THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE.
For this fourth peace march in San Francisco in the past five months, many things were different. For one thing, the rally began at the San Francisco Civic Center, instead of ending up there. From there, the new plan was for the march to wind up the Hayes Street hill, making three right turns, heading from City Hall through the yuppie shopping district, through the projects, to Jefferson Square Park. The route itself seemed laid out to be a metaphor for what many of the marchers were feeling: a long uphill trudge, seemingly going in circles, going from literally gilded domes, marching through poverty and despair, to an unknown destination.
But while the mood and the route were grim and uncertain, at least the beginning of the day was filled with sun and strong wills. For this rally, I didn't have time to prepare any signs to give away, so I headed for Civic Center with just tape recorder and camera. I came out of the train station into Civic Center's wide, sunny plaza. There were some signs that the anti-war marchers were becoming a targetable commercial demographic, as the crowd was well-supplied by polish-sausage stands and ice-cream carts up from the Mission District, their bells jangling through the soundscape. Rain had been predicted for the day, but the skies were bright, shockingly blue, and the warm spring day was cooled by some blustery breezes shooting down the streets. The big puffy clouds were buzzing with aircraft, lending a slight "invasion" vibe to the proceedings. Throughout the day, the air above whoomped with helicopters and small airplanes careening through the sunny skies. No one could avoid thinking about how the skies above Iraq would soon be filled with activity.
The crowds were coming up out of the public transportation and streaming towards Civic Center from every direction. Once again, a wild mix of people - college kids, suburban couples, city anarchists, bearded hippies, grandmas on their first political action, more people of Middle Eastern and Latino roots, though perhaps fewer African-Americans and Asians.
Walking slowly around the read edge of the crowd, the Mourning Mothers brought a forlorn note - reminding us again what is at stake. There are consequences when a nation decides to use bombs and missiles in the place of diplomacy, and words, and economics, and ideas. Returning from the last march was a gang of people in superhero costumes, Captain America, Batman, Superman, a Power Puff girl. I didn't get their talking points, but I'm sure they were compelling.
Along the fence at one end of the plaza, someone put up a grid of wires, with a bunch of strips of white cloth, it said "Weave in Your Dream," and people would stop, and pick up a pen, and think and think, and then write something down, and weave into the red-white-and-blue matrix. It was filled with dreams and wishes by 11:00 a.m.
Here and there, throughout the crowd, young, quickly-moving people dressed head to toe in black flitted about, some with bandanas over their faces. There was an undeniable glamour and menace to these anarchistic Black Block marchers, and they could be seen throughout the day, carrying battle-weary drums and tall, huge black flags that could be seen from far away. One flag had a Jolly Roger skull & bones. There was clear visual link between the Black Block, the rock group KISS and fans of the Oakland Raiders - the black outfits, many with chrome touches, the covered faces, the skulls and bats. In the jarring cultural moment of the day for me, I saw one young anarchist with a black wool cap pulled down to her eyebrows, and a black bandana pulled up over her nose. But in the strip in between, I could clearly see she was wearing full Gene Simmons make-up. My jaw hit the floor, and I grabbed up my camera, saying, "Can I take your picture?" and zoom, she ducked off. I saw her marching later, but once again, when she saw the camera, she looked down.
The crowd had started to flow along the route, winding through the city's center, and turning north under the bright sun and roaring helicopters. Hayes and the other surface streets the parade went down were mostly two lanes across, not the six lanes like Market Street for the earlier marches. Consequently, as the ribbon of people came pouring out of the Civic Center, they seemed to flow on and on and on - a never-ending outpouring of people. Although the numbers of people at these events has become a highly-politicized issue here in SF, the organizers put the count at 100,000, and many observers said the gathering was only slightly smaller than the last one. But squeezed into those narrow neighborhood streets, the snaking chain of chanting, singing, pounding people seemed to stretch to the vanishing point. At the Civic Center, I despaired that the crowd was not going to be as big as the last two marches. But standing on Hayes, looking back and forth along the route, the impact of the tens of thousands of people was overwhelming. For over two hours, the street was packed as the crowd flowed through.
As the huge army of mostly quiet, determined people plowed along the uphill route, the course went through the Hayes Valley, a long string of unreconstructed 80's-style Yuppie haunts, fancy bars, trendy shoe stores,and frou-frou restaurants. The owners of the delis and antique stores stood in the doorways of the shops, watching the flow and chatting on cell phones.
Passing out of the ritzy shopping drag into a more residential district of traditional San Francisco Victorians, there were tattooed folks above, hanging out of windows, watching and hooting, and strings of young urbanites looking down from rooftops. Zooming through the crowd throughout the route was a guy in a pink unitard on a unicycle. I don't think he was connected with Code Pink, but you never know. One sign especially filled me with dread. It was weird, such dark thoughts on such a sunny day. It's probably sunny this week in Iraq, too. There were several signs on this theme,
Coming up the incline, a rich, unexpected, overpowering aroma drew the flagging marchers toward the top of the hill: a small black church wedged in between the houses had a big, oil-barrel barbecue rig out on their front porch, and the ribs and chicken crackling loudly inside filled the air with a knee-weakening smell. They were selling dinner plates for $7.00, and doing a fair business with the vegetarian-heavy crowd. The folks manning the barbecue did some quick market study, and started chanting "Barbecue Bush! Barbecue Bush! Barbecue, barbecue, barbecue Bush!". That got a few customers. One guy had a bike welded onto an oil derrick that pumped as he rode. Someone noted the nauseating spectacle of Colin Powell having the United Nations remove the mural of Picasso's "Guernica" (before he gave his pallid rationale for the war) by noting on this poster, "The New Face of Fascism".
The crowd was overall less musical, with much less singing, no folkies, fewer ad hoc drum corps. The music that was there was all strange, foreboding in some way. In the middle of one bunch of drummers were a couple of middle-aged Morroccan brothers wailing away on Mediterranean horns. They were swooping and diving through beautiful, exotict melodies and harmonies that were suddenly, somehow, politically charged. Trudging up the Hayes Street Hill was a guy with a complete techno DJ set-up on a shopping cart, two turntables and a microphone... and a mixer, and an amp, and booming speakers.
The signs were less funny, more desperate. People were making arguments as if someone was listening. There was a feeling in the crowd that reminded me of what Howard Dean hollered, fists raised, last night at the Democratic show in Sacramento - "We want our country back!" I saw one person I know in the march - another namer, Reed Rahlman. He introduced me to his lovely companion. I got the impression he was on a first date. That's very San Francisco, huh? One family got naked for peace. There were several types of Dogs for Peace. As there often are, there were punks for peace. Man, how old are those hairdos now? 25 years? Retro, dudes! There was a soldier in a tank, sort of a float, and I shudder to think how he got that puppy up Hayes Street. There were even people willing to admit they'd made mistakes in the past.
Jefferson Square Park, by the time I got there, was swamped with people. There were speakers on the stage at one end of the large park (Has anybody here seen my old friend Martin?), but that didn't seem to be where the action was. On the north edge of the park, between the hippies dancing to techno and the dreads gathering around the Reggae sound system, the Black Block began to assemble. The tall black flags gathered under the trees. Just up the street, on my way to the park, I had walked down the sidewalk between 100 cops with riot helmets and sticks on my side of the street and 100 cops with riot helmets and sticks on the opposite side of the street. They all had lots of plastic pull-tab handcuffs on their belts, and they chatted, smoked, talked on cell phones while waiting.
At some silent signal, the mostly-masked and all-black-clad anarchist splinter contingent silently moved out into the street, walking straight towards the gauntlet of SFPD. The cops spines stiffened, but they held their ground as three or four hundred of breakaway walked right down the street between the two walls of dark blue. A couple of blocks ahead, a half dozen police Harleys with lights flashing blocked the intersection, so a block before that, the renegade parade broke East, towards City Hall. I left the speechifying guys from ANSWER at the podium behind and followed the Black Block.
They weren't destroying anything, just enjoying a little unauthorized demonstration through the heart of the city. The only people that were put off much were the drivers on those cross town streets that got caught. But even they didn't have to wait too long. There were even a few jokers in this overall grim crowd - four guys in bright spandex pants and spikey hairdos singing Twisted Sister's Desert Storm era anthem, "We're Not Gonna Take It" as they walked along in the sea of black. The Block also had their own twist on the old chants, they had one that went "What do we want? Peace! How do we get it? Revolution!"
The Block turned south again to walk past City Hall, which gots the cops walking along beside them pretty skittery and nervous. But they went on past City Hall, and on towards Market Street, chanting as they went,"Our Streets! Our Streets!" I saw a taxi feverishly turning his cab around, so I called out to him and hopped in. He was apparently a devout Muslim or Sikh of some kind, he had a long, flowing black beard and wore a white cotton skullcap. "Who are those people?" he said looking at the all black mob, surrounded by tons of cops and motorcycles. "Oh, they're the anarchists" I said. "They broke off from the peace march." He looked at them in the mirror as we headed out "Do they want the war?" he said. "They're not really pro-death, and for the war, are they? Nobody could be for this war!" "No," I told him, "They think the rest of those people aren't fighting the war hard enough. But we're all doing what we can."
Mark Gunnion
03.16.03
Some chants heard at this, the Azores March:
Hell no, we won't go, we won't die for Texaco
Who's the #1 terrorist in the world today? Bush, Cheney and the USA!
Un-deux-trois, Vi-ve La France!
We're Here, We're Queer, we're Out against the War
If war breaks out, Walk Out! (of your office)
And my favorite, the definitely un-funky:
The War on Terror is a lie,
Bush ain't got no alibi,
He's racist, he's racist,
And he's really stupid
Barbeque
(184K)
Freedom
chant (160K)
Morocco
(264K)
What
to do (100K)
Unfunky
chant (276K)
Why
did they go to the Azores? (312K)
FEBRUARY 16 2003 SF
PEACE RALLY PAGE