Photos From SF Anti-War March

Notice A.N.S.W.E.R.S. numbers are smaller and the year is 2010 and they still have not stopped the war with the same old tactics as usual that comply to business as usual with the same old boring politics as usual. These permitted marches get us no where but more the statuesque. You guys should have changed with the times but it's like you're still stuck back in 2003 as if Bush never left office. You guys were more militant back then than you are now when the war has gotten worse. Something doesn't sound right here. When a government becomes more abusive the people become more angry but you guys seem to get softer and softer every year.

Surprised you guys are still around and have not evolved into something more militant by now. I mean it is 7 years later and nothing has changed meaning all that effort of peace and cooperation with law enforce went to affecting absolutely nothing. Boy, I'd feel cheated for being on such good behavior and getting nothing in return for it? I mean if ending the war means we won't riot and the war still rages on why the hell should we be peaceful like a bunch of sheep? Shouldn't you people have gotten frustrated by now and if not now.....WHEN?

Come up with another protest tactic that actually does something to successfully disrupt the war machine and challenge authority and you will have the community inspired once again. We're just too tired of wasting our time and energy when we know it's going to be the same old thing and everybody goes home right after feeling tired and frustrated. The student occupation movement is much more energizing than you guys.

I feel more compelled to act when challenging the statuesque power structure than bowing down to it every single time knowing it gets me no where. By now it should feel pretty fucking degrading to have to still ask permission to protest when everything is going wrong. I don't have to listen to government anymore should have been everyone’s attitude by this time. What happened?

If you're going to march to the beat of another drummer rather than march in the streets on your own terms I want nothing to do with it. I want a real resistance movement, not some false resistance movement co-opted by the state and it's capitalist financers. This is is why I always say “Up with the Democracy & Down with the Republic.”

It's been time we put an end to this hierarchical oppression once and for all!

Agreed. This ANSWER marches serve no purpose except to channel people's energies into useless posing and babbling. Given that this group refuses to embrace the 9/11 Truth Movement, the one movement that could actually end the war, shows how out of touch, and irrelevant they are.

The Globalist Dictators// I agree 911 was an inside job. 911 is the whole reason why we are out here today and there for it should never be forgotten. I agree the fed is bad too. I agree world government is a false alternative being suggested by heads of state. The Nationalist Dictators// Don't be fooled into thinking a regulated government by the people as a means to maintain order in society is a real alternative to end war, state oppression and greedy capitalism. Any so called peaceful government eventually grows to be the opposite of peace, security, order and happiness. Capitalism// Same goes for regulated markets. Any pyramid system where decisions are made at the top and money goes to the top can not be controlled by any way over time and must be overthrown. Any system of greed where wealth is concentrated into the hands of a few and major populations are left out of the decision making process is doomed for a revolution. Alex Jones// The syndicated talk radio host Mr. Jones may be right about 911, banks, corporations and the police state of America but don't let that man fool you into falling for his false alternative being the return of a republic which is really the maintenance of what has always been a republic working for rich white slave driving capitalists. A republic only works to be representative of institutions that are only here for capital gain and nothing else. Such a system that only favors the rich should have never been allowed to exist in the first place. When they say the people, they mean the congress, senate, ceo's, bankers that run our lives and if we don't like it we can answer to some nice police men or army if you're an Iraqi. The republic only works to keep our hands tied behind our backs relying on politicians to save us when really the politicians of both parties are working for the same banking interests. In a democracy the people don’t ask for permission because they have the ultimate power to decide collectively on their own and there for are more inclined to physically act out to remove those who step in the way of justice. Who are the ones to always step in the way of people power in action? The fucking police. What good are they if they only work to save them from us. They don't even serve us. They're uniforms aren't even blue anymore. They look like the military now. Anarchism in America// Anti-authoritarian collectivist resistance for a an anti-authoritarian collective society is the most feasible way forward from a realism standpoint of view but you can try limited government and regulated business and see how far that get's you only to wind up back where we are today being the same old mega conglomeration of government & business under the same old republican system hence the name republican. If you ever wondered why the republicans rule even when they are not in office, now you know why. America was never meant to be a democracy. YOU NEED TO WAKE UP IN ORDER TO RISE THE FUCK UP!

Dear "Anarchist!",

I think you are a little confused. ANSWER is not your mother and their purpose in life is not to bring to you whatever you are whining that you want.

If the mainstream anti-war movement has fallen in numbers, the anarchist anti-war movement has completely ceased to exist. Meanwhile, the people in the ANSWER Coalition continue to oppose the war on a daily basis.

Aside from these anniversary protest marches, there are also the relevant emergency marches that connect the social movements together (for example, the current MUNI campaign or the Gaza support campaign). There are direct actions taken all the time at the courthouse and federal building on 7th street and at UC-Berkeley, in the on-going campaign to remind people that this country is still torturing people, still conducting extraordinary rendition, still expanding Bagram Prison. There are the new direct actions in Nevada against the AFB that is managing the drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And, of course, there are always the solidarity actions that take place directly in Palestine, Iraq, Colombia, Honduras, Cuba.

In the meantime, driving forces behind ANSWER are involved in an international revolution which has largely overthrown U.S. hegemony as we knew it in Latin America and actively supports the Bolivarian Revolution and the 21st-Century Socialist Revolution, which in the past 10 years has spread throughout the region: Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Paraguay, Colombia, Honduras, Chiapas, the Dominican Republic, etc. Maybe you missed that this historic revolution for social justice and socialism is taking place and gaining new ground all the time but that doesn't change the fact that it's happening.

Without a doubt, it is extremely sad and unfortunate to see that out of the 250,000 or so people who were attending the anti-war marches in 2003, only about 5,000 to 10,000 of them continue to be active in stopping the war. That's a disgrace.

But, I don't think there is a very good case to be made that the problem is with the people who ARE doing something about it, and the fault lies more with the people who decide to sit at home instead of participate -- whatever rationalization they come up with to justify it.

"Without a doubt, it is extremely sad and unfortunate to see that out of the 250,000 or so people who were attending the anti-war marches in 2003, only about 5,000 to 10,000 of them continue to be active in stopping the war. That's a disgrace. "

The marches got smaller over the years for a variety of reasons. The main one of which is that when war was new it was easy to get people worked up about it but over time people get used to things. During Vitenam protests grew late in the war but they grew because of the draft and large numbers of US soldiers dying and te way the modern military is setup makes it so war can exist and remain outside of the everyday life of the average person in the US.

Following Obama's election one would also guess that some partisan aspect of getting people to protests would have reduce crowd size and there mid 2009 to mid 2010 has been a relatively quiet time in terms of protests but in the case of ANSWER protests the coalitions have always been radical groups that were not that impacted by the election and at most it made it reduce the crowd size a bit from previous year levels (although the 2009 protests was roughly the same size)

"riving forces behind ANSWER are involved in an international revolution which has largely overthrown U.S. hegemony as we knew it in Latin America"

Yes and no. The US also lost a lot of interest in Latin America when the Cold War ended. The big recent change was the failed US coup in Venezuela which radicalized Chavez (who before that point was much less radical). With the latest election in Chile and the coup in Honduras not getting rolled back it isn't clear things are really moving much in any direction. The FMLN win was a pretty big change but Ortega's victory in Nicaragua seemed less so since the economic policies of he 1980s when they really were more radically Socialist are not being repeated and he ran as somewhat of a centrist. US power is definitely weaker than it was in the 1980s but while someone like Lula may be much more willing to defy the US by talking to Iran or criticizing US policies, Lula has shown himself to be a radical Leftist when it comes to what he has done witin Brazil while in office and international economic interests seem to hold sway even if now those interests are not as closely tied to the US as they used to be.

I am proud to be one of the 5,000 San Francisco Peace and Labor Marchers on March 20, 2010 both as a matter of personal revitalization and participating in an international movement to put an end to the capitalist profit motive that is the cause of all these wars, namely the peace and labor movement. We enjoyed the rousing performance of the Brass Liberation Orchestra and other musicians, making our wonderful celebration of peace, life, labor and culture a movement clearly worth joining just as a matter of therapy, not to mention survival. When we passed the Hilton Hotel on O'Farrell and Mason, we walked the picket line in support of the hotel workers fighting for a decent union contract. I have been doing this for 60 years in my hometown of San Francisco and will do it again and again so long as I can walk until we finally have socialism.

At the Civic Center, I learned about the peace candidates being run by Peace & Freedom Party on June 8, 2010 who may be found at http://peaceandfreedom.org/home/campaign
which also tells us to vote No on California Propositions 14, 16 and 17 with a special explanation of No on 14 at
http://peaceandfreedom.org/home/articles/general/634-dangerous-proposition-to-limit-voters-choices

For more on voting No on 16, PG&E's anti-public power initiative, see:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/746/signUp.jsp?key=4891

The California Voter website will have updates on all the pros and cons of the propositions on the June 8, 2010 California ballot at:
http://www.calvoter.org/voter/elections/2010/primary/index.html

The Green Party also had a table and their information may be found at:
http://www.sfgreenparty.org/

ONLY PEACE AND FREEDOM PARTY AND THE GREEN PARTY ARE THE PEACE PARTIES ON THE CALIFORNIA BALLOT. The Democrats and the Republicans are the twin parties of war and fascism, bought and paid for by the same corporations to maximize their profits. The Democrats only exist to make sure the workingclass never votes Red (socialist, like Peace & Freedom) or Green. To achieve peace, you must vote for the candidates of the peace parties. OBAMA IS EXACTLY THE SAME AS BUSH AND THAT WAS OBVIOUS WHEN HE RAN FOR OFFICE AS HE WAS PAID TO RUN BY THE SAME CORPORATIONS AS PAID FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY FOR THE SAME REASON: TO MAXIMIZE THEIR PROFITS AND THE GREATEST PROFITS ARE IN MUNITIONS

IT WAS ALSO WONDERFUL TO SEE THE 9/11 TRUTH MOVEMENT AT OUR PEACE MARCH IN FULL FORCE. It was obvious as we saw it on TV that the events of 9/11/01 were an Inside Job as there was NO AIR DEFENSE, and if you need more, THE CONTROLLED DEMOLITION OF THE TWIN TOWERS AND BUILDING 7, WHICH WAS NOT HIT BY A PLANE, SHOULD MAKE IT CLEAR THAT THIS WAS A REICHSTAG FIRE TO PERPETRATE WAR AND FASCISM AS THE RULING CLASS NO LONGER HAD THE PHONY COMMUNIST MENACE, having destroyed the Soviet Union in 1991. There were no hijackers on those planes; they were on remote control guided by the US Air Force. The massive use of drones to murder the people of the world today did not just happen; it has been long planned. The Pentagon was hit by construction explosives and possibly a US missile. There is much more and lots of books on the subject. One DVD should take care of your education:
at http://loosechange911.com/
and http://lc911.com/lc911/catalog/Loose-Change-Final-Cut-DVD-p-44.html

ALL PEACE CANDIDATES OF PEACE AND FREEDOM PARTY AND THE GREEN PARTY SHOULD PROUDLY ENDORSE THE 9/11 TRUTH MOVEMENT. After all this is a science movement, with 1,000 architects and engineers now having signed a petition for a new investigation, and science means knowledge.

Throughout the march through the workingclass Tenderloin neighborhood that surrounds the Civic Center and the downtown shopping area, we chanted:
ABOLISH THE MILITARY, BUILD SCHOOLS!
THEY SAY CUT BACK; WE SAY FIGHT BACK!
SOCIALISM IS WHAT WE NEED TO PUT AN END TO ALL THE GREED!

Yep seems to be all over the march making it as negative as the police department has paid him to make it be. Yep seem to be so sure of all his facts, and sounds like a pig undercover to me. He has so much time he has posted on most of the march updates, yet he isn't talking about solutions with so much time on their hands. Yep is surely not an average republican who doesn't like protesters.

240,000 people got bored when the leaders of the anti-war movement allowed them selves to be co-opted by city permits and police escorts. Nobody wants to feel small in a big world run by only a few people. Your follwers spread thin would have joined us if the people on stage in front of city hall would have announced the unpermitted march was about to take place pointing to the location where we mass and you could have helped us to lead the way so we all went together in one big bunch but you were too afraid so we had to circle the hall with black flags everytime just to add numbers getting everyones attention and even then most didn't know what we were about or what was going on and I'm sure you didn't want them to know or participate in our action but just listen to speakers talk their heads off till people got tired and walked home every single protest. That's what killed it!

The 240,000 are the numbers you need to confront an out of control government and the perfect time to play to peoples emotions in 2003 has been wasted and so all the passion has been lost. ANSWER could have kept everyone engaged if you had joined all the SF un-permitted anti-authoritarian actions. We would have been a great team. POWERFUL TEAM. San Francisco could have become the riot capital of the USA with people coming out of the woodwork to join us in standing our ground. We could gain back the 240,000 that are frustrated and in living despair but that would require an organization to go underground which may as well become anarchists. We could use your numbers. What do you say ? :-)) What does the bay area coalition have to lose? I’d rather feel empowered by reclaiming the streets with thousands and going our own direction than being escorted by a bunch of pigs essentially helping the state to put down would could be a very large resistance movement in the Bay Area. The hell with small emergency civil-disobedience battles/ set ups for arrest. I don’t want to get arrested. I want to stand up with by brothers and sisters and resist arrest in the streets together to jam capitalist social relations and to let everybody know in the world that Americans are not the push overs as they once thought of us. With over 200,000 people we at least have the chance to resist police oppression right here at home in the fucking Bay Area. It's just a shame that the mainstream are always the most popular with the general population but are too afraid to be disruptive when they finally have the numbers to disrupt the system. Even if us anarchists had 10,000 left we'd be fucking shit up everywhere. We are desperately in need of a strong autonomous zone full of Anarchists in the Bay and we don’t have to wait for poverty and repression to get worse to start.

"Yep seems to be all over the march"

I was and thought it was a pretty good march.. I'm just pessimistic about most things. I have commented on a few posts but mainly on the ones I posted (I tend to not use Z in comments). I usually try not to comment much since its bad to mix classifying comments with commenting yourself.

"The 240,000 are the numbers you need to confront an out of control government and the perfect time to play to peoples emotions in 2003 has been wasted and so all the passion has been lost."

ANSWER did a few things wrong that could have resulted in smaller numbers but in 2003 there were also other big organizations helping organize anti-war protests like NION, DASW etc... so you can't really blame ANSWER.

The relative lack of radicalism in the giant protests was because the bulk of those angry about the war starting were not that radical politically (a broad spectrum of the public opposed the war). The emotions of the war starting could have been pushed in various other directions but the 2 big things that had the largest impacts on decreasing the militancy of actions were the 2004 election ad the 2008 election, because many people blamed Bush personally for US actions and did not blame the long standing US foreign policy towards the Middle East etc...

Bush can no longer be blamed for the continuation of the wars a year after he is gone, so organizing protests requires many of the more mainstream protesters to rethink how they place blame for US actions. The protest today may not have been 100,000 people but it was one of the larger protests in the city in the past year and many mainstream news stations covered the nationwide aspects of the protests more than in the past few years (NPR gave it more coverage than it has given antiwar protests for some time). Organizing anti-war protests under a Democrat is harder than under Republicans (remember Kosovo protests) and in many ways the coverage of the protest today shows that the protest was successful since perhaps the coverage will start to make people think about the continuation of the war and what factors are causing it to continue.

More radical protests can keep people interested but they can also alienate people so it really depends on the specifics (demands, message, tactics). In hard economic times people are angry but they are also careful when it comes to actions that could get them in trouble at work etc... In 2003 with a new large war starting, people could take risks especially if it was a one time thing (hence all of the civil disobedience arrests on the day the war started) but when the problem is a continuation and not what many may have seen as a once in decade event, it is harder to get people to take such risks.

If we seriously want to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan we need to do much more than sit at home and wait for the next time Answer calls a march. People have to stand up and actually take initiative to stop the rulers of US colonial hegemony. Releasing ourselves and the world from American captivity means breaking free, entailing much more than holding signs, already made for you, every once in awhile, begging the Obama administration to shift US foreign policy. Generic civil disobedience isn't enough, we have to take direct action. Autonomy can only come about through people making it as such. It doesn't matter what you think of them, Ralph Nader isn't going to do it, Naomi Kline isn't going to do it, and Answer is surely not going to do it. We have to do it. We need to build alliances of resistance that rely on no one but ourselves. That means taking the responsibility of thinking for yourself, something anathema to this dependence oriented society.

Active resistance also means that you should stop paying your taxes to finance these wars and support this corporatized government. How many people at this protest are doing that? I doubt many. What about civil disobedience? We did it in the early part of the war. It's much easier to hold a sign and strike a pose than to really put life and livelihood on the line.

Though we may have many disagreements with the tea party people at least they are calling for a massive tax protest on April 15. ANSWER should also be joining them. Money talks, and when enough Americans refuse to pay for the bombs and bullets that are killing so many in the Middle East (and elsewhere) then the politicians will listen to us.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123975867505519363.html

"massive tax protest on April 15"

Unless you are an independent contractor and didn't pay quarterly, how would that work? Most people have taxes withheld on they paychecks and even get money back at the end of the year. Not having a tax form from the previous year also can create problems when trying to access public programs for the poor (even if you were not required to file taxes for the previous year legally since you didnt earn enough).

A tax boycott isn't a bad idea but the reason it works better when coming from "tea party" people is that they tend to be small business owners who are not poor and also do not have their taxes withheld.

Forming any sort of alliance with groups that are in some cases tied with the KKK and anti-immigrant nationalists also seems like a very bad idea. That doesn't mean that those who always engage in war tax resistance should not publicize it on tax day as they usually do but it should not be linked in any way to the far right crazy protests.

Yep's comments are more reasonable about at least trying to be honest with regards to all the factors that have contributed to the declining war movement. However, "Anarchist"'s attitude is more prevalent than you may think and that attitude (usually called "apathy") is one of the main reasons for the decline.

Anarchist, if your simple equation of "numbers are the barometer for public support," where the hell does that place your aging subculture? You'll find more "anarchists" at the Vans Warped concert than you will at a political protest these days. The "riot capital of the world"? Haha, give me a break. It was like pulling teeth to get 10 anarchists to agree on putting together a breakaway demo at ANSWER's rallies and, as far as I know, the largest anarchist-organized demo I've EVER been to in the Bay Area had maybe 50 people at it.

The facts of the situation are clear: compared to other times in modern history, there are just flat out LESS PEOPLE doing ANYTHING related to seriously opposing US domestic OR foreign policy, especially the on-going wars which provide a constant hook to force the corporate media into covering things. For all the bitch, bitch, bitch we heard about International ANSWER, here it is 7 years later and who is still out there making sure that someone is representing the anti-war opinion in US society? If it wasn't for ANSWER (Code Pink, Cindy Sheehan, Iraq Veterans Against the War, international groups like FMLN), any objective observer would have to say that the US population is completely subservient.

The facts are that under a Democratic president, it is harder to organize because so many of the organizations that funded and promoted the outbreak of dissent in 1999 - 2005 were associated with the Democratic Party or the major unions. It's part of the beauty of what is essentially a one-party state putting on a big show of having two opposing political parties. Just ask Charles Gibson who couldn't wait to give Cindy Sheehan all the airtime she wanted during the Bush Administration but what was his verbatim answer on continuing to cover her protests under Obama? "Enough already."

Yep's analysis of what is happening in Latin America is a little off. The coup in Honduras only goes to show the threat posed by the Latin American socialist revolution. Honduras has always been one of the most tightly-controlled client states of the US with a highly conservative oligarchy and it is amazing the Zelaya was even elected in the first place. Now, the Honduran social movement is 10 times as strong as it ever was in recent memory and the Honduran government is regionally isolated, excluded from the new organization of Latin American states (along with the US/Canada) that intends to replace the OAS, etc. Same goes with Chile, which was never really part of the organized Bolivarian/socialist movement to begin with, even though they shocked everybody by electing a socialist president.

Lula has proven throughout his entire term his dedication to the revolutionary project being organized in Latin America. The PT, after all, was the political party that founded this project along with the Cuban Communist Party in the early 1990s. Lula does his part in the largest & most complex democracy in Latin America, and when the cards are on the table, he stands by the revolutionary left (evident in his controversial support of Zelaya, refusal to meet with Cuba's "dissidents", his relationship to the FARC and ELN, and any other number of examples).

The coup in Honduras and the recent elections in Chile are meaningful but go beyond the simple analysis you give, which just goes to encourage more apathy (i.e. it's "too soon to tell" if anything exciting is going on in Latin America). What more do you need?! With the declaration of the Fifth International at the end of last year, the Latin American socialist movement is continuing to solidify its position over a 20-year plan that was executed to damn near perfection, and continues to grow stronger and stronger. That movement is now setting its sights on North America and Latin America is beginning to replace the USSR and China in funding US-based revolutionary groups.

I realize this website doesn't get anywhere near the traffic it used to and Indymedia in general has fallen apart and I'm mostly talking to the 3-4 people who work on this site (if they even check these discussions) but taking a day here or there to go to a protest and represent isn't THAT much hard work, is it? Of course, it'd be better if people attempted to organize other people and get them to also come to the protest but I've heard from plenty of people that they won't even go themselves... in other words, the same attitude as Charles Gibson: "Enough already, why bother?" That's a damned disgrace.

In response to 'um', when I work for an employer I put down 9 exemptions on the W-4 and as a consequence have virtually have nothing taken out of my paycheck. Also, today I freelance and keep a low profile and don't file. The War Tax Resisters League gives plenty of examples of how get around paying taxes for war. Check them out here: http://www.nwtrcc.org/ "Let them march all they want, as long as they pay their taxes." attributed to Alexander Haig, June 1982, serving under Pres. Reagan If you are worried about programs for the poor being cut the government already is doing this to balance the budget. They would rather pay off the bankers than take care of you. So, why do you support them in their looting?

Go ahead and don't pay your taxes. That's great, but the only way to effect change is by by actually making it. "Our taxes should go to education not to war" some marchers are fond of saying. That's definitely true. But let me clarify something here: Capitalism is the root problem. There no such thing as an even distribution in a hierarchical class society. Further, lets say you work for Boeing, JP Morgan Chase or Mcdonalds and you don't pay your taxes, are these corporations going to go away?
I am not trying to say that people shouldn't protest by not paying their taxes. That's fine. But the reality is we have to start living differently. I use recycled paper and I think others should too, but it's not going to stop trees from getting cut down. The only thing that can stop deforestation is by actually stopping it! Ending payment to the IRS isn't going to that. Only action can stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After you get into your car to go tell your friend what a great thing you've done by not paying your taxes for this year, the US policy agenda of securing oil in the middle east is going to continue.

Konsider: I disagree. If enough people stopped paying federal taxes that would shut them down. I doubt China is going to keep paying the bill if the people of the people country decide not to help finance this morally bankrupt state. The problem is with most leftists, they still think government is good. The problem is: this government is not, neither are most large centralized governments, socialist or capitalist. Not only has this government lied to us about 9/11, it has lied to us WMD, it has lied to us about torture, it has lied to us about the bank bailouts, it has lied to us about the elections, etc., etc.. Your tax dollars continue to torture Iraqis, continue the bombing of Afghans, continue the creation of the police state. You are complicit if you keep supporting these policies with your taxes.

The claim that if enough people stopped paying their taxes the government would listen to us misses some essential factors, first, the government doesn't give a fuck about you. Second, many, if not most, US government officials are not only beholden to mega corporations, but some were even former executives. The very perpetuation of our society is run by corporate profit. Not only would someone have to not pay their income tax returns, they would also have to stop buying the products that are taxed. That is to say there has to be a major break with consumerism. Not paying your tax returns and than going to Wallmart isn't going to stop the Corporate/military/governmental industrial complex.