Happy 4th of July!
The Haight Street Underworld
Giants Clobber The Astros, 13-0
SFist Tonight
Bob Brigham sent SFist the above footage from today's small protest on Market Street, which prefaces tonight's massive anti-war rally at Civic Center.
The photographer getting manhandled at around 20-25 seconds in is Luke Thomas of Fog City Journal. (Or so we're told.) Then, at the end, the camera operator receives a serious (and seriously questionable) smackdown by an officer.
Ouch.
Be careful out there tonight, folks.
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"They used to much force."
-Cindy Sheehan
Holy crap! Not sure that billy club to the head was necessary.
That's awesome! That dude in the green shirt got totally twatted.
Um...that billy club seemed excessive to me, as well. That's gotta hurt. That said, um...it seems to me that the inevitable protest with the inevitable heavy-handed police presence...accomplishes zero. Money gets wasted, people get hurt, the boomers get to relive their youth, and everyone goes back to their homes vigorously agreeing with each other that they did something important today.
And meanwhile, across the globe, nothing changes.
Why is this even necessary? Like it matters if nobody can go down Market street for a few hours/days/months.
i was right where that clubbing was taking place at about 12:30. i strolled down there on my lunch break to see what was going on:
bunch of non-day-job-havers, bitching.
one guy was on a bullhorn complaining about the "cops," right before his rant about "3 million people in prison."
where are your priorities, protestors? do you even know why you are out there?
i'm glad i wasn't around for the nightsticking...
Ugh... is whacking a guy with a nightstick considered legal or just flat out assault with a deadly weapon? It doesn't seem the protester was doing any physical act to force the officer to defend himself.
@ the nightstick wacking: the cop looked like she(?) said something right before the hit, and we can't tell what the hittee said or was doing with his/her hands. We lack the context to say whether the cop was right or wrong.
Still, that had to hurt :(
@ AKit
Oh do we have to debate this? What is it about white, middle class, educated kids? Do they not understand that when a cop gets his nightstick out he is going to use it, so you'd better get out of the way. Right or wrong doesn't matter. In the real world these things happen. Just because you've got some crappy cause it does not make you any different from a shoplifter or a drunk driver. Why are these idiots always surprised by the beat down. They deserve it just like everyone else.
Yo Fizznpop - why do you immediately think Akit's a white middle class educated kid? Or do you mean the skull bustee? And, sure, if a cop wants to hit you a cop will hit you, black white or anything, but if it's not appropriate you fight it for yourself and your community. It's insane, cowardly and immoral to do otherwise.
I mean Mr greenshirt and all the other well meaning fools out there. Don't really understand the rest of your point though. Personally, when I've been at the footy and been hit by a cop, no one thought about justice, they either stood and fought or ran away. I always ran, though it's not so easy when the bastards are on horses and the rival fans are throwing bricks at you.
Oh yeah, no doubt. Cops are scary as hell and I'd run as fast as my ass would go. But afterwards, especially with footage like this, you look at it and see if what was done was right. If not, well, it's probably not the first time that cop's hurt people he didn't need to. And that cop needs to be retrained, because he's helping no one.
Just to clarify - I'm not talking about this particular police. I can't tell what happened, and I'm not an expert. But other people are, and if Mr. Greenshirt thinks he's been wronged, well, he better do something about other than impotently protest.
my experience with protesting in sf goes back to the mid-80's, and during my time in the paddy wagon and the holding pen, i learned quickly that there are two types of protesters:
1. neo-wannabe-anarchists who overturn newspaper dispensers for kicks and try to evoke an "unwarranted" response from "the man".
2. people who want to protest *anything*, and/or use any excuse to glom their personal gripe onto whatever else is being protested.
both are lame. there is absolutely NO reason to engage in violent protest, and doing so just begets violence like you see here ... this is more than well known. Ultimately, it turns attention from the protested issue to the question of "unreasonable" police violence (see protester type #1).
wchase: I call both groups "serial activists" and they're closely related to the "ambush activists" who plant people on both sides of the street to ask passersby, "do you have a minute to save the children?" Fact is, all of these people would be doing a better job at changing the world if they became lobbyists rather than collecting their $1 per signature on some grouch's pet petition.
The comment asking if the protestors knew what they were there for made me laugh ... reminded me of that Lights Out evening we had last year when i ran across a bunch of young folks on bicycles at the end of Pier 14 who left their beer cans, napkins, sandwich wrappers, and other one-use-only items sitting on the pier instead of disposed into the multiple trash cans on that pier ....
And now, can we finally acknowledge that SF's self-styled "anarchist" protesters are a bunch of veal-fed wimps?
No seriously. If you're gonna be all "militant" and talk smack about the SFPD (which just got a big raise from Mayor Newsom despite that rise in homicides and crime) and whatnot, and think you can have your hippy trippy march without getting the snot beat out of you, think again.
The fact is , that the trustafarians and the pseudohippies and the wannabe60s people have no idea what they're dealing with. Cry all you like, but if you aren't gonna bring your A-Game to your little day of protests, STFU and stop crying. Or better yet, FIND A BETTER WAY TO END THIS F*CKING OCCUPATION!
I'm not holding my breath as mindless conformity or impotent protest seem to govern this city. So much for So-Called Leftist San Francisco.
Some of those people seem old enough to teach the others about what happened after we simply "pulled out" of Vietnam
Re-Education camps anyone?
Yes, we shouldn't have been in there in the first place, but dear god the solution to an already screwed up problem is NOT to make it a vacuum whereby people who want to seek worse vengance than 9/11 will rise to power
That was awesome!
Sorry green shirt kid, but welcome to real life. This is not a video game or a tv. When everyone else was backing away from the cops waving their clubs, you decided to confront one of them. What did you think would happen?
Hopefully you got some sense knocked in to you.
Well, the video has to be kept low-resolution and without sound so you don't see the hard core sub-group spitting on the police and can't hear the insults they are screaming. They don't give a shit about Iraq, they are there to fuck with the cops first and foremost, and the police know that.
Personally, how the SFPD does it is amazing. I could not work as a cop for a day without going Rodney King on someone.
You usually can tell someone is sitting in their parents basement all day when they start posting about the "real world out there". People weren't exactly throwing rocks or molotov cocktails at the police.
The girl with the bike being pushed around doesn't seem to be such a threat to the armed and armored police, nor most others in the scene.
Also, wchase: perhaps you have been hanging out with the wrong crowd. Needless to say, there are tons of peaceful protests happening in this city, and there are tons of activists other than the ones you describe.
Did SF get its Los Angeles version of MacArthur Park today?
Everyone is an activist. What a sad, pathetic label that has become. Activist = unemployed and socially inept. Birds of a feather...