenly accuse the police of “failing to protect” the public and other protesters if the police don’t stop the riots quickly enough. The police can’t win; no matter what they do, they are accused of “silencing free speech.” And the media is only too pleased to repeat that narrative.
Florida ACLU President Mike Pheneger is setting up areas for lawsuits; he whines that because the convention district is blocked off, Tampa is passing up an opportunity for “a nice, neat, tidy kind of exercise in first amendment rights.” Occupy the RNC states on their website: “Tampa passed an oppressive ordinance which strips rights, and makes virtually every participant an outlaw immediately by stepping foot onto downtown.” They accuse the “military industrial complex” of luring protesters into “a trap” in order to justify the convention’s security budget.
This reprehensible behavior began at the 1999 WTO riots in Seattle, which decimated the business district. And even when the police are found innocent, such as the pepper spray incident at U.C. Davis in 2011, police suffer; one Davis officer was still eventually dismissed.
The leftists code their tacit approval of violence in the phrase “respecting a diversity of actions,” which asserts that no protester should stop another protester from using violence or vandalism, nor should they report them to authorities if they know of such plans in advance.
Occupy the RNC, which calls itself the “above-ground coordinating committee” for the protest marches, affirms the “diversity of tactics” pledge as part of the “Tampa Principles” detailed on their website:
Our solidarity will be based on respect for a political diversity within the struggle for social, economic and environmental justice. As individuals and groups, we may choose to engage in different tactics and plans of action but are committed to treating each other with respect.
We reject all attempts to create divisions among our movements. We agree to not publicly criticize other parts of our movement or cooperate with state or media efforts to portray good protester/bad protester.
The actions and tactics used will be organized to maintain appropriate separations of time and space between divergent tactics. We will commit to respecting each others organizing space and the tone and tactics they wish to utilize in that space.
Not only does the first statement tacitly encourage violence, but Occupy the RNC has the gall to assert elsewhere on their website that they are not endorsing violence.
As Natasha Lennard, a freelance writer for the New York Times who joined the Occupy Wall Street protests, was arrested so she could have a story, and still calls herself a journalist, acknowledges:
Groups in both Tampa and Charlotte have publicly stated that their plans for protest are peaceful, although a mixture of permitted and unpermitted actions are planned. The Coalitions to March in both convention cities have adopted their own versions of what were originally the “Saint Paul Principles,” used by RNC 2008 protesters. The principles include a respect for “diversity of tactics,” such that if a group chooses to adopt more radical or less law-abiding tactics than another protest contingent, they will not be obstructed. Above all, the principles stress that activists will not assist law enforcement action against other activists, regardless of a disagreement in tactics. Whether groups will break windows, burn dumpsters, damage property or even adopt Black Bloc anonymity tactics to move through the streets cannot be predicted and would never be publicly announced in advance.
Unsurprisingly, the Occupy the RNC website taunts that martyrdom and bloodshed will occur at the RNC.
Here are some of the “non-violent” actions the leftists plan:
Trespassing in restricted security areas
Refusing to cooperate with police efforts to maintain order
Blockading and disrupting businesses
Providing certain types of support and cover for protesters who are planning to harass private citizens, damage private property, and attack police; this support includes:
Offering a map with the locations of hotels housing the Republican delegates
Offering a map pinpointing “evil” and “oppressive” corporations to be targeted for unnamed “decentralized direct actions”
Pledging to defend the Tampa Principles: a statement of commitment to all protest tactics, specifically including property destruction and violence against police and other targets
And some of the major players are:
Occupy Wall Street [and several other locations]
Industrial Workers of the World–Gainesville Area General Membership Branch
Vietnam Veterans Against The War/Old School Sappers
The Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee
Food Not Bombs [and several chapters]
Party for Socialism and Liberation
The Green Party of Florida [and other locations]
Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign
National Immigrant Solidarity Network
May 1st Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights
Decentralized Non-Violent Resistance Movement
One group, CopWatchers, has members who actually celebrate the murder of police officers.
The local Occupy movement is largely supported by sex club owner Joe Redner.
According to Occupy the RNC, the protesters start with a “Death of Democracy March” on August 26, followed by a “March on the RNC” and possibly simultaneous “March for Our Lives”. The convention’s first night will feature a “Celebration of Resistance,” with “radical anarchists” holding a “Roving Radical Dance Party” throughout the city. The “Rally and March Against Voter Suppression at the RNC” follows, and then a day of “Shut Down Bain Capital” protests staged outside businesses such as Outback Steakhouse, Hospital Corporation of America, and Staples.