Thousands Rally and March in SF

Looks like the RCP's revolution was a big washout today. It's pretty sad to see that these suckers marching in support of a Maoist front group. When the RCP sets up it re-education camps, you all can enjoy the endless tape loop of Chairman Avakian's speeches.

http://www.infoshop.org/texts/rcp.html

I'm saddened to see the previous post stating the day was a waste. Yes, W.C.W. is probably a front group for the RCP, but does that negate the space it created for lots of youth to come out in to the streets and feel that they had a voice? Did you see some of the pictures?

I have my own mixed feelings, and sometimes bitter resentment, about lowest common denominator politics casting its wide net and scooping up mass public support (and the funds too!) while actually being rooted in strong idealogical politics that are not forthcoming immediately.
( YES, A FRONT GROUP!) But who are you to shit all over everybody that chose to demonstrate today? Cause I sure saw a lot of people out there not all "towing the party line". The fact of the matter is that groups like this also often provide a space for people who are newly politicized that other groups don't or don't have the capacity to create the space. I know, because it happened like that for me. Its very hard to get involved in "radical politics" especially with groups that operate with a "non-hierarchal" power structure if you've never been involved in the group before.
So while I respect your critique of WCW as a front group I feel that it is very counter productive to building a movement to dismiss the efforts, especially of all the youth, as a waste.
Please don't flame in any comments. Feel free to e-mail me if you want to discuss your opinion with me directly.

Thank you for these GREAT photographs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sorry, but resistance isnt marching through the streets chanting, then going to work the next day. If americans wont really resist, wont really challenge power, then do they really expect change? The largest global non-violent protests in human history occured during the build up to the war in Iraq, and they had absolutely no effect. Do people really still think that simply yelling really loudly will stop the war? If we want to look at real tactics for change, look at france in 68, look at spain before ww2, look at the zapatistas and oaxaca - but dont look to ANSWER or 'World Can't Wait".

hell yes! pacifism, on a global scale never will help change anything. and also, fuck the RCP, that's like saying if skindheads put on an anti-war march, but since it is a anti-war march and it is a space for free speech, then it's okay the skinheads did it. fuck that. and fuck the RCP.

Yes, I don't really think it is a big deal if RCP is behind WCW. Their politics will either reasonate with the broader public or not depending on if their message has an appeal. I find that generally they are sitting in the background of these events and not giving it too big of an Avakian spin. But by providing a venue for people to vent their frustrations and views is okay with me. Just recently WCW had Danial Ellsberg as an invited guest speaking at the Grand Lake the other night and he spoke about the need to get those miserable Democrats in power this November. God, that's a scary proposition, but I guess it's better than a bloody war.

Beautiful pics by the way!

Chicago was a bust as well WCW organizers projected 10,000 plus to the corporate press -- they got 1,500-2000 tops. Almost half of what WCW mobilized last November. That estimate came back to haunt them tonight.

http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/74238/index.php

I am glad that people are protesting against the war, I did it before it started and got dissapointed with the ignorance of those who thought that you could win the heart of others by destroying it. My worry now is the separation among americans, one group talks about the other group (or viceversa) and in reality, as long as the people is separated nothing will happen. Let's talk about embracing each other and joining the celebration for life. There should be no line among americans. Unfortunately we life in a box where major news channels (nationally and internationally) are creating a hostile environment around us, according to them our backyard is too dangerous and our neighbors evil or extrangers so we should never stop thinking about it. Stop supporting this ideas (don't buy their advertiser products, hit their pockets!). Love your peers, embrace and listen to them, then war will only mean nonsense.

I join Soula in thanking you for these eloquent photographs, Lori. I heard the addresses of Father Louie and Susan Galleymore broadcast on the radio Thursday afternoon. Both offered tremendously important ideas (to hear them, try Flashpoints.net), but no ideology. Around ten p.m., I took over some food and stayed to visit with a friend and admire the "Art Alley;" all the time I was there young people were present in small groups; one large group of young and old was gathered around women recalling diverse personal experiences in Iraq, Europe, and the U.S., and offering historical perspectives on the present situation.

Well, with great respect to Ellsberg, Vidal and others who inspired and participated this venue was a fiasco. Constitution is in a toilet and you get 1,500 protestors, hah.

It looks like the FEMA - Halliburton concentration camps have been build with too much overhead in mind, americans are bigger sheeple then expected and these camps will not be occupied to full capacity.

Now, just wait for another staged false flag "terror" attack and you won't get even those 1,500..
This is the end folks, I'm leaving the country for good next month, not worth to fight it anymore..

Yesterday around noon, cold and wet, rain coming down on us, there we were in Justin Herman Plaza...

...and then Daniel Ellsberg reads us a passage from Common Sense, written by Thomas Paine in 1776, a must read. And Mr. Ellsbergs' reading and Thomas Paine's words cheered us and gave perspective and hope to a crowd gone suddenly quiet in earnest listening.

...and then a little later Daniel Ellsberg said that something like he would rather see us, the 1500 out here, in the rain, on a weekday afternoon, than all the thousands out on a sunny weekend day. And this warmed us again.

Am wishing Oliver North (previous poster), that you could feel what that warmth captures.

>not worth to fight it anymore.. In the words of Sir Winston Churchill: Never, never, never give up.

Won't ever. Never giving up. I am not alone.

People of San Franciso, the SF Bay Area, California, the United States: the world turns on the actions we take here...and like a wave, these actions ripple out. Never give up.

So, I saw flyers for this event, but didn't even write it down because, well, world can wait does not impress me. then i encountered the march, and what really struck me was how many youth of color were present. Way more than I'm used to seeing.

so, I'd say it's a wake up call to those of us who dislike WCW and RCP and other sectarian grups and front groups; they are having success organizing youth of color, who are the front lines of this stuff...both by being a main target of recruiters and by being the communities who are most heavily impacted by the shift of resources from communities to war; what about the rest of us? are we even *thinking* about what it would mean tob raoden our movments to be relevant to youth of color? do we think we can win with a handful of largely white twenty somethings fucking shit up?

It's a sad day when WCW/RCP are doing better organizing than we are.

Great Pics Lori.

Some of the comments have denounced World Can't Wait because of the role of the Revolutionary Communist Party. There were demonstrations in over 200 cities nationwide on Oct. 5 including many in "red state" areas. Leading up to the demonstrations World Can't Wait raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for ads in the New York Times Washington Post and other papers. In the Bay Area, there were walkouts at over 30 schools including Fremont High, Oakland High, Downtorn High School, Emeliano Zapata High. 400 attended an evening of conscience and benefit on October 2 featuring Alice Walker, Daniel Ellsberg, Elmaz Abinader and Boots Riley. People like Gore Vidal, Sean Penn, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Harold Pinter, Naomi Wallace, Steve Earle, Ariel Dorfman, Malik Rahim, Francis Fox Piven, Martin Sheen and many many others have signed the call to drive out the Bush regime that has appeared in ads nationwide.

Right now the US government is openly proclaiming that it has the right to use torture. Over 100,000 Iraqis have been killed, habeas corpus a principle that dates back to 1215 is being overturned. Plans have been drawn upfor an invasion of Iran (think about what that would mean). We don't have time for a bunch of frankly sectarian bullshit about communist participation in a movement. If you think the approach that world can't wait has is wrong, then argue for what we need to do.

Here's what world can't wait says on their website about the participation of communists and the RCP in the movement:

Q: But aren't there communists in World Can't Wait?

A: Yeah, there are. Supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party helped initiate it. They're in it because they think it's absolutely urgent to get rid of this regime, that it would both lift a huge burden from the world and would also give people a sense of their own potential power, and they think all that would open up avenues to get to the kind of society they want. Same as a whole lot of other people in World Can't Wait which, by the way, includes Greens, Christians, Republicans, anarchists, Muslims, Jews, feminists, Democrats, pacifists, and people who claim no affiliation also think it's urgent to drive out the Bush Regime and also think it can help lead to bigger changes that they want in society, coming from their own viewpoints.

But to turn the question around, if you refuse to pitch in to October 5th, when you know that this is what has to be done just because there are communists in it, then you need to think about how well that worked back in the days of McCarthy or in Nazi Germany (when the many forces opposed to Hitler could not find the ways to unite). And how exactly would you explain your particular brand of "abstinence-only" policy to a prisoner at Abu Ghraib or a teenager in Tennessee who desperately needs an abortion or someone under the bombing rubble of Falluja or Lebanon? And then after you think about that, you need to actually start working on October 5. To stand aside at this point is really unconscionable.

I too am encouraged by organized protests of any kind and dissapointed by the turnout. Thursday's event was way below what I had expected. I will attend any of these though, to participate and express my abhorence of anti-democratic corporate authoritarianism in any guise.

I'm 55 and lived through SF of the 60's and seen the idealism of my generation's rhetoric wash down the relentless pressurized drain of the consumer/workslavery culture. Having a family and being the "provider" is the nail in the coffin which seals one's complicity. The best sage advice I can give is for each of us as individuals not to wait for an organization or group or some kind of mass social movement to arise from an economically dependent bureacratic structure. The workworld and its authoritarian tyranny is built upon this hierarchical paradigm and the fear of "failure" it dangles over one's head. Better to see oneself as a free agent of change within the consumer culture Matrix. Protest daily. Design the agenda yourself. As long as you don't break any laws(quiok, before they revoke the Constitution altogether!) and you can handle the dirty looks you will get for disobeying the social commands to behave passively to corporate toxification, you have a free pass to act.

A couple of weeks ago I was on Market and went in to pee in a McDinkles and discovered they didn't have a restroom. Two floors, no restroom. As I went out the door. I turned around and in a firm enough voice for ewveryone to hear, said, something to the effect of .."Don't patronize this corporation. They are an agent of your oppression, feeding you low quality food and paying staff low wages. No restrooms? Why do you come in here. Please rethink your actions. Leave here and go visit your local Mom and Pop restaurant where you'll get a fair deal."

This was fun and empowering. I highly recommend this and any other daily protest you do as your day evolves. Express yourself as life happens!

highschoolers now may well bring to fruition what collegers began in the late 60s - standing up for real non-cynical global care and awareness!

What a beautiful sight !! It is pity I am so far away in Spain, but my heart was with all those (perhaps millions ?) marching and demostrating That the World Can´t Wait... We, all over the world, are sick and tired as how this ego-maniac in the White House and all his "lameculos" that are trying to bring the world to a New Era of "freedom, libertty and love".... Rice, Cheney, Runsfeld, together should be taken to Guantanamo to try and see if the Administration "mild torture is enough to open minds".

If this march is not enough, we should make another one, but this time ALL OVER THE WORLD,

Gerard Prieto from Spain

The crowd looked pretty big to me from this vantage point! Two-minute QT movie. 13MB.