RNC '08 Report: Links: Independent Media Organizations that Covered the 2008 RNC

Democracy Now: http://democracynow.org

Democracy Now offered the best coverage of any national news organization during the RNC.

On Day 1 of the RNC, producers Amy Goodman, Nicole Salazar, and Sharif Abdel Kouddous were arrested. Salazar and Kouddous were arrested while covering protests, Goodman when she approached the police to ask for the release of her colleagues.

Glass Bead Collective: http://glassbeadcollective.org

Glass Bead Collective (GBC), based in New York City, brings together individuals from diverse academic and professional backgrounds including video art, film, theater, architecture, photography, music, mathematics, fine arts and philosophy to create works which re-contextualize culture and the world in which we find ourselves today. GBC was founded in 2002.

On the night of August 26th, when three Glass Bead Collective members--Vlad Teichberg, Olivia Katz, and Anita Braithwaite--arrived in the Twin Cities, they were detained by police and had their computers and video cameras confiscated. After a large public outcry from journalists and others, their reporting tools were returned to them, but the brief arrests--together with the August 30th raid on the i-Witness Video residence--served as an early and chilling warning bell regarding press freedoms during the RNC.

During and after the RNC, Glass Bead coordinated production of the "Terrorizing Dissent: Election Cut" documentary. Even after the RNC, GBC staff were harassed in St. Paul while working to complete the documentary. As a result, the group moved out of Minnesota's capital city into a Minneapolis church that was out of the jurisdiction of both the St. Paul police and Ramsey County Sheriff's Department.

Twin Cities Indymedia Center (TCIMC): http://tc.indymedia.org

Twin Cities deployment of the now international Independent Media Center project (www.indymedia.org), which was originally established by various independent and alternative media organizations and activists in 1999 for the purpose of providing grassroots coverage of the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle.

As in Seattle, Indymedia acted as a clearinghouse of information during the 2008 RNC, and provided up-to-the-minute reports, photos, audio, video footage, and a twitter feed through its website. Indymedia's content is mostly submitted from site visitors, while editors retain control of the news positioning on the homepage and section indexes.

TCIMC undertook much production work on the "Terrorizing Dissent: Election Cut" documentary. Together with the Glass Bead Collective and members of the Tilsner Artists' Cooperative, TCIMC hosted the "IndyMedia Lounge" during RNC Week—a warehouse-sized loft in Lowertown that offered wireless Internet, work stations, washrooms, and information-sharing to both out-of-town and local independent journalists.

The atmosphere in the IndyMedia Lounge during RNC week was often extremely tense due to ongoing targeting and harassment of journalists who were working in the room—from Glass Bead Collective, Mobile Broadcast News, Portland Indymedia, and i-Witness Video.

Minnesota Independent: http://minnesotaindependent.com

Some of the best on-the-ground, raid-by-raid, tear gas canister-by-tear gas canister RNC coverage of any print publication. While there were a team of people generating the online portal's coverage, what did it for me was their sending out a guy who has reported from Iraq into the comparatively only semi-Mean Streets of St. Paul to document the protests and police.

Reporters Paul Demko and Andy Birkey were both arrested during the RNC. The Minnesota Independent's extensive RNC Archive is here: http://minnesotaindependent.com/category/rnc.

Twin Cities Daily Planet: http://tcdailyplanet.com

A local independent news site that, as with the Minnesota Independent, had some of the best local alternative coverage, including excellent articles by Mary Turck and Sheila Regan.

Reporter Sheila Regan was arrested on Day 4 of the RNC.

The Uptake: http://theUptake.org

Indymedia-type site focused on user-contributed, mostly video, reports. Using cellphone technology, The Uptake live-streamed on the Internet from some RNC events and were one of the powerhouses of relevant, comprehensive reportage. The Uptake had the first video from inside the Convergence Space following the raid.

Volunteer coordinator Suzanne Hughes was detained/arrested during the RNC.

i-Witness Video: http://iwitnessvideo.info

NYC-based I-Witness Video uses video to protect civil liberties by probing police actions at First Amendment events. I-Witness Video has uncovered perjury and abuse by police officers and prosecutors, and revealed illegal police surveillance and exposed official lies.

i-Witness footage was responsible for exonerating around 400 protesters falsely charged by police during the 2004 RNC in New York City. It was little surprise they were quickly targeted in St. Paul.

On August 30th, two days before the RNC was due to begin, the house where they were staying in St. Paul was raided by police on an incorrectly-addressed warrant looking for "weapons delivered in the mail" that turned out to be boxes of vegan leaflets.

On September 3rd, police attempted to raid the second i-Witness Video location in St. Paul, claiming they had a report that someone was "holding hostages" in the i-Witness office. Founder Eileen Clancy and videographers Emily Forman and Malisa Jahn were detained/arrested in the run up to and during the RNC.

Submedia.tv: http://Submedia.tv

Since its humble beginnings in 1994, subMedia has grown from a small group of determined filmmakers into a grassroots network of socially and politically engaged artists and individuals. subMedia scrutinizes popular culture and media through the production of film, performance art, video, music and zines.

Equal parts performance and protest, an attitude of art following action defines subMedia’s productions. From the regularly released and highly produced video blog “It’s the End of the World as We Know It”, their work injects a radical analysis into the culture in a most entertaining way.

They produced six "Special Motherf*king Reports" during the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN and, together with Pepperspray Productions, created the collaborative documentary, “Ground Noise and Static” after the Convention.

Pepperspray Productions journalists Joseph La Sac and Lambert Rochfort, working with Submedia.tv, were both arrested while covering protests during the Convention.

Mobile Broadcast News: http://mobilebroadcastnews.com

Mary-Kate Stoever and Flux Rostrum from Mobile Broadcast News.

Staffed by long-serving underground videographers Flux Rostrum and Skinny Chef, MBN has a video editing room in a bus that runs on veggie oil. They drive this bus all over the U.S. to cover alternative news.

Small independent news outlets tend to work with other small independent news outlets, sharing footage and keeping everyone up-to-date. RNC Footage from Flux and Skinny could be seen on many news sites during the RNC, and in several documentaries edited after the RNC.

The MBN bus was repeatedly harassed and illegally searched by the police during the week of the Convention. Just before they got on the road to leave town after the RNC, they discovered their fuel line had been cut.

MBN Journalist Kelly Benjamin was arrested on Day 1 of the RNC.

Portland Indymedia: http://portland.indymedia.org

Oregon-based deployment of Indymedia. PDX news ninjas submitted radio and written reports to their site live from protests in St. Paul, MN.

One Portland Indymedia journalist, Wendy Binion, was arrested on September 2nd while covering the Poor People's March.

Rochester Indymedia: http://rochester.indymedia.org

NYC-based deployment of Indymedia.

Dawn Zuppelli from Rochester IndyMedia was detained/arrested while covering the convention protests.

Bay Area Indymedia: http://indybay.org

San Francisco deployment of the Independent Media Center project A.K.A. "Indymedia". Bay Area Indymedia members were responsible for the "Uncertain Future" documentary about the 2008 RNC.