account and fotos of Sept. 24th antiwar march

The large ANSWER facilitated anti-foreign intervention march on Sept. 24, 2005 was perhaps the 10th in a long series of these since year 2002 when it became clear that the U.S. would escalate it's involvement in Iraq, after a decade of lower level monitoring of Iraq's airspace, arms inspections, and sanctions on trade.
During the previous several days there had been transfixing and disturbing reports that Hurricane Rita could possess category 5 windspeeds and destroy much of Houston and Galveston, a few weeks after tremendous damage in New Orleans. Someone I listened to had predicted a low turnout at the Answer march, and so I thought that the focus on the hurricane might be a good excuse, if this were to be the situation. In fact, there was an impressive turnout at Dolores Park. All the banks of bathrooms and portapotties had lines of what seemed like hundreds of people around 11:45am. People in the park were either listening to the people on the stage or were affiliated with interest-groups, and talking with each other beforehand. Everyone looked at each other's inventive signs. The march took quite some time for everyone to walk pass a particular point, and took up many blocks.
Moreover, the day was really sunny and ambient, and it feels like there are lots of people in town for this protest, the large Love Parade tekno fest starting at 1pm at the Civic center, and everything seemed so remote from the unhappy events in the middle east and the american southeast.
The group Anarchist Action had received negative press a couple months ago when an officer trying to arrest someone for throwing a sign in the street was hit on the head by a bystander. People in the same group had been advertising a feeder march to the main march from 16th and Mission BART station. Arriving a bit late to see their takeoff, I saw a larger number of police in vans and on motorbikes who seemed to be moving around two blocks away from Dolores street. Someone who had been around at the time said that this feeder march had been stopped by police officers blocking the street, and telling them to return to 16th and Mission. The fact that dozens of people were emerging from the BART station each minute made it in feasible for police to detain just individuals associated with the group, and they were let go, but it demonstrated some level of antagonism. I really decided that this group displayed very wise strategy by deviating from the pattern and not being predictable. There were zero arrests before the end of the march, and thousands of flyers were passed out, even though the police department had been spoiling for a conflict. The march had a lot of different contingents based on cities they came from, different peace groups, or cultural groups that had decided to participate.
The route passed through the castro District, down a few blocks of Market, on Van Ness by the city hill, then down Gough to Jefferson park. There were a small number of visible crazy signs, such as something someone wrote about 'gooks' with images of SF police officers, but there were only about four Protest Warriors, and then a group of people who didn't seem to have anything to do with Iraq, but were holding the flag of Israel as though this constituted a counterprotest? Someone on Van Ness shouted not to go down Gough because 'it's a trap'. A large number of police in a special crowd control detail were flanking a contingent identified by black clothing; of course, people with third way or radical democrat perspective can't necessarily be identified based on dress. I don't like to engage in a lot of scanning people in the crowd and imagining that isolated middle aged guys with sunglasses are probably police, because this speculation could just give someone an ego boost, but there were definitely a couple people whose behavior gave evidence that they were law enforcement staff, for instance, walking along speaking by themselves, and seeming to watch a particular part of the crowd and staying with them. Passing by ANSWER staff collecting money, a few people expressed dissatisfaction with their leadership.
At Jefferson park, it took nearly an hour for everyone to file in. The AA group sat down in grass near the SE corner of the park, and were having casual discussions. After a couple of minutes, it seems like one person focused on a nearby NBC11 news van and went over and attacked its window and wrote 'down with corporate media' on it, but I couldn't see because line-of-sight was obstructed. What was interesting was that where previously there had been huge lines of police following along the sides of the crowd, here the onlookers were scanning around expecting police to come, or for the NBC11 staff at least to come and exhibit an angry reaction. Just 20-30 feet away, parents were feeding their kids juice and the crowd passed by the other side of the van and didn't notice any of this going on due to the sound of the megaphones, even though there had been some chanting of slogans going on. This took quite some time - by the time some cameramen returned to their van 20 minutes later, lots of people in the area had wandered away. Then the van reporter took about 5 minutes to go get police to return to write up a report. I don't think this reporter gave the emotional reaction desired by some.
It seemed like a lot of people were leaving for the Love Parade or home because the lawn was . Hanging around a while longer, many people were eating or flyering, and a couple felt like arguing with the protest warriors. Someone called and said they had heard something was happening at Eddy and Gough, so I walked up there to see. There were a lot of police motorcycles there, and I asked someone nearby what had happened, but they sort of looked at me as though they were thinking "who are you?", with a cautious perspective, but it seems like it was just a verbal spat that had occurred.
The Love parade did have something of the style of the Berlin parade of the late 90s, but with two dozen stationary floats ringing Civic center. It was really fun and it struck me as like halloween in the Castro except cooler with better music and less crowded, with less violence and gay bashing in the shadows, so now I don't have to go to halloween this year! I just looked at the film of arrests of a group going to the Love Parade, and I hadn't seen any of that, and it was surprising to see. It looks like the group became physically isolated on a block lacking other passersby, rally participants or ravers. Hardly anyone else at the main protest learned about this large arrest scene.

<<<<<<<The AA group sat down in grass near the SE corner of the park, and were having casual discussions. After a couple of minutes, it seems like one person focused on a nearby NBC11 news van and went over and attacked its window and wrote 'down with corporate media' on it, but I couldn't see because line-of-sight was obstructed. What was interesting was that where previously there had been huge lines of police following along the sides of the crowd, here the onlookers were scanning around expecting police to come, or for the NBC11 staff at least to come and exhibit an angry reaction>>>>>>>>>>>

these were our local anarchists - they had the regular black clothes with handkerchiefs tied from their noses to their necks. i saw the anarcko's attack the NBC van - two or three of them started smashing the van with their bodies, slamming it with their fists.

before the parade started i was wondering when the anarkos were going to do their propaganda of the deed or deeds - this was the first one i saw - i'm sure others would follow - but of course you don't know their plans of attack.

jokingly, of course, i asked one of the masked anarko-girls if she would like my lighter so she could set the corporate propaganda van a-flame!!!!!

she just smiled.

i figured i better get out of there - the police were nearby.

It's kind of hard to tell from one picture but this guy looks alot like the dude who was caught on camera this last Spring in Santa Cruz after the UCSC students down the military recruiters. For more info., see santacruz.indymedia.org a post around May or thereabout.

well, with the anarchist actio n group, I concluded that their approach and tactics were quite astute on Saturday. Everyone was aware of them and many received a flyer. Perhaps a future goal would be to figure out how to make a safe space for middle aged oppressed people. After all, I am almost surprised how well the perspective of people I happen to talk to on the bus or other situations comes across as more radical than mine on many issues, even if they're not plugged in and have a very average work life. Meanwhile democratic representatives are mostly scared to display an anti-Iraq position, and you are told that anyone at or left of the Ralph Nader 'pro democracy' perspective would be a <1% minority nationally.

So SFgate finally reported that the arrests well after the political rally at the love parade were for jaywalking? I have seen situations where the police were clearly prepared to take advantage of any regulations such as traffic rules or "failure to obey an officer" in order to achieve a goal. Or detaining someone then just not charging them.It is saturday and the judges hold court on Monday morning. However, it mostly worked well during the rally itself.

By the way, I caught NBC11 at 11pm. That reporter with the blue shirt actually delivered above average or good text in his report of the march.I don't know if they are a station that posts transcripts online. They didn't mention the newsvan thing. The bigger NBC company has many ommissions. Go to the Iraq gory section photo of nowthatsfuckedup.com and look at the photos that the american soldier peasants are submitting to get free access to the rest of the site. Now if typical soldiers all have collections of photos that intense, which is far worse than anything shown on the news, then a lot isn't being reported.

we got NBC!!! Now the masses will line up in our program of window smashing for freedom, and spray-painting for autonomy. It was really great that we got the van, because the van is a SYMBOL of the local station, and the NYC HQ of this evil corportation. Surely the power brokers in NYC will give up their station to the people now...after all, we broke WINDOWS on a VAN.
Great work fellas, I'da joined ya, but I forgot my hankerchief, and my Anarko-powers were rendered impotent.

What, are you some sort of cop?
yah.

He's just someone who's not an idiot who thinks you can change the world by running around and smashing up some vans.