**UPDATE** There’s a lot going on in St. Paul in the way of police raids on protesters gathering before the convention - in homes, in theaters, in public places - and their voices are attemptedly being squelched by local law enforcement. Please stop by www.theuptake.org and watch these stories as they unfold as told by citizen journalists on the street. I’d post the videos here myself but you really need to watch them all to get the full picture of what’s going on.

I met Jason Barnett of TheUptake.org earlier this year at a dinner with Schlomo Rabinowitz and Jay Dedman here in Washington , D.C. You may recall the video. Since then I’ve had a pretty rapidly expanding relationship with The Uptake and citizen journalism in general via Jason and those Minnesota new media mavericks. I’ve dabbled with helping them out with video requests and editing in the past, but after seeing what Brian Conley and Co. went through to document the ‘truth’ in Beijing I felt sort of dirty for having talent and time and not using it to help document what’s going on here in in our own backyard. So when the call came in to help out TheUptake, EpicFU, and Remix America with some video backup for the DNC/RNC I couldn’t resist.

These guys are doing some great work for the cause of citizen journalism and covering all of the news and events that slip through the cracks - i.e. all of the stuff that the mass media missed because they were too busy parlaying in obsequious banter about how the candidates haven’t chosen a VP, or how once they have that *gasp* they’re a woman. If you want the skinny from the ground make sure you tune in on;

TheUptake.org
QIK: The Uptake
TheUptake on Twitter
TheUptake on Youtube
TheUptake Group on Facebook (For the Latest Uptake Updates)
The Uptake 24/7 Streaming on Mogulus

A few of the pieces I was lucky enough to edit for these guys, highlights from the DNC: