Last week many of you read here about the Greensboro 7 who were arrested at an anti-Bush protest on SOTU night.
Yesterday I attended a rally in support of these seven young college students who face multiple serious charges ranging from "inciting to riot to assault on a government official". They have a court date March l and as of yesterday were still trying to engage legal counsel.
If you can contribute to their defense, the have a paypal account, "Greensboro 7". Their e-mail is "greensboro 7 @gmail.com.
My impression after talking with them and exchanging hugs is that they are stunned that this could have happened to them. They didn't go out that night looking for trouble but trouble found them in the form of a man in plain clothes who was video taping license plates. Call them naive, they actually thought they were within their rights to stand in front of the plates and ask the man to identify himself. He did not. As many know, police don't like being questioned, and they have guns. When this one put the camera away and brandished a gun everyone tried to run but the unlucky 7 were caught and arrested. The phrase that sticks in my mind from their accounts is "Glock to my head".
I've lived long enough to remember the "police riots" in Chicago during the 1968 DNC convention and the police using dogs and clubs and fire hoses on civil rights marchers, so I have no trouble believing we had a mini-Chicago in beautiful downtown Greensboro that night.