Repressive measures at the RNC

Another RNC, another dismaying tale of repression on the streets. You wouldn't know it to look at the mainstream media coverage of the conventions, but there is a major crackdown on free expression happening in St. Paul (as there was to a somewhat less dramatic extent in Denver). Journalists have been assaulted and arrested for doing their jobs; activist groups planning peaceful protests or engaged in monitoring police behavior at those protests have been subjected to preemptive raids and detentions. Police have used pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, and concussion grenades on demonstrators.
You would think that all of this would be front page news; it would be if it happened pretty much anywhere else (or, at any rate, in Bad Countries We Don't Like), and yet, of course, it is hardly mentioned in the mainstream corporate media.
When a journalist as well-known as Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now, is arrested for doing her job, we should be particularly alarmed. It's the sort of thing that police states do to show everyone that they can silence whomever they want. This might have its intended effect, which is to discourage dissent and make people frightened, but it might also alert people to the seriousness of the threat to our civil liberties and prompt them to take action. I fervently hope it's the latter.