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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) _ As John McCain accepts his party's presidential nomination Thursday night, protesters calling for an end to the Iraq war plan to march outside the Xcel Energy Center.
The Anti-War Committee, which is organizing Thursday's march, urged others to join in and denounced the increased presence of police in riot gear and acts of "intimidation" in the streets of St. Paul.
Tracy Molm, a member of Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Minnesota, urged students to get involved.
"Students in this country are angry. We're angry because it's us that are asked to fight and die in this immoral and unjust war," Molm said Wednesday. "Bring that anger to the streets, because that is how social change in this country happens."
Gov. Tim Pawlenty blamed the violence this week on a small group of "anarchists, nihilists, and goofballs who want to break stuff and hurt people."
"They need to be dealt with," Pawlenty said in an interview with WCCO-AM of Minneapolis. "When you want to break stuff and hurt people, you can't do that."
Police arrested 102 protesters in downtown Minneapolis early Thursday after a concert by the rock group Rage Against the Machine. Of the arrests, 100 were for misdemeanors and two were for gross misdemeanors. Eighty-seven of those arrested were tagged and released; 15 were booked.
Police earlier had expressed concern about the possibility of trouble after the concert. A couple hundred people lingered outside the Target Center after the concert. Police eventually ordered them to leave. A smaller group chanting "Whose streets? Our streets" then headed toward the main part of downtown.
A downtown Minneapolis intersection was blocked off as police processed those arrested. Young people sat on a sidewalk, their backs against a building, or stood quietly in line, their hands in plastic cuffs behind their backs.
Including the Minneapolis protest, police have arrested 422 people since Saturday in pre-emptive raids and at protests in downtown St. Paul that were marred by violence. St. Paul was quieter on the convention's third day, when four women from the peace group CodePink were arrested after crawling under a fence a couple blocks from Xcel. They were released.
CodePink also took credit for disrupting Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's speech on Wednesday night. The group said two of its members were given tickets to the speech by a Republican delegate who was frustrated with the party and Palin.
The CodePink members, Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, were escorted from the Xcel Center after yelling and displaying a banner. They said they were held until after her speech but not arrested.
Police said they broke up more serious plans to disrupt the convention.
Search warrants and other police documents made public this week claim that anarchists discussed plans to throw Molotov cocktails, sabotage the Xcel Energy Center or the St. Paul Downtown Airport, stretch metal chains across freeways and kidnap delegates.
Authorities filed felony charges Wednesday against eight people they said were core members of the RNC Welcoming Committee, a group that has worked to plan and support efforts to attack the convention. The eight, swept up in weekend police raids at houses and a Welcoming Committee workspace, were each charged with conspiracy to commit riot.
Also Wednesday, federal authorities announced charges against another man accused of planning to use Molotov cocktails to attack the Xcel Center.
Associated Press writer Jeff Baenen contributed to this report.
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