SF Greek Solidarity. Protesters March Through Downtown. 5 Arrests

Who was arrested and are they out? is there anything outsiders can do to help them get out faster?


Keep it up, hope to see much more of this in the new year!

an advance-guard moving into Macy*s could have been something, if Macy!s was the final target. people could put up a banner on the inside once the cops sealed the entrance, or someone could have projected on a wall outside, if things there went down as it sounds in this post. independent affinity groups add a nice touch when possible, at this one corporate outlet or a number of any others during an event like this

I heard like 6 locked up three released as of Early early early sunday. Spoke with 2 people upon their release. One person injured by the pigs.

SF IVAW Represent!

How does screaming the not so original '' Fuck the Police'' at the mini fortress of the Mission SFPD precinct station help build solidarity with the rebellion in Greece ? I can tell you that numerous bystanders i talked to or overheard were under impressed . (Those that even understood what was going on that is . ) I talked to one man originally from El Salvador who said that he had been harassed by the police and considered them not that much better than the ones in San Salvador . " Only not as deadly ''. But he compared chants like Fuck the Police to teasing pit bulls and also commented that to many bystanders it made the cops look like restrained good guys .
I also wonder was there any attempt to reach out to Greeks and Greek-Americans in the Bay area , many of whom or their families had opposed the 1967-1973 Military dictatorship and the US support for it ?
I'm sorry but it seemed in some ways like a old RCP demostration (before they decided to form alliances and at least attempt United fronts ) Very insular and self congradutory .
But with all their faults at least the RCP and other Leninist groups take care of their arrested comrades . Bail, attornies etc.
Will you guys do the same or do you even have the capacity for that ? If not then maybe you shouldn't engage in those types of actions if you aren't prepared for the likely consequences..

I was the one arrested at Geary and Grove streets. The police cited and released me with a resisting arrest charge a few hours later. As of this morning my body aches and I cannot place to much wait on my right ankle due to the police kicking out my ankle and legs from behind when they took me down. Just want to let people know I am ok and free, but the police definitely caused me some damage.

damn! we forgot to see how the rcp does things!!

Fire in the streets of Athens, Greek youth unleashed.
The concrete wasteland below their ancient city of marble,

Tenements and cinderblock apartments, cannot hold
Their dreams, their pooling blood, their exploding rage.

It is spray painted on the steps of the Acropolis,
It burns all night in the skeletons of upturned cars,

And spreads thru the stores of the gentrified streets
That line their great boulevards.

Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot down by police,
But his spirit went to no heaven, nor hell.

An anarchist youth, his soul took to the streets.
It tore up the asphalt; it turned cement into rain,

And it screams to us all, across our electric screens,
The demand of a thousand masked faces, “No more!”

No more wasted lives in these commercial canyons and dead end ghettos.
The youth are rising, and the flags of all Nations

Feel the heat of the Greek Flag, burning.

yeah - before they went into the backroom behind ANSWER or NION (I forget which), the RCP did favor vanguardist marches through certain neighborhoods, to try to incite the working class to rise up. I wonder if it would work in the Central valley where everyone is losing their house. Where are conditions ripest for such leadership? I hope everyone's okay today. The stuff in Greece is still going this weekend, by the way. My take is that it was a mixture of a highly educated society, unemployment, and their particular culture. We'll see what comes of it.

I guess you didn't really read what i wrote . I was making the point that the demo reminded me in some ways of a RCP action, in that you'll both seem indifferent to what impact (if any ) you're having .Re your comrades that were busted it seems like none are facing serious charges, Good. But my other point was if they had been charged with felonies and faced prison time would your coalition, bloc , mileau whatever have the resouces to back them up, financially, legally, and politically ?
As for contacting Greeks resident in the Bay area i would have thought that would have been one of the first things the organizers would have done . After all at demos about the siege of Gaza you have Palestinians (sometimes hundreds ) , at rallies against the British occupation of Northern Ireland Celts would be plentiful and so on .

With the US economy failing due to corruption on Wall Street and in real estate it is uprising protests have not tapped into anger over the economic collapse.

The protest went through the Valencia area, Mission Street and downtown shopping district. Valencia hipsters are probably from the wealthiest background of any of the places and while many are liberal few feel the impact of the recent downturn and since most try to live under their means the least likely to be impacted. The shopping district is full of people who have the money to go shopping at places like Macys rather than at local cheaper malls so it was also full of people unlikely to be sympathetic. Mission street probably had some people who would feel sympathy but while many peopel look down and out it isn't much worse off than it has been for the past few decades so there is less likely to be the anger one would see in areas with high eviction rates, WaMu layoffs etc...

A tie-in to Greece could have helped the protest but a tie-in with the US economic collapse and a route taking it through neighborhoods impacted by the housing crisis and downturn would have been much more productive. The actions at the malls did draw in media unlike the other parts of the protests but when one doesn't have control over the message it has to resonate though easy to understand demands and the economic crisis is something everyone knows about while even though its getting some coverage even among left leaning Americans people know very little about Greece.

Since the protest was organized mainly as a solidarity protest with a police shooting in Greece I guess there are reasons that tie-ins with police shootings made better sense than it being tied to the reason that the rioting in Greece is so widespread (which relates to the world economic collapse). Perhaps with that focus pulling in more people who have had family members killed by police and focusing much of the protest in neighborhoods where that message is strongest (as Oct 22nd does for example) would have been a way to go?

The protest wasn't bad. Just having some mainstream coverage and photos on Indymedias of a solidarity protest probably helps those in Greece by showing them there are people around the world who are in solidarity. Still it did seem like it was mainly inward looking with much of the reason for the protest to make the Anarchist community feel like they were doing something meaningful rather than helping build a larger movement for future actions. The average age of protesters seemed like it was 30+ and that itself wasn't a good sign since it shows that the movement is not pulling many new people in.

Thanks to '' Some thoughts'' for responding . I'm certainly not an enemy of the Anarchist scene . I applaud , for example, what the IWW has been doing with Starbucks workers . (We agree that unionizing Starbucks workeres hurts the Starbucks CEO far than smashing their windows , or ''liberating '' some expresso machines ! )
By the way for those that have cable, (paid for or pirated ) CNN International has had fairly extensive coverage of Greece.

'' Some thoughts '' may be correct than many of the '' Valencia Hipster'' bystanders probably wouldn't be receptive even if the message had been crystal clear. However the Salvadoran i referred to was in his 40's. told me he had three kids (the oldest is hoping she will get hired at starbucks to help the family manage ) and his wife's temp job at the Post office ends in Jan. (He 's in the Laborers Union but said that he has only worked a combinded total of five months in the last year) Guys like that are precisely the type that we need marching alongside us .

Just wanted to write and say that I was there for half of the protest yesterday, and I thought that it was alot better protest than the one in July where I was arrested at. Everyone kept it cool in the Mission and had some good actions in front of New College and the police station and then took the march down to Market and the Christmas shoppers. That is where the anti-capitalist message needs to be expressed. Good job! Sorry to send those last comments out and I know they sounded a little harsh, I just didn't want to see a repeat of the July 2005 protest because that turned out to be no fun at all. I hope that people are all out of jail now and nothing to big comes of this. All in all, I thought that it was a good protest and I suppose everyone proved to me that I had nothing to get worried about.

I disagree that an average age in the 30s would be bad sign; perhaps it reflects the networking. Indeed, it makes me most nervous to see *everyone* at age 16-22, because that gives me more of a feeling of movement failure because I have subconscious thoughts that anarchism has descended into youth culture or an angry adolescent phase, despite the proud intellectual foundation and history of nonmarxist radicalism (Notwithstanding the description in the Chronicle of the shopper scared by the tipped planter). It's bad for a larger movement to have mostly 60+ people (e.g. KPFA) or all teens, but it is natural for affinity groups to end up with demographic similarities.
It occurred to me that the reference above to old RCP demos might be something only only those ~29 and older could even remember. When were they last active? I never saw any of their street protests, but there was a fascinating experience at high school where a nerdy Junior Statesman kid invited members of the RCP, democrats, libertarians, and ISO to debate, and I started reading reports in newspapers I picked up. Perhaps around 1999(?) were the last RCP Mission/ Fillmore workers vanguard demos, when lots of folks were 10 years old. There are so many literate and thoughtful younger people around who should have equal contribution to leadership, but there are a lot of others who only even start reading a daily newspaper in their 20s, and take even longer to crack out of the mindset of Obamamania or equivalent. By the way, tips to the statement above about backing up colleagues who are unjustly charged or took a risk; it's good to initiate dialog about the level of support one might expect from the community for various intensities of protest action.

Here, I'll quickly add some flash-to the-past links from March 2003. Our community was really enraged about the impending escalation in Iraq. We were pretty much 100% correct about our forecasts of what would happen. 100,000s deaths, $2 trillion+ later, Bush has even apologized. Oh well. Our SF protest style didn't stop the war, but was somewhat more successful than many cities. The police aren't the real target. I totally support placing these symbolic demos for shutting down business as normal in the financial district or retail area. It is vulgar to go to work or Neiman Marcus when our country is going to war!
In this, a large group was kept out of Union Square
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2003/02/18/15757021.php

Later, this happened by the mall- I believe no harm was done. What jumps out to me is the 'Punx for Peace' sign. While the rest of the crowd might not inspire the workers to join a movement either, and I aesthetically might like those guys, that prominent sign makes me embarrassed or feel like an unserious youth rebellion movement
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORTTwN5HZpg

"I was the one arrested at Geary and Grove streets. The police cited and released me with a resisting arrest charge a few hours later. As of this morning my body aches and I cannot place to much wait on my right ankle due to the police kicking out my ankle and legs from behind when they took me down. Just want to let people know I am ok and free, but the police definitely caused me some damage."

Yes, and I'm sure you're entirely innocent and didn't resist at all..

There was some support on the street but for the most part people didn't even know what the fuck was going on, few of us spent the time to explain anything. Plus, we were being led by flag-waving uniformed men. Part of how lame this protest was comes from the fact that many participants simply wanted to make a show for the Greeks, hopefully get some pictures taken that didn't show how small a group we were. I'm not against symbolic actions but where was the outreach? I put up some posters in my neighborhood but didn't see any others around anywhere. Let's not settle for activist schmoozing and "internet phenomena." Also, as much as I hate cops for all their crimes, I'm not in denial that they have a near monopoly of force in our cities and that if we ever hope to abolish their power and capitalism and classes and private property, etc we aren't going to do it by taking on all the cops. Every revolution involves a mutiny by a major state security force along the way, doesn't it? What can we do to foment that and not just uselessly rage at these smug doughboys while they collect overtime?

First of all i was not this demonstration. i moved out of the Bay Area a couple of years ago. This demonstration sounds like was great, for a fairly low period in the movement in the U.S. Why that is is a longer discussion than we can have here on Indybay altho i would definitely like to see some of people's ideas on this.

Now to the real discussion of my posting: Da Cops. Cops generally won't be won over to the revolutionary. They are not soldiers who generally come from the working class, and when their term is over they will return to working class roots. Cops are professional killers, paid lifetime killers, protectors of the status quo, its property, and its bourgeois class and their norms. Anything else they do is secondary. Compared to soldiers who do revolt a lot: World War I, Vietnam, and today to a limited extent. You see IVAW but you don't see an organization of police against police brutality. Any cops like that would be forced to quit the force or it would be a death sentence from other cops. Both of these have happened to a limited extent in this country. Because of this, to get to the real power in this world and dismantle it (Smash the State and Capitalism!), we often have to fight the cops, sometimes even if we don't want to.

"Now to the real discussion of my posting: Da Cops. Cops generally won't be won over to the revolutionary. They are not soldiers who generally come from the working class, and when their term is over they will return to working class roots. Cops are professional killers, paid lifetime killers, protectors of the status quo, its property, and its bourgeois class and their norms. Anything else they do is secondary."

Do you know any cops? Friends with any?

Didn't think so, you sound like anti-gay bigots who talk about homosexuality being a choice -- that is, you sound like an ignorant twit. Go back to being ignored and wonder why your impotent rants don't sway anyone.

At least deanosor was thoughtful enough to use qualifying words like "generally" and "often." I'm not under the illusion that we will never have to fight cops, if they are attacking us. But saturday obviously wasn't one of those times. But also, aside from them being paid killers, do you think that ALL cops are totally insensitive to corruption and brutality? Do you think their mafia-like organizations have no cracks at all? What about people in neighborhoods that are immediately oppressed not only by cops but also by violent thugs - who don't have the resources to ensure their own security? (Please don't suggest the Guardian freaking Angels...) And lastly, deanosor's position still doesn't deal with the fact that the cops have a near-monopoly of force.

Aside from the fact that there is a lot more essential work to be done than just yelling at cops, there is PLENTY of shit we can say to the cops in situations like saturday besides "fuck the police." There is a long list of murders by local police to throw at them. There is the fact that they are so inept at solving or preventing violent crimes. There are the glaring contradictions of white-collar criminals that not only don't get prosecuted but actually get promoted. And maybe, just maybe, there are the seeds of dissension among the ranks caused by the same hierarchy and bureaucracy that helps fuel mutinies among soldiers. It's not true that cops don't come from the working class, even if it may be from the reactionary side of it. Below is an admittedly short list of class-based confrontations by the police against their bosses, but the first one occurred just a couple weeks ago in China:

Laiyang City, Hunan, China police protest, Dec. 2, 2008:

http://www.chinaworker.org/en/content/news/577/

New York City Police Strike, 1971:

http://www.nycop.com/Jun_00/The_Police_Strike/body_the_police_strike.html

Boston Police Strike, 1919:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Police_Strike

For a world without cops of any kind,
MF

I was there and it was actually pretty lame. Around 40 people went into the mall and pretty much got their asses kicked by around 10 cops. What's so fucking glorious about that?

The people in the mall were pretty ethnically mixed and lots were working class kids just hanging out. Since they didn't have a clue about what was happening, many just saw white kids provoking the pigs and being stupid. At least that's what I was hearing them say.

Next time use more intelligent tactics, find a more appropriate target, don't be such sitting ducks and allow the cops to beat you up so easily.

Chock it up as another in a long line of failures. If any of you persist in calling it a victory, I have to suspect that you picked up some crack on 6th Street on the way to the mall and smoked it before posting here. Get a clue!

FUCK THE MEDIA!

I don't know why anyone who wasn't with those guys smoking crack from 6th Street and posting here would want their class enemies in the corporate media posting misinformation about them. I mean come on, what gives?

I attribute lots of it to Amerikan anti-intellectualism. Meaning: people who were weaned on MTV and cable were never able to develop social skills, let along radical organizing abilities, to draw enough new people into a action to make it both substantially radical enough AND with enough of a mass to make it effective. Anyway, activismists rate success by how many column inches the liars at the SF Chronicle of SF Examiner give it, or how many seconds the liars at ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News or other defenders of capital devoted to it. Face it, the middle class suburbanites watching the corporate TV news aren't going to be even a tiny bit more sympathetic to the insurrections currently going on in Greece because they're watching a sound bite of young boys who quite likely could be their own kids raging through a shopping mall smashing things and chanting incoherent slogans.

If so many young people didn't have their cognitive develop take place through a cathode ray tube, but had truly learned to read they might have been exposed to amazing thinkers like Frederick Douglass and would have read him saying "If there is no struggle there is no progress...Power conceded nothing without a demand. It never did and never will." You don't achieve solidarity with Greek comrades through narcissistic actions like getting your picture in the newspaper, on the TV news or even more self-indulgently posting it on a website like this. Greek comrades seeing it would be just as much passive spectators as you or I -- and hopefully they would see how truly lame the San Francisco action last Saturday was. Come on, they're taking over TV stations in Greece, not prostrating themselves before plastic reporters begging to get filmed. Read the fucking brilliant passage in Guy Debord's "Society of the Spectacle" to get a sense of how impotent media strategies really are.

What to emulate the Greeks? Do what Joe Hill suggested right before his death: ORGANIZE! Get out of your activist ghetto and start talking to other working class people in your apartment building -- organize a tenant's group -- or with your co-workers or just start relating to "normal" working class people in your neighborhood. But again, as the Greeks said "Turn off the TV and get out in the streets." But next time don't do it with 60 of your friends who are dressed in the same rather unimaginative costume as you, do it to really confront the ruling class with a substantial challenge to their power. There are no easy answers to exactly what that means, but at least aspire to the factory occupation at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago a couple weeks ago. Or the widespread, but under the radar, squatting actions in the nearby Central Valley. But don't expect lame symbolic actions to go beyond being lame and symbolic. Demand the impossible.

I love that the hipster anarchists did a banner drop from their gentrified apartment building on Valencia. I wonder how many working class people of color were displaced so the spoiled 'narchs could have a "sweet pad?"