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Anarchist/Direct Action/Black Bloc out in SF national |
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news report
 Monday February 17, 2003 09:32 by path in exile - non-affiliated the BLANCH
 Report from SF action Evenin' all. Or good morning back home I suppose. Here's a sceal beag about my little adventure today. Tourist scum and all tha. Seeing the city with some locals is always the best way, eh? About 175,000 protestors (police estimate 150,000) showed up today for the anti war march in San Fran, finishing off the weekend of worldwide actions. The march was organised by the ANSWER! coalition, and included a variety of groups including Greens, Pacifists, Labor (they cant spell over here), and, of course, a few Hollywood stars (this is California after all). Around 3.30pm or so, a group under the banner of Direct Action Against the War set out on an unpermitted march from the rear of the main stage to the downtown streets. The organisers of the unpermitted march said they wanted to show the authorities that it was their city and they were entitled to go wherever they wished. The march of approximately 2500-3000 (mostly masked up in black) headed north in the direction of Union Square, which is reportedly the upmarket shopping district in the city. I cant confirm this because the march never made it there and I havent been there before. In fact in retrospect most of my time spent during the march was looking at my map trying to figure out where the fuck I was. At one intersection mounted police blocked the way to Union Square and there was an attempt to push through with placards, sticks and rocks, but the cops had those 2 foot long riot batons out and were swingin' and swedgin' hard core. This didnt last long so the march turned south and snaked around for a bit, clogging up Market Street for a brief time, which is a main traffic artery with a few shops on it also. The march then doubled back around and found its way onto the Cable Car line on Powell Street, where people climbed on top and shouted antiwar slogans. Then the march turned and ran en masse down Powell, over the pedestrian bollards at the end, and back onto Market St, a move not anticipated by Police. A group of about 50 Black Bloc'ers stormed the San Francisco Shopping Centre and smashed windows inside with rocks and bins, before exiting onto 5th Avenue and rejoining the rest of the crowd on Market. The crowd went further down Market, and I'm not too sure at which junction this happened, but the cops ended up hemming the march in at both ends. It looked like it was going to be a mass arrest but then the cops at the south end told everyone to disperse north. So people tried, but evidently nobody had told the line of cops at the north end. Lots of pushing and shoving ensued, the cops had their batons drawn, but everyone just pushed through and a huge cheer went up. After that things all got a little messy. I cant really remember what happened but the cops were rushing in and hitting people, then rushing back out again, horses were going crazy.. people sat down at the intersection for a blockade but the cops didnt tolerate it for very long. They cleared one part of the junction, then split the crowd in two and kept them on the pavement (or the "sidewalk" to use the local lingo). Lots of people were looking on, and the band kept on drumming in the cops faces. At this point (about 7pm or so) I was fucking knackered and hadnt eaten all day so it was time to go home. So I yanked that trusty map out of my arse pocket, but decided not to ask a nice policeman for help. Lots of other shit happened during the day that I only heard about later on cos it was at other points in the march. Old Navy (sweatshop store that sells "New Hampshire" yachting style wankah clothes) had a window smashed early on, I saw that, and a few places got graffitti'd, but I didnt see the cop car getting broken and sprayed. Apparently the direction action heads here are planning a city disruption on the first morning after war is declared, something we could learn from in Baile Atha Cliath metinks? Should be interesting. They were pretty well organised but when we got to that junction of Market and 8th, people just hung around for too long, which was a bit fucking pointless. It was only getting people worked up and arrested over nothing, we should have moved off to somewhere else and had our fun further back in the city. But they wanted to test their blockade tactics I guess, so fair play. Here's some shit from the "splinter march" (thats what the scum media here are calling it) (splitters!) if you're interested: Photos from the first push: Photo of cop car smashed n sprayed: Video from when the march was surrounded, and some more video clips of cops gettin heavy: Just a few general photos of the bloc: Some photos as tings hotted up, including flag burning (I missed this) and cops going crazy: At some points, especially at the confrontations at the 8th street junction, it was hard to tell if there was more people protesting or more people filming! So there you go. Hope life is good back home. From your local IMC correspondent on the wrong side of the Atlantic, goodnight. |
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5and the bit at the end
"At some points, especially at the confrontations at the 8th street junction, it was hard to tell if there was more people protesting or more people filming!"
sure dont you know that in those situations the people filming are protesting.
Nothing like a hundred camaras to defuse a confrontation. Well anarchist art collectives help as well but a hundred camaras do wonders.
The LA march was probably around 100,000 (who knows, go look at the pictures of easily 6-8 packed city blocks). It started at about 1pm from Hollywood/Highland (a recently revamped downtown tourist core of Hollywood. It was a very diverse crowd with a huge number of what looked like the usual liberal suspects, a huge number of organised socialists (I saw SWP placards (a group of about 10 people), Revolutionary Communist Party(3 hardcore paper sellers with a mobile booth), International Socialist Organization (about 20-30 people with a huge banner all in red t-shirts)).
The best part were groups of people like the Bus Riders Union who had an incredible drumming section and were all very young. There were also a couple of masked-up samba bands, a lot of punks wandering around, a lot of very creative costumes and placards ("Somewhere in Texas a Village has lost its Idiot", "If you put a Dick and a Bush together what do you get?: FUCKED!" etc.).
The march was headed to the Sunset/LaBrea recruiting station and wound on along Hollywood until we got to La Brea and turned left. At this stage there was some weirdness going on ahead that no-one could see from the middle of the crowd where we were. We had to turn left (travelling parallel to Hollywood and back East away from La Brea) and then saw that there was lots of horse dung and lots of hastily parked cop vehicles and crash-barriers blocking our way. A sound truck down a side-street behind police lines exhorted us to make it to Sunset/La Brea no matter what. Shortly after that there were the usual ANSWER people spread out in two-lines deep with 30-gallon drums collecting money from the crowd.
We took the next right and then came out onto Sunset. We could see the crowd still streaming along Hollywood to the first La Brea left-turn when we looked back up to the North.
Back on Sunset the crowd moved a little faster but by the time we got to Orange (a block up from La Brea) it was too dense to move any further. We hung around for about 30 minutes and watched as the people kept on streaming by, on and on. A guy with a cardboard tank towed behind his bicycle, a group of white-clad traditional Chinese drummers, clusters of Critical Mass cyclists, beautiful Hollywood babes, ancient hippies, yuppies in fleece, tall dreadlocked Rastas in tie-die, on an on.
We split at about 4pm as we didn't feel a need to be lectured by Christians, Hollywood Liberals and Dogmatic Socialists about why War is Bad.
At one stage during the march I had spotted what looked like the Black Bloc (4 black clad kids with a "Stop the Militari$ation" banner). I had heard earlier about calls for a Breakaway and wondered what was going to happen. Apparently about 200 rallied near the banner at Sunset/LaBrea and had a face-off with the po-po which resulted in a couple of arrests. See http://la.indymedia.org for more details. Apparently the cops in a display of irony used armorised SUVs to charge the crowd of 200. This was a purely symbolic confrontation where the Black Bloc refused to follow the "permitted" parade route. I talked to a good few people afterwards who had wanted to leave the march at various points and were refused permission to do this by the police. One of them was arrested after she hopped a barrier to cut back up to Franklin because her plan had been to show up and then go meet a friend.
Overall, it was good so many showed up, bad that the march was so restricted, good that the Black Bloc stood up for their right to protest effectively, good that not too many people were hurt.
http://www.sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/02/1574994.php
http://www.sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/02/1575034.php
See link. Sucks.
Just a note to clarify.
The breakaway talked about above was organized in part by Anti-War Action, not Direct Action Against the War-- which does not actualy exist.
There is a Direct Action to Stop the War which is planning a massive nonviolent direct action shutdown/transformation of San Francisco's financial district the first business morning after war starts. Check out the plan at actagainstwar.org
best wishes froma fire in the belly of the beast