Police Bulldoze Protest.

Minneapolis

On December 20, 600 state and local police forcibly evicted about 100 protesters who had been occupying a city park and seven state-owned buildings. The demonstrators objected to plans to route a highway through the park. Authorities stormed the encampment at Minnehaha Park, arrested thirty-six protesters and charged them with trespassing, burned makeshift shelters, and bulldozed the buildings, which were located next to the park.

Outgoing Governor Arne Carlson made an appearance to declare the raid a victory.

The raid involved 130 squad cars, a state patrol helicopter, three city buses, cherry pickers, backhoes, several fire trucks, five twenty-foot Ryder trucks filled with police in riot gear, and eight portable toilets. It is expected to cost several hundred thousand dollars, making it the largest and most costly raid in the state's history. The police claim that they expected to encounter 300 protesters on the site but found only about 100.

For four months, the protesters occupied a strip of a Minneapolis city park scheduled to be cleared for a new four-lane highway. According to the state transportation department, cutting a swath through the park is the only viable way to relieve urban congestion and to make way for a future light-rail system.

"The purpose of the reroute is to replace an antiquated, very poor roadway. There are no shoulders, and it is extremely dangerous. It does not meet federal standards for a highway," says Kent Barnard, public affairs coordinator for the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

The protesters--including members of Earth First!, the American Indian Movement, and the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community--claim that clearing the park strip would destroy a savanna of oak trees that is sacred to a local band of Native Americans. They also say the highway would pose a danger to a natural spring on the site and to local waterfowl.

The protesters, many of whom returned to the site after two days in jail, are seeking an immediate federal court injunction against the state. They argue that because the highway project is receiving federal funds the state must comply with two federal laws enacted to preserve Native American cultural and religious remains and objects--the National Historic Preservation Act and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The state's highway-expansion plan is in violation of those two laws, they say, because the state has not sought consultation from any tribal government.