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Indybay Feature

#OpBART 3 - until BART announces they will no longer censor people

640_opbart3_aug292011.jpg
Date:
Monday, August 29, 2011
Time:
5:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Event Type:
Protest
Organizer/Author:
Location Details:
Mon Aug 29th 5pm at Civic Center for round 3

Protests to continue until BART announces they will no longer censor people during peaceful protests

https://twitter.com/#!/OpBART
https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23OpBART
https://twitter.com/#!/AnonyOps
http://youranonnews.tumblr.com/


To the members of the Press and BART

We are Anonymous, over the past two weeks we have proven that we stand by what we believe. You have threatened to shut down cell phone service if needed again, although your threats went empty, the dictator like tactics did not go unnoticed by the world. BART police are becoming increasingly aggressive at the protest, and peaceful protesters are being arrested for “being too loud”. We will continue to show the world why #OpBART is necessary. We have stated and will keep our promise of a protest EVERY week until our demands are met. Since these demands have not reached the BART board of directors yet, we will remind you of what we want in order to stop our protest:

1. Fire Linton Johnson and BART Chief Kenton Rainey.

2. Mandate new training for all BART officers.

3. Publicly apologize to the people for shutting down cell service.

4. Take the guns away from the BART police.

5. Reopen the investigation to the killing of Charles Hill.

Not only will these demands make the public feel more safe riding the BART system, but it will also ensure that BART is taking active steps to correcting it’s mistakes.

So now that we have made ourselves clear, we will continue with #OpBART every week until our demands are met.

We will see you Next Monday the 29th, 2011 Outside the civic center at 5pm.

We are Anonymous,

We are legion,

We never forgive,

We never forget,

Expect us.


http://opbartsf.tumblr.com/post/9310643106/to-the-members-of-the-press-and-bart
Added to the calendar on Thu, Aug 25, 2011 9:02PM
§We're from the Internet. We're here to help.
by Anon
640_anonymous-heretohelp.jpg
We're from the Internet. We're here to help.
§To San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr
by Anon
sfpd-suhr-anonymous.jpg
This is Anonymous, we until recently did not know who you were. We stumbled upon an article in which you have stated “I don’t want this to be construed as delivering a threat,” But shortly after you go on to make a threat: “It will be different next Monday,” This kind of statement is somewhat amusing because we have stated “We come in peace.”

Now you have our attention, We do not appreciate threats nor do we take well to them, especially from a chief of police who has a very interesting background himself. May we remind you of 2003? Allegedly conspiring to obstruct the investigation into the infamous Fajitagate affair, in which three off-duty cops allegedly beat up two men for their Mexican takeout. Or maybe we should ask Chief Heather Fong why she had to reprimanded you in 2009.

We are Anonymous.

We are Legion.

We do not forgive.

We do not forget.

Expect us.
§Protest Plan For OpBart-3
by anon
Recently, a document surfaced detailing a plan for the third round of BART protests on August 29th. In it, a suggestion is raised to change the direction of the action: to focus on station closures—rather than police brutality of the BART PD—in an attempt to “shame” BART, or somehow outwit them with logic. The implication is that, once presented with a crowd of protesters bearing signs imploring them not to close stations, BART police will, for unspecified reasons, not attempt to blame closure of the stations on the massed crowd, nor close the stations at all.

This is incorrect and counterproductive, and further illustrates the main problem with OpBART: It is replete in revolutionary fervor, but severely lacking in focused ideology. Because of the decentralized nature of Anonymous, the operation finds itself swinging between causes almost at random, focusing attention on each new injustice, but at the expense of the original message.

Let us be perfectly clear: THE BART OPERATION AND THE PROTESTS SURROUNDING IT SHOULD BE FOCUSED ON THE CONTINUING BRUTALITY AND UNACCOUNTABILITY OF THE BAY AREA TRANSIT POLICE.

To muddy the water by presenting secondary and tertiary issues (such as cell disruption, and unwarranted station closures) as the primary goal of the movement is confusing to activists and the public. Though these issues are completely valid and deserving of address, they must take secondary roles in accordance with their overall importance.

The conduct of attendees to the protests has been similarly counterproductive - Impeding station function and shutting down Market Street does nothing but turn popular opinion against our cause and provide the police with an easy way to vilify us in the eyes of the public. Straying outside of the immediate area of BART stations also places us within the jurisdiction of the San Francisco Police Department—against whom we have NO IMMEDIATE ISSUE.

To this end, we propose the following guidelines for the third round of OpBART, scheduled for Monday, August 29th at 5:00 PM:

1. ASSEMBLE OUTSIDE CIVIC CENTER STATION, IN THE LARGE PLAZA SURROUNDING THE MAIN ENTRANCE. This in NO WAY impedes the function of the station itself, and ensures that the public cannot reasonably see us as “the protesters who kept me from getting home”. The BART police would have NO JUSTIFICATION for shutting down the station, and would be unable to reasonably blame us. Remember, they will be in control of the media narrative, and if they are able to say that we shut down the station, they will. To give BART any excuse whatsoever, is to shoot ourselves in the foot.

2. STAY THERE, STOP RANDOMLY MARCHING AROUND, AND PICK A TARGET. The area is highly visible, both to passengers and passersby. It places us within range of the institution with which we take issue. Marching up and down Market does not expose us significantly more than it would if we stayed put, and staying put again deprives the police and media of their “unreasonable protesters shut down civic infrastructure” monologue.

3. STAY ON MESSAGE. THE PROTESTS ARE ABOUT POLICE BRUTALITY FIRST, AND EVERYTHING ELSE SECOND. Leaping from topic to topic does nothing but confuse those not involved with the operation. The San Francisco Chronicle already has reporters saying that the third round of protests will be about station closures during the first two operations. We CANNOT ALLOW the media narrative to be twisted like this, and to leap from topic to topic based on whatever the newest injustice is does nothing but confuse potential allies and allow the police and media an easy out. The popular narrative already shifted to “hipsters mad about cell reception”, and we ABSOLUTELY MUST shift it back to the issue of POLICE BRUTALITY, and fast.

4. KNOW YOUR TARGETS. THE SFPD ARE NOT THE ENEMY RIGHT NOW. Our issue is with BART police, not the SFPD. Historically, the SFPD has been extremely accommodating to civil protest (see footage and reports from Operation Chanology, which had its biggest turnout in San Francisco), and to rail against them as though they were actually our targets is not productive. DO NOT CONFLATE THE SAN FRANCISCO POLICE DEPARTMENT WITH BART POLICE. The SFPD should not have to clean up the mess BART police created, and BART police should not get a free pass because the protest group wandered out of their jurisdiction.

Anonymous is participating in noble action, placing itself in opposition to police brutality and corruption. Its dedication to the cause of social change is commendable, but its decentralized nature makes it susceptible to derailment by distracting voices. Ideological inconsistency will ultimately do more harm than good, even if the conflicting voices are individually beneficial. To sway people to our cause we must win in the court of public opinion, and to conduct ourselves in such an erratic manner does little in this regard.
§Breaking news messages from August 29th
by Indybay
Monday Aug 29th, 2011 11:40 PM : Two #OpBART arrestees released about 8:30pm
Monday Aug 29th, 2011 6:42 PM : 2 protesters arrested in Embarcadero station, one of whom was arrested while speaking in a bullhorn near fare gates. #opBART
Monday Aug 29th, 2011 6:32 PM : Protesters are now inside Embarcadero station, speaking in a bullhorn and chanting. #opBART
Monday Aug 29th, 2011 6:22 PM : #opBART protesters have left Montgomery, now walking towards Embarcadero BART station.
Monday Aug 29th, 2011 6:15 PM : Protesters have entered Montgomery BART station; station remains open. SFPD following protesters into the station. #opBART
Monday Aug 29th, 2011 6:06 PM : Protesters entered Powell station and allowed to chant by BART police. Now marching on sidewalk toward Montgomery station.
Monday Aug 29th, 2011 6:04 PM : After police blocked Market St, BART protest split in two and marched on sidewalk to Civic Center and Powell stations

Comments (Hide Comments)
by has something to say
Among the workingclass who use BART, commonly known as the court of public opinion, those of us who sell our labor for less than $77,000 a year, there is no support for the constant shut down of BART. There is support for objecting to shutting down cell phone service, which is an emergency service, and for abolishing the BART police, which are unnecessary and deadly. We have received the message. The cell phone service has been on. As to the police, it appears you have to run for BART Board yourself as they are all elective offices to have the BART police abolished. All you have to be is at least 18 and a registered voter in one of the BART service counties. You cannot function without the support of the workingclass; that is like a fish being out of water.
by (A)
The American working class majority has never supported any protest movement and is filled with prejudice, racism, patriarchy, sexism, homophobia and care about nothing but maintaining their working class status and playing their role as consumers. They care about nothing more than wealth accumulation and won't hesitate to climb the ranks if a position is offered to them higher up in the chain of command in capitalism and government. The privilege to be ignorant and apathetic is more important to commuters than shutting down a system of genocide, slavery and police murder. Everyone in America has been brainwashed in school and work to be subordinate to and scorn the black flag people. Fuck the working class and fuck the middle class. They are the ones upholding this SYSTEM OF HELL & TORTURE together when they could be fighting alongside to put an end to the beast! I will never acquiesce to any of it.
by jimmy
you might want to know, that police are profiling very heavily everywhere if you dont look ''a certain way''. they will even TAKE YOUR PICTURE even if you just disagree with why youre being stopped! no citation given , but if you question them they want to TAKE YOUR PHOTO! what's up with that??
Their labor profits, consumer spending and taxes ultimately work to sustain the empire. They are not helping the situation but are the enablers of the circumstances that surround us.
by A. J. Getty
I spent a large part of my youth studying spirituality and non-violent philosophy at a Hindu ashram in Varanasi India.

I let my anti-worker anger get the best of me and misspoke. I meant to write that I want to "SHOO" away cops and workers, not do anything that would harm them. I am fully within the Gandhian tradition of non-resistance.

Please ignore the typo in my previous post.

Gurus teach self-realization, and we need to be more like spiritual entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs.

For a world that isn't shaped by the consumerism created by the working class.

A. J. Getty
...on both the stoppage of the BART and the workign class. I have been an anarchist for nearly 40 years and i don't agree with those anarchists who say fuck the working class. Now while i do agree that American working class is not blameless, i don't think that they are in any way the main enemy, and the US working class even with their problems are part of the world working class, the overwhelming majority of people in the world who can change the world to be a non-hierarchical, non-capitalistic, non-oppressive place to be. I, like most radicals, don't consider cops to be in the working class but to be the enforcers of ruling class edicts.

I have a proposal as an alternative to shutting down the BART trains, which will get at the heart of the problem, even tho it might get a little less visibility. It is to do a concerted campaign to block the BART administration building in Oakland. Blockade it. Occupy it. Find other creative ways to stop its functioning. They are the main enemy in this fight to abolish the BART Police, and get rid of lying censoring administrators.
However I'm afraid hacking, disruption, chaos and system shut down is still on the agenda. >:-})
by freedom fighter
Hacking, disruption, chaos, and shutdowns should be done against the police, the administration, the government, and large capitalist businesses not against average BART trying to get somewhere. I realize that the main cause of the disruption has been caused by the bart police and administrators themselves, and not by protesters, but we need to control our tendency to have chaos for its own sake and strike at the real enemy.
by Sam Francisco
This was posted on Tuesday Aug 16th, 2011, but it's relevant to this debate:

I'm 100% supportive that you all came out for this protest. I was there and had to use BART and made it out of Civic Center Station at a quarter past 5:00. The BART pigs should be disbanded, the fares should also be eliminated with the substantial savings from not having these highly-paid armed murderous thugs, the restrooms should be opened up again and made accessible to EVERYONE. BART workers should have their wages raised and fully-paid benefits should be restored. BART should be FREE!

But 99% of commuters, most of whom are the white-collar multiracial working class, were totally alienated from this action. People weren't clear what the protest was about, most if talked with in more than sound bytes would agree with the free speech issue on the communication shutdown last Thursday. Except for seeing the helicopters, and seeing as many parasites from the corporate media as there were protesters, most riders on BART didn't have the foggiest idea what all this was about.

Organizing something on BART without including BART and Muni workers in solidarity and without drawing in the downtown and Financial District workers won't go beyond symbolism. Just remember the community-wide working class agency and self-organization of the year-long (starting in 1955) Montgomery Bus Boycott against the racist Jim Crow laws on public transportation. Too liberal for you? That's missing the point, because after over a year of struggle the boycott was victorious.

If we want to win we've got to start rethinking our tactics and start thinking about what winning would take.

Lastly, many of us learned long ago that shutting down transit during rush hour AFTER work is doomed to failure. It just pisses people off. Let them get home to their kids, their dinner, and let them unwind from a day of exploitation and misery unmolested. Everyone deserves to get home as quickly as possible to a cold glass of beer after a day of wage slavery.

Do it in the morning instead. Remember the pre-dawn hours of Thursday March 20, 2003 when nearly 20,000 of us tried to shut down San Francisco to stop the war? So many workers were GLAD to have an excuse to be late to work. I remember seeing newsracks and concrete garbage cans knocked into intersections with the help of guys in ties and office clothes. They spent the whole morning participating with the excuse that they had been "tied up in traffic" (which they helped tie up!). People will LOVE you for giving them an excuse to be late -- or to not even come in at all -- to work. And with the chaos that slows them down or prevents them from getting to their awful jobs, we've have time to spell out the issues of the protest and hopefully draw them into joining us.

Then we could attack BART with something more like a strike -- maybe even another general strike with workers shutting down ALL transit (e.g. BART, Muni, SamTrans, AC Transit, Golden Gate Transit, etc., etc.) -- that spreads by working class agency across the entire region, rather that yesterday's symbolism that alienated workers commuting home AFTER work. The point is to prevent anyone from working at all.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

New comment on August 27, 2011

I completely agree with deanosor. Occupy and shut down the BART headquarters building in Oakland. And try to draw in rank-and-file transit workers, not only at BART but at Muni, AC Transit, SamTrans, Golden Gate Transit, etc. So the next time a pig murders someone on transit, we do a boycott in solidarity with some kind of "social strike" action (like keep the buses and trains running, but don't collect fares) of transit workers. Since most Muni workers are black and Latina/o, we include them in the planning for spreading the struggle beyond transit and like the "Arab Spring," we draw everyone who's working class, poor, dispossessed, exploited, or oppressed into the struggle.

Our goal should be to exercise real power to force transit agencies to disarm and disband their murderous pigs and to stop the austerity-based attacks on the living conditions of the poor, homeless and working class. As Frederick Douglass said in 1857:

"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will."
by creater
yes, most people are only interested in seeing a ball filled with air getting kicked around a stadium. thers no ''mass movements'' of consciousness! looks like a shocking event is the only thing thay may do anything. who knows. too many people are afraid to lose what status they have. but the cracks are showing. if you don't believe racism doesent exist, yes even an african american state worker said she's ''never experienced racism''. well in randall robinson's ''quitting america'' book ,he points out that not admitting r5acism is affecting you is a form of self loathing. of course you are supposed to look down on yourself and look up to AUTHORITY. a lie from the beginning of kindergarten.
by candle
they run @ a million dollar deficit because of the bart police and fair agents...
by [scared of bullets]
As of 3PM Monday afternoon, 29 AUG 20ll--
Several TV trucks are already parked on Market Street,
near UN Plaza;
possibly waiting for Bart demos [anti-police versus pro-police?].
...
I hope the professional SFPD can restrain the poorly-trained BART cowboys.
If you MUST come here, bring a wet washcloth [to shield your mouth and nose from possible teargas].
-- NOT feeling brave today
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