So the amazing spectacle of Thursday the 27th with its mass protests around San Francisco gave way to Friday, with its extremely overpaid on overtime and overexcited police force complete with rubber bullets and riot shields. I was a sideline witness to the 'Franklin Street Sweep' but didn't learn about what happened to my friends in the 'Sweep' until Monday. I was on my merry way to a queer affinity group gathering in the Castro, and since I was late I didn't linger to find out what the hell was going on with the police influx around the intersection of Hayes and Franklin. Turns out everyone was rounded up, even people on the sidewalk trying to comply with police directives, and arrested for failing to disperse. They were held for six hours and released with a warning to stay off the streets for 48 hours, or risk jail time if they again fail to disperse (i.e. stand on the sidewalk near a police officer).
Here is an account of the 'Franklin Street Sweep' by a SlackerStalker correspondent in the field:
The group we were in was walking peacefully on Franklin Street when the cops surrounded us on all sides. They did this by forming a phallanx and running at us from behind so that we were trapped in the interior of a block where we couldn't leave. There were cops on all sides of us then. We were then squeezed in from all sides by at least 200 cops in a circle around us, not unlike how fish are caught by pulling the nets in from all sides at once.
The cops charged at us with their billy clubs braced in both arms while screaming at us to "MOVE! Get out of the way!". One cop shoved an older disabled man with a cane down so hard that he was bleeding from his head and knee. He needed to be taken to the hospital for treatment by ambulance. Linda saw another cop repeatedly shove a man on a bike, even though the man had complied immediately with his orders. Two very over-the-top reactions that just the two of us witnessed. Who knows how many other acts of police misconduct were observed by other people?
I also watched as press people were denied access to the area that we had been corralled into (a city block). One cop stood directly in front of a camera crew so that they couldn't film the scene. I also noticed that the highway patrol helicopters cricling above kept news helicopters from entering the airspace above our block. It was a news blackout. Freedoms of the press are also going out the window as well, it seems...
Meanwhile, late to the gathering in the Castro, I heard that the protestors who had been starting to try to block Van Ness and Market (apparently an anarchist affinity group that ran away from the 'Sweep' just in time) had been dispersed with rubber bullets as soon as they occupied the intersection. So, when our little fringe protest hit an intersection, we were careful to stay to the side of the road or on the sidewalk, and cross with the lights. We were trailed by an entourage of about eight cop cars and caught glimpses of a few city buses full of cops in riot gear circling the neighborhood. They tried to anticipate our route and we just randomly chose a direction at every intersection.
I marched and chanted and sung for four hours over at least as many miles. The police effectively blocked every intersection we encountered and almost every street we flanked, so nobody had to leave the sidewalk and get arrested-- the cops did our work for us! As we neared downtown the eight squad cars were joined by about a dozen motorcycles, and still later about fifteen cops in riot gear jogging alongside us. By the end of the night they looked neither aggro nor scared, just bored and exhausted.
Meantime our mood was both conscientious and bouyant. It was such a relief to do something besides watch the news. My friends and I walked with a woman with an enormous white shaggy sweet boydog named August who was wearing a pink sign "Puppies for Peace." Nearby was a mom with a gaggle of six or seven young (10 or 11 year old) kids, who we had picked up as we passed Mission High School. They led us in the Spanish language version of "The People United Will Never Be Defeated." One of the kids looked JUST like Harry Potter, so we nicknamed their crew the Harry Potter For Peace contingent. You get the picture-- we were pretty upbeat. The whole thing was very therapeutic-- especially having the citybus drivers and ambulance crews honking and waving the peace sign gesture at us as we passed them. My favorite chant was what I think is a modified soccer/football singing chant: "no war, no war, o-way owayowayowaaaaay." That was what we were singing as we hit the high point of the night, turning from Market onto Castro and picking up a whole new crew of marchers and getting a great welcome from the sidewalk passersby.
Now it is time for...
The SlackerStalker Guide to Late Night Urban Unpermitted Protest Marches
A supplement to The Slacker Stalker's Rules for Marching in a Mob Against Something (click and scroll down past the list of sign slogans).
1. Remember that at night everything is gray-scale and reduced to shapes and movement. Your pretty signage on sticks is wasted. Costumes, sandwichboard signs (for up-close reading), and flags are good. Flags give shape, movement, and drama to the movement of people through the street at night. It almost doesn't matter what is on the flag, if anything. If you are stuck marching with a sign on a stick, look for the police searchlights and TV cameras with their nuclear-powered gazillion-watt floodlights: they will pick up your message. ESPECIALLY if it is a TV helicopter-- turn your sign facing the sky and I guarantee they will try to focus in on you. Soundmakers are good too-- a little boombox with a CD of Mumia's statements against war is a nice choice.
2. BYO lighting. Flashlights, yes. Torches, no.
3. BYO entourage. Dogs and kids, yes, but keep an eye on them even if they aren't yours.
4. Get more mileage out of yourself with a little personal care and vocal chord maintenance. Chapstick, gum, bottled water, and the multipurpose cloth bandana or a handful of tissues, yes. Excess baggage, or even ANY baggage-- no.
5. Communicating with non-marchers is a must. Flashing the "peace" sign at passing motorists-- the minimum. Light-hearted taunting of people in restaurants (i.e. the particularly enjoyable friendly chanting of "Americans Out of Baghdad" to the customers at the Bagdad Cafe on Market Street)-- good. Beckoning seductively and chanting "join us"-- better. Cheering and blowing kisses to the people being arrested or standing in detention areas-- an absolute must. If you have propoganda promoting your cause then handing it out to passers-by is usually more effective at night. People on the streets are more likely to take propoganda handed to them by strangers at night than in broad daylight. Go figure.
6. So you have a bullhorn. Point that thing as high as you can away from eardrums that may be at your usual screaming height. Thank you.
7. So you don't want to get arrested. Either way, carry some form of ID, and a good pen. If it looks like you're falling into a police trap, find someone (try the guy with the bullhorn) with the number for your local Legal Aid firm and write it on your arm. Hook arms with the people near you and go limp as the police try to arrest you. This is the only way to try to guarantee they won't charge you with resisting arrest. Standing up too quickly can be construed by a nervous cop as a pretext for a good billyclubbing. And remember: smile in your mugshots. You don't need to look guilty. You never know when you'll be running for public office!
8. So you want to get arrested. Don't have enough activist cred doing the legal thing? Then follow the advice in #7 but, since you are planning ahead to get arrested, wear wristwarmers. 80's fashion rebound to the rescue! The plastic handcuffs will be loosened by any wrist apparatus you can manage to keep on. Then, when you have gotten a little leeway, retrieve the toenail clippers you stashed in your front pocket and snip yourself and your friends free.
9. Have sex. I heard this story from a credible source and an eyewitness to the San Francisco protests of the 1991 Gulf War One. A pier the cops were using as temporary holding for protestors was full of young gay men. They all had their fancy plastic wrist ties on, but that didn't stop them. They decided to start trying to have sex. It was turning into a full-fledged orgy (I guess the wrist ties were working for them). The cops were so weirded out they decided to let them go.
10. Eat fire. It is really a bummer to know how to eat fire but mostly end up protesting things in the daylight, when fire-eating is a lost cause. Here you are sticking hot stuff in your mouth and all you get for it is a fume high. So, when you know you'll be taking to the streets after dark, take:
- a lighter
- a small coffee can (with lid) with at least a cup of rubbing alcohol or lighter fluid
- a metal coat hanger
- and a 10" strip of old cotton t-shirt fabric
Tie the fabric into a tight little swab on the end of the straightened hanger wire, soak it in the fluid, light it, STAND FACING DOWNWIND, tip your head as far back as possible, hold the wire swab-down perpendicular (i.e. at a 90 degree angle) to your face, open wide, dip it in, lightly close your lips on it (not all the way) and exhale through your mouth. Voila. Impresses the ladies. It is especially impressive if you wear some kind of message on your body (may I suggest painting slogans on naked torsos? Is that too Lesbian Avengerish of me?).
