a berlin blog
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a berlin blog |
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Thursday, March 20, 2003 Shutting down the CityThe protesters trying to shut down San Francisco have blocked about forty intersections, including a stretch of Market Street. While I was down by the library this morning some of them formed a human chain (and one human speed bump) in front of a paddy wagon. The police van was just trying to turn down Eighth Street -- away from the demonstration -- but a crowd of people ran over to it because they had nothing else to do, locked arms, shouted, and forced the driver to turn around and find some other way to get where he was going. The crowd went wild. They hollered, "Our street! Our street! Our street! Our street!"Yeah, your street and no one else's. At large in the City there's a heavy and irritating atmosphere of which-side-are-you-on. Apparently fire trucks can't get through certain intersections, and the firemen are pissed. It reminds me of what a homeless woman shouted at a candlelight vigil on Sunday night: "A candle and a Dixie cup ain't gonna change the world!" No, but it tells the world which side you're on, and so, apparently, does blocking fire trucks. UPDATE: It's really stupid out there. Buses are stacked along Mission Street, motionless and empty. The mean combative atmosphere from this morning has curdled into political bickering on streetcorners, random shouting by anyone with a beef (especially rants about "shopping," as if shoppers were to blame for the war), useless idiots with bullhorns, at least one fistfight, bottle-throwing (in an Oakland BART station, where employees wouldn't let protesters on for free), loose bands of protesters marching up and down like guerrilla factions, a reported take-over of administration buildings at UC Berkeley, and protesters lying down in front of ordinary cars to keep them from moving. What are these people trying to prove? Almost everyone in San Francisco hates the war. Of course, the cops respond to this kind of thing by acting like stormtroopers; when I asked one of them why a stretch of Mission was blocked by a line of cops in riot gear, he said it was the protesters who had blocked it off — as if he and a dozen other cops weren't standing there with billy clubs. I said protesters were blocking streets everywhere; why were the cops here? He just shook his head. I hate San Francisco when it gets like this. The protest doesn't feel like a movement for peace and justice, but a fractured, angry surge of narcissism. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 9:00 PM | |
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