In MN, Massive Police Raids On Suspected Protestors

Day four was illuminating.
While many say that we are returning to the culture war, and I agree, I think it is also going back to revising the history of the sixties. There were some very large protests planned, and we were at the Capital for the students initial march from there down to Harriet Island (Renamed "Peace island" for the convention). It was a good number, though lower turn-out than expected, due mostly to the number and reputation of the security. The number of protesters, particularly above student age, was drastically reduced. The word was definitely out, that these people were hair trigger, authoritarians, and the older crowd was not much up for antagonizing them. I would like to hear if anyone knows the criterion used for selecting the people in law enforcement who were selected, because I think it was much the same as the criteria for the DOJ and Iraq Provisional Authority (that is to say partisan).
We stayed at "Peace Island" until six, when they planned to make a human peace symbol marked out on the ground. During that time, there was another protest of the more youthful student aged people, again, starting up on the Capitol and coming down into the convention area. That protest had also been effected by the security and it's heavy handed efforts... And it was apparently larger than people had expected. Down at the island, we didn't know why we heard nothing from the other protest, but there was apparently some argument over their licence and it's timing. We did the peace symbol and went across the river to downtown, where we found that the police had shut down all of the bridges across the highway to the Capital, to stop the protests from being able to make their march. With over 2500 people there determined to march, they had apparently started to cross the bridge when the opposite side of the bridge was closed and the police started clearing the area, catching many on half-way across the bridge. That's where we saw them, seated on the median and cuffed, with a growing crowd stranded downtown and curious as to why this had happened, why the violence was necessary and why ALL of the bridges had been closed. Apparently the marchers had seen the first bridge closed and been herded toward the next one down, and then the next... Until they were pushed by riot police, horses, tear gas, flash-bang grenades, and extremely tough measures, into the massive parking lot of Sears, where it was announced they were now under arrest, and over about four hundred people were corralled, cuffed and booked into the morning.
Amidst stories from the escapees of being ridden down by Minneapolis Bike police who using their bikes to ram them in the groin, run over their feet the backs of their legs and spit on them, while accusing them of "Trying to steal my bike?" There were some stories that the protesters were throwing things at the police, from the police, but no one we talked to saw that... Almost everyone from disparate groups said the police just started shooting the tear gas and the marching them down. On the opposite side of the bridge, the cops flipped off the crowd, called them vulgar names, and gained themselves no friends.
I think this is how the conservatives would have liked to handle the sixties and seventies, and how they believe they would have also won the war in Vietnam, by treating the protesters as an "Insurgency," and an enemy to the state, rather than coddled by "Quaint" human rights.
Here s a link to what we saw when we arrived behind Sears... (You might recognize someone, who had another member of her team "Detained" along with estimates of around a dozen other journalists).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKS1ifzxi4c

....And this is the reinforcing of one of the blocked bridges... The voices you hear were not protesters (although they sound like it), but people (many with cars on the other side of the highway) who had assembled during the lock-down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XqExVRrsJY
(We have other footage, but it takes a long time to upload)