In The Riot, Nieto Lives On

Everyone knew it was going to happen, except perhaps the city officials, who threw a massive viewing party in downtown despite the warnings of the police. Last night, thousands of people took over the streets of San Francisco in the hours following the victory of the Giants over the Royals, taking the World Series trophy home for the 3rd time in five years.

Many activists were quick to mock the rioters last night, drawing comparisons between the police treatment of either black protesters or simply any protesters with a political message, and the supposed treatment of those at the sports riot, who are often white. But this line of thinking is deeply flawed when comparing the Giants riot to a common example such as the recent uprising in Ferguson. For starters, the riot in the Mission could not be described as mostly-white. Taking place in a increasingly-gentrified Latinx neighborhood, the rioters were much more racially diverse than the aforementioned narrative might let on. The Mission district has also seen countless protests over the last few years, and a number of police shootings, such as that of Alex Nieto earlier this year. Alex was a well-known Latino man, whose name appeared in both chants and graffiti during the riot.

With this in mind, it may be less the racial or class makeup of the riot that keeps police at bay than it is the size and ferocity of the riot. If we look back to the early days of Ferguson, parts of West Florissant were practically an autonomous zone as some participants described, and the police were at the outskirts of this zone, trying to force their way in. This method is not radically different from SFPD’s approach to those gathered at the bonfires on Mission St., and if scaled up to account for how many more people were on that street last night than in Ferguson, and the level of resistance shown towards police, the approach might have been almost identical. From this we can conclude that police are much more hesitant to break up a protest or riot that will defend itself. Much could be said about why more people came out to a sports riot than a riot over the murder of a young person of color, and we would certainly prefer it the other way around, but that is not what we’re discussing here.

So, why then would the police respond the same way to so-called “revelers” as they do to the supposed “thugs” and “rioters” in Missouri? Not because baseball is as revolutionary a subject as the death of Mike Brown, but because baseball was simply what put people in a situation where they could take action against this world of misery and alienation. But while sports may have been what brought people together, it was the context of gentrification and police brutality that clearly gave these events their character. While focus might be on the couches burned in the streets, plenty of other fun activities took place nearby while clearly spoke to the rage people were feeling about the systems of domination:

• Vanguard Properties, a real estate company who have faced several protests in the last year for evicting Mission residents with the Ellis Act, was completely covered in graffiti, and had it’s windows broken.

• A tech bus was attacked with bottles as rioters chased after it yelling “Fuck Google!”

• A start-up company was attacked with rocks and bottles as people shouted “Techies!”

• A Vida condo building that was under construction was set on fire after rioters breached the fence and broke some of it’s windows.

• Several MUNI buses were attacked, and the entire system was shut down shortly after. Last month, MUNI raised it’s fares, and it’s likely people still remember Kenneth Harding Jr., a black man murdered by the police for allegedly evading the fare on MUNI three years ago.

• Numerous cop cars had their windows smashed out, and were covered in graffiti. Tagged messages included “Fuck the Police” “Riot” and “KHY.” KHY, short for Keep Hoods Yours or Kill Hipsters & Yuppies, is a graffiti crew based in the Mission District, and have been active in anti-police and anti-gentrification struggles.

• Police officers took bottles from the Mission to the Powell shopping district, and in some cases were forced to retreat.

Not everything that happened last night was positive, multiple shootings occurred and one person was stabbed (though the situations in which these happened are unclear.) It’s also possible that many people present had no interest in the aforementioned attacks or the antagonism behind them. But that does not and cannot erase the widespread hostility towards the police, as huge crowds stood their ground against cops, building barricades and throwing bottles. The names of those murdered by police in recent years were chanted long into the night. The struggle against the gentrification of the Mission district also reached a boiling point, as a brick through the front window of Vanguard Properties was met with the cheers of hundreds of onlookers. Several high-end stores were tagged with anti-yuppie and anti-techie slogans.

If the rioters were so clearly conscious in nature, why did it coalesce because of a sports game? Urgent action is needed against the social order, and no sports victories can come often enough for us. There is never a wrong time to engage in conflictual action against capital and the state. Organize with people you trust to take action immediately, make connections with people to grow networks of resistance. We have no time to waste.