The GOP wasted little time in showing its true colors at this year's Republican National Convention. Hundreds of protesters have been arrested, including a number of journalists and lawyers. The Democratic Convention wasn't a whole lot better. Protesters were kept far away, alloted their own space where "free" speech was permitted far from the eyes and ears of delegates.

But as Gena Berglund, the Legal Observer Program Coordinator for the Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild says, Minneapolis-St. Paul has never seen such a crackdown on its streets before. Police officers, The National Guard, Secret Service, and even FBI officials have launched an all-out offensive against the protesters - and those trying to cover the protests. And it's not as if there wasn't a precedent as Karen Greenberg, Executive Director of The Center on Law and Security, reminds us. At the RNC in 2004 large numbers of people were rounded up and detained and protest was kept as far from the convention as possible. It's a kind of post-Seattle security state, which on the one hand indicates that street protest has had an impact. But also that the federal and state response is becoming more extreme. Listen to the full interview here, along with an interview from inside the documentarian house that was raided - and stay tuned for more reports throughout the week.

Thanks to The Uptake, Elizabeth Press, and the Glass Bead Collective for the St. Paul video in this segment.

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