San Francisco Bike ride against G8

Most people on the sidewalks appeared happy to see us, or at least had no negative reaction. Sometimes call-in radio shows and ranting sections on youtube and newspaper websites give the feeling that the public has a lot of antibicycle fanatics, but we didn't see any.
Appearances were made by both Gabe Myers, who was basically arrested during the 2005 protest as a 'sucker' and charged (and later let go) with felony lynching after dropping a foam sign in the road as a police car drove at high speed towards him, and also Josh Wolf, who spent a record amount of time in jail for refusing to speak to a grand jury formed to probe the battery of the other officer who was driving the vehicle. Grand juries gathering evidence and issuing indictments are allowed unrestricted questioning of witnesses, unlike regular courtroom practice, and a witness is not allowed to have a lawyer present. In situations where a political group is involved (such as the Red Scare of the 1950s), these juries are capable of vastly overreaching and gathering long lists of names of people uninvolved in crimes, who could be branded as suspects. Press reports created a confusing picture, but Wolf was not considered in contempt of court for refusing to testify about the injury of the officer, or to show his video tape, but rather he didn't agree to unrestricted questions about participants who he had a confidential journalistic relationship with.

The ride was pretty nice. It was very sunny, and most of the route had long stretches uninterrupted by short cycle lights. The nature of the large police response was interesting in that only a small group of friendly bicycle officers, plus some Harley and motorbike riding police officers were mixed together in the crowd. We had no trouble splitting the road and tunnel with cars, and things felt much safer than during ordinary times when you inevitably split the right lane with buses and right-turning cabs. In a few cases, there was mixed body language when some officers objected to the tail-end of the group continuing to move on a red light, so people became worried and stopped. Yet other officers appeared to be hurrying the group through on the red by stopping traffic. In any case, every so often one could squint two blocks down and make out police vans, Chevy Suburban/Tahoes, and cars moving by, sometimes briefly sounding a horn as though they were trying to get around traffic. Occasionally the ride would come across a new group of police parked well away from the start, such as Columbus avenue. Then at the end where people listened to music, while a smaller group stood across the street, it seemed like more vans with police emblem kept turning the corner to drive by.
Reasons behind the negative response by thousands of people (from the left, right, and center) to the G8 are difficult to summarize briefly. On the surface, a meeting of world leaders might appear to be a positive thing, akin to the creation of the UN. In addition, it isn't clear how much could really get discussed during 2-3 days of talks, or how anything so ominous could arise out of this.
The easiest way to explain it is that the era of colonialism never ended. Governments (spanning multiple presidents) have spent the last few decades working closely with large companies and are controlling the economies and governments of most of the third world against the interests of their populations. It is easy to let your eyes glaze over and think "yes, we just need to invest in Africa" and not realize that the areas of Africa with the most foreign 'investment' are the most impoverished, for instance the horrible resource wars in the Congo (where the United States helped assassinate their democratic leader in the 60s, and installed a dictator), or Shell Oil destroying the land base in the Nigerian Delta while sharing none of its profits.
Much of the decisions and content of these meetings is worked out beforehand. Institutions such as the World Bank are where the details of public/private plans are worked out by small committees. One of the most common mechanisms for creating third world poverty is the forcing of countries to take loans for large infrastructure projects such as dams, waterworks and power grids which aren't used by working class, are carried out by first world corporations (such as Bechtel in Bolivia) and end up indebting the population for decades.
Finally, while it seems like individuals have little chance of influencing such powerful institutions, it is important to remember that the WTO has had to make major concessions to emboldened latin american, african, and SE asian contingents after the major turning point after the 1999 protests. The signing of Merkel's Climate statement was regarded as a big success during this meeting, although the lack of concrete actions promised in this agreement makes it seem like the public was just successful in making the leaders want to seem responsive. You as an individual might not be able to change it all by yourself, but it is coming about as an emergent property of a movement of less than 10% of the population who become activists.