Minneapolis police are aggressively clearing out the homeless shelters today

As most of you dont know, I volunteer a lot around the Twin Cities (Minneapolis St. Paul) area and heard this morning from some of the people I meet in this line of work that the Minneapolis Police are visiting all the spots the homeless have to go throughout the day and arresting them en mass for things as small as not having ID.

There is some speculation that this has something to do with the Repuglicon convention, but that seems like an awful long time to hold someone. I also heard through the grapevine that an employee of one of the raided places said there is a deadline (statute of limitations) on some federal warrants that is coming soon and they need to find the people wanted.

I dont know, all I do know is the Minneapolis police are raiding the few places the homeless have to go through the day here in the area.

I find a certain irony that the RNC convention is in Minneapolis

because of the RNC convention, they hvae doubled the patrols of the mens bathrooms at the MSP airport.

They are making sure the floors are padded and there are good strong hand holds on the walls.

My dad volunteers in the Phillips neighborhood, working with the indigent and alcoholic Indian population.

He tells stories about how these people go to great lengths to get a state ID card (sent to the address of the program my dad volunteers for) only to have the cops confiscate them whenever they do a raid.

Very very evil.

So, are they sending them to Gitmo?

Are they looking for particular people to serve warrants to? Why raid shelters? The homeless aren't "bothering" anyone if they're in shelters. Very disturbing....

but it appears they lined EVERYONE up on one particular place, and took an awful lot of them away. I may give a call to the local ACLU and let them know what is going on.

He's very progressive (to the left of me, and that's saying something), and involved in lots of community issues in the Twin Cities. Let me know if any organizing is done around this. I'm sure he'd want to at least show up for any actions.