Dear friends,

Thank you for calling on the City of St. Paul to immediately issue permits to the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War, for a march on the Xcel Center on September 1, 2008. We have received copies of more than 100 of your messages, and we know many others were sent. Those who contacted the Mayor of St. Paul via email received a standard reply. We can not count on the city's reassurances: their actions and inaction speak louder than their words. We must keep the pressure on. We hope the information in this message will help you do just that.

* May 31st is too late. Learning from the experiences of organizers in other cities that have hosted these national party conventions, we know that the City is unlikely to deliver a permit that will take us to the Convention while it is in session. They are under a great deal of pressure to keep dissenting voices as far from the Xcel Center as possible. This is the only way to ensure that neither RNC delegates, nor the TV viewers at home, can avoid hearing our anti-war message. Public pressure is our best shot at securing the permit we need from St. Paul City officials. As for legal challenges, they take time and May 31st is simply too late to begin such a process. This is why our complaint was filed in federal court on March 24th. Even so, we still hope public pressure will convince Mayor Coleman to issue the permit right away.

* "Sight and sound" is not enough, take us to the Xcel Center. In a normal permitting process, a group submits an application for a specific route at a specific time, and the City responds to the request of that group. If a given permit is approved, the City then sets it's logistical plans around that. In this case, the City is taking an entirely different approach. They has not responded to our proposed route and time, and instead, has said it will make every convenient logistical arrangement before it considers the rights of protesters at the RNC. We do not accept the idea that traffic flow concerns are more important than the right of protest. Even if they were, the RNC - and the first protests against it - were announced in Fall of 2006. There has been more than enough time for reasonable considerations of this sort. It seems evident that the City of St. Paul is delaying, in order to issue a permit for a march route that is convenient for them, and upholds the minimum legal standard of "sight and sound." Well, the war in Iraq, and massive opposition to it, may be an inconvenient truth, but it is one that we will take to the Streets of St. Paul on September 1, 2008.

* From start to finish, the City has delayed, discouraged, backtracked and failed to keep its word. What follows is a brief history of our effort to secure the permits, along with the help of lawyers from the Minnesota chapters of the National Lawyers Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union. This outline makes it clear how it has, so far, been City policy to thwart our efforts.

Days after it was announced the city would host the Convention, members of the Coalition applied for a permit to hold a march on the first day of the RNC. When the City invited the Republicans, they also invited demonstrations against the war and the Republican agenda. Despite the benefit of advance planning for all, our permit application was returned, resubmitted, and returned again, with letters saying that the application had been submitted too soon.

On November 1, 2007, the Coalition submitted a recurring event permit application, for a series of marches which included the September 1 date. All dates other than September 1 were granted.

During meetings in December and January between the Coalition and the City, it was agreed that the City would grant the portions of the route down to and away from the Xcel Center now, and would work out the area around the Xcel by May 1, 2008. However, when Coalition attorneys documented this discussion, and sent a draft agreement to the City, the reply was a copy of new City guidelines which said no permits to and from the Xcel Center would be approved until March 1, 2008, and no permits around the Xcel would be issued until May 31.

This contradicted past discussions with the Mayor, City Attorneys and St. Paul Police. It also contradicts the City's own permitting ordinance, which requires the police department to approve or deny a permit within 21 days.

On March 1 the Coalition received a conditional alternative permit which is essentially a blank page. It has the date, but no time and no route. We appealed this to the City Council, which can review permitting decisions by the St. Paul Police. Our appeal was never considered by the City Council. City Attorneys argued that because the conditional alternative permit neither grants nor denies our permit application, we improperly brought the appeal before the City Council.

This left us no recourse but to go to court, where we filed on Monday, March 24, 2008. If we wait until May 31 and receive an unacceptable permit, or notice of further delays, there will be no time for a legal remedy. This is the lesson from the 2004 DNC in Boston. When the organizers finally received their permits and were faced with protest pens and no ability to march, the courts had no time to act. We don't want to be in the same position in Minnesota. Legal action is important. Public pressure is vital.

* Keep up public pressure on the City. If you have not emailed Mayor Coleman yet, please do so. If you got one of those standard responses, feel free to write again. If you can, making a personal phone call would put more pressure on, and not be so easy to dismiss with a bulk email. Mayor Coleman can be reached at mayor@ci.stpaul.mn.us or 651-266-8510.

* We further request letters to the editors of the local newspapers, sending your support for our permit application, and calling on City officials to grant a permit now, and talking about this protest as an important, national anti-war response to the Republican National Convention. The City papers can be contacted as follows:

Star Tribune (250 word maximum)

Submit from their website OR... Fax to 612-673-4359 OR... Mail to Editorial Department, Star Tribune, 425 Portland Av., Minneapolis, MN 55488.

Pioneer Press (150 word maximum)

Please send your letters in the body of the e-mail, not as an attachment to letters@pioneerpress.com. Include your full name and your city of residence, for publication. For verification purposes only, and not for publication, include your street address and daytime telephone number.

Thank you for your contributions to building this important anti-war march.

In solidarity,
the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War