Arrest Video Of Carnahan Crew Members Brian Matthews And Javonne Spitz

The original video of Javonne Spitz shows a little old lady in a pink shirt crying and asking why she is arrested. It is here at the Post Dispatch website. In that posting, Spitz admits to being an activist and being part of the Carnahan Crew in the comments. Took me a while to determine whether or not to post this, but this is the full story of Javonne Spitz and Brian Matthews, two Carnahan Crew members who spent the day trying to make problems for the healthcare protests.
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Keep in mind the standard response of Carnahan has been this was a conference on aging, and he couldn't figure out why the Tea Party was there. And yet, members of his crack volunteer army are there, snapping pictures, making a nuisance of themselves, and eventually arrested for interfering. 

This is video earlier in the day of Brian and Javonne getting mixed up with David Brown and another young man trying to sell merchandise while in line. The black man is not Kenneth Gladney, who was working separately with his own materials. You see Javonne saying, "Come down here black man."  That picture is also the one Adam from StlActivist Hub has access to, which suggests that Adam (probably through facebook), has all of the pictures that Javonne took that day.  But not all progressives support her. Javonne spent the day taking pictures, then going inside, where she caused enough problems that hotflash from ShowMeProgress wrote about her being unruly.

"I was disgusted, though, to open the P-D this morning and find that six people had been arrested last night after the event, and at least two of them were pro-reform advocates. One of them, Brian Matthews, had sat behind me and had been, I thought, a little too eager to rev up the hostility a notch. His account of what happened is in the Post this morning. He says he was pretty much an innocent bystander. His friend, Javonne Spitz, was also arrested, and the word I get from others who attended is that she was too vocal before the event started and that pro-reform people had asked her to leave."

Javonne was asked to leave.  She then went outside and took pictures of everyone she could, shoving her camera in their face without explanation.  This tactic has happened all across the country, and is clearly an attempt to intimidate Tea Party protestors from showing up. Who told Javonne to do this?  Was it a coordinated action?

I have video of another man who claims he works with Carnahan, who is verbally abusive to a number of Tea Party folks, and who would later appear at the McCaskill event, claiming he was with TalkingPointsMemo.com. That's coming up next. But you've been waiting for it, and here it is. Video of Javonne Spitz and Brian Matthews being arrested.


She is arrested after being told repeatedly to leave. When she finally does leave, she stops again and tries to take another picture of the police officer standing over Elston McCowan. The officer has had enough and runs over to put cuffs on her, and she refuses to do so. She struggles, fights back, and keeps saying she's not under arrest. When she refuses to comply, they threaten to spray her, and then spray her. Note they don't spray Brian Matthews, or Elston McCowan, who is sitting on the curb. They arrest and pepper spray a combative and unruly person who won't comply with lawful orders to move away. I guess we can put to rest the idea that she was a random person coming down to the aging conference to see what it was all about, as she claims in the Post Dispatch interview. We can laugh at her statements that the Tea Partiers scared her off, seeing as she is the one trying to be intimidating by snapping pictures of citizens speaking their mind.
And I guess we know this isn't a little old lady being manhandled by police, but instead a leftwing activist involved with the Carnahan campaign and Organizing for America (yes, she organized events for the Obama campaign) who spent the day causing problems, getting increasingly erratic and abusive, and eventually was arrested. Which brings the total to four of six, the people who were involved in Democratic politics who were arrested that night. That leaves one person unidentified who is on video hitting a tea party videographer and one being a reporter, Jake Wagman, who came in at the end after Javonne had upped the tension level, while SEIU staff accused of assault were still being arrested. Let's not pretend little old grandmothers and ministers were unfairly arrested and detained. Left wing activists and SEIU staff looking for trouble were detained and arrested.

Comments

[JLawson]

I'm getting just a bit tired of the 'pro-reform' crowd acting like nobody else should have any sort of say whatsoever - and their protestations that 'Well, of COURSE you can have your say, just do it in a respectful manner!" are about as false a bit of rhetoric as you can come up with.

It's all about silencing the opposition - they know they don't have anything good to sell, so the answer is to make sure nobody can raise objections to what they're trying to get everyone else to buy.

[Oldcrow]

What really disturbs me about this is not that they mouthed off to the tea partiers that is par for the course, what bothers me is the whole camara and pictures thing it smacks of a pogrom, where they told to do that by anyone in the organizations they organize with/for? And if yes why? Is it for an upcoming intimidation campaign?

[Gunga]

It would serve us well to remember that not all lefties are sad and pathetic misfits occupying the fringes of our society. Focusing on the loons might cause us to forget that many sober and seemingly clear-minded individuals support the President in his march to change this country in ways that would have seemed unimaginable at any other point in our history. The 'system' can take care of the kooks. It requires constant vigilance and the will to act to take on the rising tide of misinformed but calm individuals who think that it's the government's job to keep them fat and content.

[CHUCKtheFED]

I was at both Mehlvile and Hillsboro. Some very interesting discussions occurred unsupervised between members of both sides, after leaving the events. I think the Powers That Be are not too keen on that happening. And if it were not for all the cameras, Missouri would have been used to promote the politically motivated image, that the whole of the "fly over zone" are just racists, "clinging to their God, and their guns..."
Thank you John D. Podesta.....pffffttttt

[Public Freedom]

We held a demonstration in front of the white house the other day in support of Kenneth Gladney. We managed to ask some white house officials why this isn’t being treated as a hate crime. Kenneth needs all the support he can get with all the flack being thrown at him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42ImOl1krB4