ST. PAUL, Minn.—Five people were arrested Monday as scattered violence erupted alongside an antiwar march by thousands of people to the site of the Republican National Convention. Police used pepper spray in confrontations with some protesters, several of whom smashed windows, punctured car tires and threw bottles.
Instead of a single coherent march that organizers had hoped for, fringe groups of anarchists and others wrought havoc along the streets between the state Capitol and the Xcel Energy Center where the convention is taking place.
Police estimates of the crowd shifted during the event before settling on 8,000 to 10,000. The crowd was clearly in the thousands, many of them marching peacefully.
The arrests occurred in confrontations several blocks from the convention arena. Five people were arrested for lighting a dumpster on fire and pushing it into a police car, St. Paul police spokesman Tom Walsh said.
About 20 anarchists who had started the trash bin fire later tried to block the intersection of St. Peter and Exchange streets. Police quickly dispersed the group, then shot two tear gas canisters at the fleeing anarchists.
Pictures taken by Associated Press photographers showed officers using pepper spray on protesters who appeared to be trying to block streets.
“There are people who are committing violations of law and they’re being arrested,” Walsh said.
About 200 people from a group called Funk the War noisily staged its own separate march. Wearing black clothes, bandanas and gas masks, some of their members smashed windows of cars and stores. They tipped over newspaper boxes, pulled a big trash bin into the street, bent the rear view mirrors on a bus and flipped heavy stone garbage bins on the sidewalks.
One man who seemed to be the leader of the group carried a yellow flag with the motto “Don’t Tread on Me.” The group chanted “Whose streets? Our streets!”
Meanwhile, a group of about 100 anarchists pushed a dumpster filled with trash and threw garbage in the streets and at cars. They also took down orange detour road signs. One of them used a screwdriver to puncture the back tire of a limousine waiting at an intersection and threw a wooden board at the vehicle, denting its side. Another hurled a glass bottle at a charter bus that had stopped at an intersection. The bottle smashed into pieces but didn’t appear to damage the bus.
Closely following the anarchists were teams of riot officers carrying batons, rifles and guns that could be used to shoot tear gas.
The day’s march was organized by a group called the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War, whose leaders said they hoped for a peaceful, family-friendly march. But police were on high alert after months of preparations by a self-described anarchist group called the RNC Welcoming Committee, which wasn’t among the organizers of the march.
At a rally preceding the march, speaker after speaker called for ending the war in Iraq and more spending on domestic needs, such as providing health care and fixing crumbling bridges. Immigrants, labor and student groups, veterans, and others gathered for the roughly mile-and-a-half long march.
Peace activist Steve Clemens, 47, from Minneapolis said he was disturbed by the number of police.
“But we can’t control that,” said Clemens, who had already been arrested once—for crossing into a restricted area during a march Sunday.
Alan Rybak, a real estate agent from Lakeville, Minn., stood along the protest route carrying a sign that read “Support Our Troops.”
“I’m here to support our troops and to tell (protesters) to get a job and go home,” said Rybak, a Republican Party activist.
A group of 200 or so college-age people holding a banner that read “Students for a Democratic Society” began walking the route before the set time of the march. Many wore bandanas around their faces, bracing for the possibility that police would use tear gas.
They soon stopped in front of a couple dozen counter-protesters who were holding signs that read “Victory over terrorism.” The students played the song “Like a Virgin” and performed the “Electric Slide” dance in front of the counter-protesters.
Monday’s larger rally went ahead even as the GOP curtailed the day’s official activities because of Hurricane Gustav.
Police executed a series of raids in the days leading up to the march, arresting six people. Five remained in custody on probable cause of conspiracy to commit a riot.
In the raids, police seized materials including knives, axes, bomb-making materials, maps and anti-war literature.
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Associated Press writers Ryan J. Foley, Martiga Lohn and Jon Krawczynski contributed to this report.
