Reclaim the Streets: One Protester Released, One Held for Investigation

To all,
I thought that the Sun.(Feb 11, 2K1) Daily Cal (the U.C. Berkeley student paper) report on the Critical Mass/
Reclaim The Streets action was sheer buffoonery ("the pro-
testers started fires with a combination of debris and SOFAS", according to this article), but the article I'm writing about now (DailyCal, 2-13-01)
<http://www.dailycal.com/article.asp?id=4532&ref=news> was nothing other than a shameless copy & paste of a police
press release. We ABANDONED our bikes and sound system?? Yeah, when we were confronted by a skirmish line of riot gear-clad police hell-bent on violent confrontation,
as video footage that has been and will be posted to this site will show.
But I go on. Just pick up a copy of this rag or log on to the above Web address, and you'll see how badly this so-called report reeks of police bias. Which is why we need all the independent media we can get.

Per your article at on the Friday Critical Mass/Reclaim the Streets, online at:
http://www.dailycal.com/article.asp?id=4532&ref=news
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Your story is so obviously a re-write of the information that police sent out about this incident. Was there any effort at all to find out *who* destroyed the property (answer: the police), *who* initiated the violence (answer: the police), *who* showed up in full riot gear, etc etc.
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Independent Media Center (http://www.indybay.org/) will have to continue providing the best coverage of protests and dissent in Berkeley and San Francisco. Their secret? They actually do reporting and talk to people rather than relying on government propaganda to write stories. Try it sometime.

Just a note that Berkeley police/govt probably had in mind the S26 demonstration when the same sound system was used, they probably don't have much discrimination, "see that sound system, those people will do what they did on S26".

On S26 lots of stuff was smashed and broken (news-stands, windows, I was there). Property owners don't like that and call out the cops. That time they just stood by, this time they had the special nasty riot police ready to bash heads.

Maybe nobody would have smashed anything on Feb 9, in solidarity with Ecuador. Who knows?

The police never have any right to quell free speach and estroy private property, as they did on February 9th. Sure, a bank window was smashed on S26. Does that give police the right to attck all protestors. The fact that things "might" have been broken on February 9th (an action promoted as a non-violent party) is irrelevant. The police showed up fully decked out for a riot, before being given any indication of violence from the crowd. The cops are good enough at blaming us for their brutality. Lets not help them along.