> August 16, 2004
>
> F.B.I. Goes Knocking for Political Troublemakers
> By ERIC LICHTBLAU
> New York Times
>
> WASHINGTON, Aug. 15 - The Federal Bureau of
> Investigation has been questioning political
> demonstrators across the country, and in rare cases
> even subpoenaing them, in an aggressive effort to
> forestall what officials say could be violent and
> disruptive protests at the Republican National
> Convention in New York.
I guess that it's good that the New York Times finally got around to covering this situation, even if the news is two weeks old.
The FBI has been pretty quiet around here since that weekend before the DNC. It's pretty obvious that the FBI "investigation" was simply an attempt to scare the young anarchists in this region. They succeeded to some extent, although most of us here in Kansas City are making jokes about the FBI. The FBI visits actually backfired for them, because the news about their activity generated lots of positive support for us from around the world and in Kansas City. The local alternative newsweekly, The Pitch, did a sympathetic piece on the FBI harassment, which created a bunch of free publicity for our new infoshop and bookstore. In fact, many of the new faces I've talked to who have visited the store last week said that the Pitch article was where they found out about us. And the whole thing seems to have increased our street cred among our artist neighbors.
I hung out yesterday with two of the KC anarchists who were targeted by the FBI. The FBI never came up and both of them have the attitude now that our political work must continue. One of them is worried that he might lose his waiter job, because the corporate fucks who run Applebees are concerned about their name coming up in The Pitch story.
Chuck0