SFist: Saturday Protests Had Great Energy, but by the End, Lack of Leadership was Painfully Obvious

dantsea

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:06:52 -0800

It's like textual hemochromatosis, right? If you don't get it out, it'll poison you or whatever.

WagonMonster

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:54:09 -0800

Doesn't make me any less right.

nomadlisa

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:14:38 -0800

i love that through the (other/splinter/additional) march through union square, saturday shopping traffic and the stockton tunnel where we were following the sisters--- that people thought this was a legally sanctioned march. :)

dantsea

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:40:39 -0800

If people were this angry before November 4th, we wouldn't need these protests, now would we? Thanks, that's a shocking revelation that none of us figured out until just now. For every Prop 8 post I see from now on, I'm going to start taking wagers as to how many comments will be posted before someone writes this, or the equally tired WHERE WERE ALL OF YOU BEFORE NOVEMBER 4TH. I mean, I know it's fun to be sanctimonious on the Internet, but try to aim for originality.

travin

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:23:54 -0800

How about making it the yellow brick road?

SFHope

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:06:28 -0800

Actually, on further thought, it'd be awesome if the street was converted into sidewalk and trees planted. Could make the sidewalk all rainbow sparkly.

SFHope

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:00:50 -0800

I for one am SO HAPPY that they blocked the intersection for hours. Every time they do this, it turns Castro/18th into a pedestrian mall where we can walk around freely without having to take our lives into our hands. I think the neighborhood would be better off if they just blocked off the streets there permanently (with maybe an exception for delivery trucks). ...but then I think SF in general would be better if they blocked off ALL traffic into the city and had everyone park at BART lots outside (while making BART 24 hrs, obviously). =)

travin

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:21:57 -0800

Mattymatt, did you by chance share these wonderful ideas with the protesters or did you sit silently by giggling to yourself what an insightful column you'd write about it later? Everyone wants to be the leader and very few have good ideas. Even fewer actually share their ideas. Leadership happens when someone takes the lead, not standing around criticizing--especially after the fact. Maybe next time you could contribute, we could use your help.

manys

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:05:08 -0800

Could've been a pretty big showing. To what end?

FNREEDIE

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:57:19 -0800

Thanks for this column. It's time to get strategic. It's time to get motivated in this cause. And most importantly, it time to get our allies into the fight with us.

donkeykong

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:55:17 -0800

There was another march that went from Civic Center up Market to Stockton, through Union Square, Chinatown, North Beach, the Wharf, then south on Polk, south on Van Ness for a while and then back to Polk to the Civic Center. The leaders the whole time were the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and Pollo Del Mar, who had a rolling sound system and mic. It varied in size, but there were a good amount of people most of the way. Too bad the two different marches didn't get together beforehand! Could've been a pretty big showing.

NotAmused

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:30:29 -0800

The group of people who sat in the Castro and 18th intersection included many people who were there after the week before after the march from City Hall to Dolores Park to City Hall to the Castro. This crowd was much smaller and led by a fellow who had a megaphone. People bought pies and pies of pizza from Escape from New York, trash bags from Walgreens, gave out telephone numbers of elected officials. Supervisor Dufty spoke about how a march in Visitacion Valley or Chinatown could be organized and how our neighborhood is suffering, i.e., All American Boy, on Castro for 32 years, is closing. A person then took the megaphone mike from Dufty to announce he brought trash bags. It was nice to see how generous people were, but it was hard not to be annoyed when they arranged a ton tea lights in the intersection, leaving behind globs of white candle wax long after they left (and still there), and when a handful of people were moved to the sidewalk to bang a drum and cry on their megaphone "make some noise, honk your horns" into the wee hours.

manys

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:20:25 -0800

The problem is that the smart people have realized that plain protesting doesn't work for everything. This leaves the public movement with a lack of brains and, consequently, leadership. But hey, I hear some rich gay people secretly gave tons of money to "No On 8," so it won't be long until this controversy is a faint memory. Keep gluing fur to your cars, people, the US is no place for bigotry!

pinecone

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:13:35 -0800

San Francisco's very own Archbishop Niederauer was instrumental in the Yes on 8 campaign, getting the Mormons involved in this fight. Yes every bishop takes their orders from Rome, but the degree to which Niederauer took action on this is inexcusable, damaging and divisive to the local Catholic community. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/09/MNU1140AQQ.DTL Why not protest the actions of this man. Take the demonstrations to the Cathedral on Geary. Or the nearby offices of the Archdiocese. Or at the Archbishop's residence.

WagonMonster

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:08:55 -0800

If people were this angry before November 4th, we wouldn't need these protests, now would we? You're not going to win the hearts and minds of the voters by these kinds of things. The Yes on 8 people are bigoted assholes, but, they worked within the system and ran a smart and successful campaign. The only way to beat them is to also work within the system, and run an even smarter and more successful campaign than them. Running around the streets of San Francisco in drag is not going to change anything.

allergic

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:01:11 -0800

I agree with the street-blockers in that civil disobedience is necessary to use and is a valuable tool in any movement. But they need to check out how it has been used in the past, and when it has worked, and when it hasn't. African Americans didn't go to black lunch halls and refuse to leave until they were served, they went into the white neighborhoods. And it was a coordinated, concerted effort. Even the protesters at the RNC this year had a plan -- they wanted to block all possible entryways for the delegate buses. And in some sense, they succeeded, since many delegates were late. Any act of civil disobedience should have a PURPOSE. I doubt any of those people sitting in the middle of 18th and Castro (or at Octavia & Market earlier) had any idea what their action was trying to accomplish. I know you all want to take action, but that doesn't mean it's okay to stop thinking about the consequences before you block off a street. It's a perversion of the theory of civil disobedience. If you want to shut down the gears to make some change, you'll need more than one street, and -- just a hint -- the gears of hate aren't located in San Francisco.

aj

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:50:06 -0800

One more idea. Matt, set up a Stop8 PAC, and raise some money.

aj

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:44:34 -0800

Oh, and NO organizer written folk music. Dance music, maybe. Singer songwriter guitar solos? No.

aj

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:43:16 -0800

Excellent, excellent column. I nominate ... YOU, and the creator of Join The Impact. The Stop8 website is excellent and is a great place to get people involved and organized. The pre-existing No campaign totally, completely failed. They are NOT the leaders. So forget about them, and also forget the big "mass meetings" this week that will be similarly muddled and full of let's-not-piss-anyone-off "we stand together with communities A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I , J, ... Z, AA, BB, ..." rhetoric. Instead the key will be to get a team of about 100 serious, committed volunteers involved in taking the names and getting the signups and then scheduling future actions: kindness (outreach to potential swing voters via the "Love Unites" message) and punches to the face (boycotts). Get all these volunteers organized and ready BEFORE the next protest. Then at the next one, sign everyone up.

troymccluresf

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:40:31 -0800

That's a problem I've had with most protests around here. They usually piss off the people most sympathetic to the cause. Like when we invaded Iraq in 2003. "Yeah, how DARE these people live in the Eats Bay, let's go trap them at the onramps!" Uh, oh...kay? This was even worse. What the fuck are you gonna do in the Castro?

apossum

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:35:08 -0800

Agreed. But hasnt this lack of leadership been the problem from the start regarding Prop 8. Post Nov 4 this is not a new problem, but a lingering unresolved one. Even at the protest/rally/whatever on Sat-there was no clear message or mechanism to get involved. The events of Saturday were a missed opportunity. Disrupting traffic and blocking intersections in the Castro seems like one of the least effective activities. The only people who took notice of this were people like me who could not get home because of the f'ed up traffic.

bornandraised

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:15:14 -0800

"But everyone wants to help. Everyone feels strongly about this issue, even people in bars. They just need someone to tell them how they can make an impact ... someone to answer the question, "where are we going?"" Bravo, seriously. That was the best, most concise, summation of what is needed right now in this community, and it almost brought me to tears.