Shut down of San Francisco - financial district [Archive]

abstractmentality

21st March 2003, 18:47

I arrived in San Francisco at around 7:45 am (would have been there earlier, but some friends were lagging behind), and as i walk up the stairs out of the BART station at Embarcadero, i hear huge chants of "No War In Iraq." i couldnt help but smile that so many people were out opposing the war. I came on the BART with about 8 other people, and were meeting with about 8 more. We walk onto the street to see masses of people. In the intersections of streets on Market (one of, if not the biggest "market" street in San Francisco) we saw people blocking traffic with the classic sit down, and others with Seattle style metal tubes holding them together. We then walk down to the next intersection, only to see the same thing. we then noticed that 2 of our friends that helped with the organizing of the event were sitting down already. a few minutes later they were arrested and put in a small police pen made of police barracades (from what i heard they were there until noon-ish). I do not even remember how many intersections had civil disobedience, it was so many. i would have loved to join them, but i was already skipping out on a final for cultural anthropology, and i had another final at 8am the next morning, so i couldnt.

3 of us later broke off to go to the civic center, from where we marched to the federal building, and then to down the street. whats interesting here is that previous to us getting there, another group was stopped from protesting by a police line. now that we got there, the police line was surrounded with a few thousand protestors on either side. they had no choice but to leave, let us join, and march on. we marched through the streets with no permit for miles on end, taking it over. we must have had about 8 thousand people, no way in hell the police could have stopped us without brutalizing us in front of NBC and ABC news cameras.

my group of 3 left when another sit down on market was taking place and people were getting arrested. they arrested so many, they had to bring in busses to take them away. at one point in the day, i heard that the bay bridge was shut down due to us. a day i will not forget.

for some more information and pictures, go to the San Francisco Indymedia website (http://sf.indymedia.org). The link is to the homepage of the SF Indymedia site, so if you are looking at it in the future, you may have to look around the site for it. March 20, 2003.

abstractmentality

22nd March 2003, 02:12

Here is the report the sociology professor i went with to the protest yesterday wrote:

Wanted to share a report back from direct actions all over San Francisco
yesterday in case you are interested. Don't rely on the mainstream media
to find out what happened, and is still happening! Much better coverage
is on the alternative media. KPFA has been doing great coverage of the
antiwar demonstrations all over the world. Indybay.org has great
pictures, reports, updates about what is going on in the streets.

First, M20 was GREAT! SF cops did not know what to do next. One of the
networks announced on the news how ALL the cops were on duty & a bunch of
CHP (highway patrol) had to be called in for backup. At one time,
helicopters reported that over 50 separate demonstrations were happening
simultaneously. We carpooled down with about 15 people from Davis. About
half were prepared to do civil disobedience & get arrested; a couple were
risking deportation (as they were on student visas and from the Middle
East); a few of us were planning to do support at intersections and hoping
to be back to give or take finals exams on Friday. We all knew that
simply being in the streets put us at risk of arrest--we'd learned last
sat. that mass arrests of people in 'illegal assembly on the sidewalk'
were possible.

The group I was with for the whole day (3 of us) spend most of the time
doing support at various intersections in the financial district, at the
Federal building, enjoying liberated zones before the cops arrived, and
marching on one of the many planned & spontaneous marches that went
through the city. This gave us a great chance to see a tremendous amount
of creative, noviolent direct action and resistance. People were very
angry and committed to disrupting 'business as usual'. The day of action
was very successful in disrupting our daily lives. I think many people
were empowered and would not be satisfied by directing their sorrow, rage,
disgust, shame, and especially voices in permitted parades. We don't have
the "right" to disrupt the economy, says our Governor…. the media refused
to report on any of the reasons that the direct action was called, refused
to report on the creativity, nonviolent tactics, and energy that was in
the streets.

The rest of the report, if you want to know more, includes some highlights
of what our group heard about and did ourselves. First a few highlights
of what was going on, then, more details about a few specific actions.
Many roving affinity groups--going from intersection to intersection. A
waitress against the war serving snacks to protesters, knitters who later
roped off an intersection on Market with their yarn, several bike brigades
doing great communication work, helping us know where support was needed &
what was happening. Early in the AM, Bechtel corp. sent everyone home
and was shut down for a long time; the Bay Bridge was shut down briefly; a
couple of on/off ramps on the highways were shut down for a little while
early in the morning; a group of 'dead' people carrying a coffin -- Dead
Against The War and another group, Queers Against the War joined with a
couple hundred people to spontaneously march to Market from the Carlyle
Group HQ after the police finally (after several hours) cleared the
intersection; black blocs; pink blocs; white for peace blocs… less
organized efforts to move the TransAmerica pyramid's blockades to close an
intersection; spontaneous blockades made from newspaper boxes & garbage
cans; graffiti…

The only violence against a person I personally saw was done by the
police.

Below, more details on the actions we did.

When we arrived at the Embarcadero shortly after 7am, we came up out of
the BART station and walked right into a huge faceoff between protestors
locked down (I think this was the Market & Main intersection) and the
police. The riot cops were surrounding the lockdown & perhaps 1000 people
were supporting the action. Here we saw a mother with her toddler and
several other protesters standing between the cops and the people locked
down.

We headed to Market and Sansome where we knew some friends were doing an
action by Citicorp. 2 lines of a tight lockdown were blocking the whole
intersection--creating a huge free space between them. By the time we got
there, the cops had un-liberated the space, but there were many, many
people still there, including a brass band. Folks with their arms in the
pipes were reinforced by several rows of additional protesters sitting
down in the street. A little after 8am the firetruck arrived with a big
electric saw that they used to cut off the tubes from protesters arms.
People were lying down on the street, arms locked in the pipes. Cops
burned at least one woman and needed medics to attend. It took a long
time to cut everyone out & arrest the all the people who were there.
Arrestees were put in a temporary pen on the sidewalk and were left there,
handcuffed, for at least 3+ hours.

It looked like there was maybe only one of these big saws, because it
seemed like cops were guarding intersections until the firetruck arrived.
This made some intersections stay blocked for much longer. The affinity
group trying to shut down the Carlyle Group had that intersection closed
for a long time! We were at this action for at least an hour, until all
the arrests were made. Someone almost was successful in taking down the
American flag at building HQ. Looked like the intersection was reinforced
with hay or straw earlier, but the bales were gone by the time we arrived.

Over 1400 arrests as of Friday morning--cops are using MUNI buses to
transport arrestees and themselves around the city. As one intersection
was cleared, more people would go & sit down at or take over the next
one. Some drivers were more frustrated than others. We saw a taxi almost
run over one of us and later another car sped through a crowded
intersection almost hitting several people.

Back to Market Street & Montgomery. Several thousand people are crowded
around dozens of people occupying the intersection--mostly sitting down.
Very heavily militarized by riot cops. Cops grab one girl by hair, throw
her down to ground and hit her with baton. Another woman has a broken
wrist--not sure how it was broken. Medic is allowed off sidewalk but woman
is arrested & denied a doctor anyway. Some people in our group leave
because can't bear to witness the brutality. Others stay, convinced we
must be witness & hold cops accountable. Lots of legal people writing
badge #s and folks with cameras documenting. 4 people from Davis decided
to sit down with others & get arrested here. Police have surrounded most
of this big intersection, hard to leave even if you want to.

Planning was coordinated & decentralized at the same time.
Reconvergence times throughout the day and night & places were set so
dispersed crowds could regroup & set out again. One of these times was
set at 12noon at Civic Center. After being at several tense standoffs at
intersections in the financial district, we headed to meet up with an
expected breakaway march at the Civic Center. We heard from the Direct
Action Against War organizers that support was needed at the Federal
Building. They did a quick training for people who might want to help do
the civil disobedience there and we set off. Incredibly, the building was
barely guarded at all, except for some police fences and a couple of
cops. There were some people blocking entrances but not a lot of action.
We found a drum circle & several hundred people chanting & dancing in the
streets--we were telling the workers to walk out & had a good audience
gawking at us from the windows. This went on for a while… where were the
cops? we think they ran out of them, or maybe a Black Bloc march attracted
too many?

An ANSWER led march started & passed by the Federal Building and we
decided to join it since it was unclear what was happening at the Fed
Bldg. We were afraid it would be one of the less-exciting parts of the
day since ANSWER usually cooperates pretty well with the cops & gets
permits, etc. The beginning was a standard parade but soon we were
stopped on Market by a few rows of riot cops. We were stopped for a while
but somehow got the cops to move at one point ! Still they would not let
us down to the Financial District. So, we went the long way around. But
this proved to be a great march. We effectively took Van Ness for about a
mile--stopped both directions of traffic & got tremendous support from
truck drivers, workers, and some drivers. We eventually turned (I think on
California) and headed towards Union Square. Up & down the street, we
stopped trolleys & police ended up diverting traffic as we moved forward.
The march just kept growing and was several blocks long at the end. Going
through the financial district eventually, we saw incredibly few cops--
especially in comparison to earlier in the day. [however, we heard that
more towards the back of the march lines of cops were following on each
side--in either case, they let us go for 3 hours!] They started to appear
as we approached Market and stopped the march almost as soon as we got
onto Market. In a beautiful spontaneous response, the whole march sat
down!!! I think this was >7000 people sat down on the street. About 10-15
minutes later, the cops moved & let the march pass. But, some people
stayed & locked down (somehow they had new pipe/tubes!!) holding the
Market & Montgomery intersection for a while. The march continued but
many people stayed at the intersection. Still few cops. 30 minutes passed
& then busloads of gangs of cops on motorbikes started arriving. They got
into formation, ordered everyone out of the street & waited till a
firetruck arrived. Mabye 20 people were sitting down & locked down at the
intersection. About 150 cops, with riot gear, guns for rubber bullets or
tear gas (not sure which) confronted the totally peaceful, unarmed crowd.
More cops kept coming. We chanted for them to put down their weapons as we
were unarmed, but this just seemed to anger them. Not sure if the
firetruck was for a watercannon or the electric saw because we had to
leave to go back to Davis, prepare for finals. Cops just guarding in
formation. Starting to arrest people w/o tubes on arms.

It was ~5pm. People were organizing to try to close the onramps to the
Bay Bridge again. KPFA kept us updated on the drive back to Davis of the
Bay Bridge attempt and we heard that Montgomery & Market was still blocked
& tense long after we left. This morning, direct actions still happening…