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From: "dnordin" <•••@••.•••>
To: <•••@••.•••> & others
Subject: PROTESTERS SHUT DOWN SAN FRAN
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 10:56:55 -0800
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_______________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
http://www.ainfos.ca/
http://ainfos.ca/index24.html
________________________________________________
The pie-throwing flan-archists of the Biotic Baking
Brigade have struck again, this time targeting a
corporate media reporter responsible for spewing
misinformation about the massive anti-war protests in
San Francisco.
Phase I of the BBB's "Operation: Shock & Awe" began at
7 pm on March 20. In the middle of blockaded Market
Street in downtown San Francisco, outraged individuals
surrounded KTVU Channel 2 reporter Jennifer Jolly
(seriously, we're not making the name up), a typically
blonde-haired, fancy-dressed TV "news" personality, and
confronted her regarding her lies and blatant
propaganda. Earlier in the day, these individuals had
watched her report on the air that demonstrators were
violent and disrespectful and lawless, that parents
should not bring their children to anti-war
demonstrations, that she had not witnessed any
incidents of police brutality, and other such garbage.
BBB Agent Tarte Classique, who just so happened to be
carrying around cans of whipped cream and paper plates,
made her/his way through the throng, announced "Pies
for your lies!", and deposited a large plate of cream
straight into Jolly's talking head.
Of course, Jolly is just a cog in the corporate media
machine. This phase of the BBB's "Operation: Shock &
Awe" is meant to address not an individual telling
lies, but rather, an entire corporate-industrial
complex. The directors governing the media
conglomerates also sit on the boards of the military
weapons manufacturers and all of the other industries
in an interlocking directorate of power. So, it is not
really accurate or enough to just say, "the corporate
media is biased." In point of fact, the corporate media
IS the war, is the military, is the destruction of the
environment, is the gentrification of our cities, is
the criminalization of the poor and non-aryan and
foreign-born...it is everything that we loath about
this society.
During this time of global crisis, we don't expect pies
to stop the military. But rather, we will use them to
subvert the dominant paradigm as an auxiliary activity
to the more pressing ones such as militant
demonstrations, blockades and occupations.
Let slip the pies of war,
Agent Apple for the BBB
*******************************************************
Thursday, March 20, drew to a close with an estimated
4000-6000 people still marching through the streets of
downtown SF as of 10 pm. Below are notes on current
events for A-infos readers. SF Indymedia,
http://sf.indymedia.org/, and SF Liberation Radio,
http://www.liberationradio.net/, are covering these
events.
--People in the streets did an excellent job of
shutting down SF by utilizing cat-and mouse techniques.
So, while there were affinity groups and large
gatherings of people that would occupy an intersection
until being arrested (and should be commended for this
action), a more effective tactic was for smaller groups
to occupy the intersection until the riot cops came and
got in formation (which, because they operate in a
hierarchical command structure, and because downtown
traffic was completely tied-up, would often take a very
long time), and then walk a block to the next
unoccupied intersection and take it over! This worked
extremely well, and allowed people to stay out of jail
and keep active all through the day.
--There were many forms of direct action taken besides
road and building occupations. According to
eyewitnesses and Indymedia reports, windows of
corporate targets were smashed, graffiti was left all
over downtown, fire hydrants were opened and gushers of
water loosed, newspaper boxes and garbage cans were
moved out into the streets as barracades, corporate
media vans had their tires slashed and were
spraypainted, cop cars were spraypainted and had
windows smashed and tires slashed, and a military
recruiting center had their doors smashed in and
interior dramatically redecorated, as well as files
looted and tossed out into the streets.
--It should be noted that there was a more aggressive
stance taken against the police and corporate media
than at any time since the Rodney King riots and the
first Gulf War in the early 1990s. Aside from property
destruction against the corporate media, reporters on
the street were constantly confronted and hassled. The
police were overheard saying that they had never seen
such aggressive behavior at protests, and they seemed
surprised, overwhelmed, and generally freaked out.
Large dumpsters were on several occasions pushed
through lines of riot police, and according to an
Indymedia report, a violent cop was attacked by angry
demonstrators who were sick of being hit by his
billyclub!
--Apparently, police have claimed to the media that
after they arrested the Black Blockers, they found
caches of Molotov cocktails, rocks, and other weapons,
but they exact claim has not been confirmed at this
time. Also, they claimed that a protester tried to take
a gun from a cop which led to injuries and a violent
confrontation between police and protesters. However,
eyewitnesses claim that this allegation may refer to an
incident where a lone officer rushed into the BB trying
to arrest someone, and people in response stopped him
and were telling him to calm down and back off. He was
seen to be very afraid and calling into his radio for
backup, but in reality he was not in any danger, though
he may have felt that way because he was in the middle
of several hundred masked-up marchers.
--Here are a few snippets from corporate media reports
that are of strategic and general interest:
It took three hours for anti-war activists to cripple
downtown San Francisco using hit-and-run civil
disobedience tactics to an extent never before seen in
the Bay Area.
The city that nursed the sit-ins and be-ins of the
counterculture protesters of the 1960s was gummed up by
a form of demonstration that relies on the whims of
small knots of activists, who flitted from block to
block instead of lumbering with the predictability of a
mass march...
A police spokesman said the mood on the force is one of
exhaustion due to the overtime hours and the stress of
dealing with the tens of thousands of protestors that
have clogged city streets for the past three days.
On Thursday morning demonstrators occupied 50 separate
sites, predominately intersections, where officers were
called on to make arrests and clear city streets, the
police said. Between 1,300 and 1,400 people were
arrested, according to the department.
"We don't really know how many people are out there or
where they're going next," Ladan Sobhani, an organizer
with Direct Action Against the War, said shortly before
noon. "People make that decision on their own."
At the 11 a.m. peak of the protests, activists had shut
down 30 intersections, blockaded a dozen buildings and
forced police to ask motorists not to come into
downtown.
Often, police would encircle the demonstrators only to
find themselves encircled. Sometimes as few as 25
demonstrators shut down an intersection and stifled
traffic for blocks.
"It's a cat-and-mouse game," said Deputy Chief Rick
Bruce, who heads the Police Department's special
operations bureau.
"We're in a totally reactive mode," he said. "We just
respond to illegal activity. It's tough. They are
moving faster than us. They shut down all of Market
Street this morning. As soon as we would reopen a
section, they would shut down another one."
A protester from Oakland said police inadvertently
helped demonstrators seal off streets.
"When we block a street for 20 minutes, the cops come
and block it for another half an hour when they
surround a few people and block off the corners, " said
Williams, who said he had helped clog 10 intersections
before noon -- but always moved before officers could
arrest him.
"They're slower than us, so they compensate with total
overkill," Williams said. "There will be 50 cops
arresting five people. But hundreds of us move on. "
Capt. Kevin Dillon said demonstrators move faster than
police "because they can violate the law. It our job to
enforce the law. If we disperse them illegally or make
an illegal arrest, it will haunt us. They just move as
fast as they want."
Even protest coordinators were in poor position to
predict its effects. There were no leaders -- merely
"pied pipers" who escorted activists from the dispatch
point at Justin Herman Plaza to where reinforcements
were needed.
Many of the protesters belonged to one of two
categories -- affinity groups, dozens of clusters
of five to 25 friends or like-minded individuals who
had been planning their initial demonstration target
for months; and free-lancers who showed up with no set
destination in mind.
The affinity groups promptly fanned out to more than
two dozen points, blocking intersections, encircling
buildings or blockading entrances.
"The large demonstrations are great, too," said a
21-year-old Laney College student. "But we've been
doing them, and obviously people haven't been
listening. With this, people can't just view them from
afar.
(People inconvenienced by them) have to stop and think
about what's happening in the world."
Officer Drew Cohen, who was documenting the police
response on his camcorder for the department, said he
came away with a respect for demonstrators' tactics.
"They succeeded this morning -- they shut the city
down," Cohen said. "They're highly organized, but they
are totally spontaneous. I think police are doing a
great job, but the protesters are always a few steps
ahead of us.
"Our success will come when we arrest so many of them
we have depleted their ranks," Cohen said. "Otherwise,
we can only play catch-up."
****** The A-Infos News Service ******
News about and of interest to anarchists
WWW: http://www.ainfos.ca/
INFO: http://www.ainfos.ca/org
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