UNFUCK THE WORLD: Photos SF 3-15-03

"Emergency mass non-violent direct action protest planned for 7:00am the morning of the next Business Day after the US strikes. Meet at Justin Herman Plaza, San Francisco.

Transform our city from Profit and War into Life and Resistance! -- shut down the corporate warmakers!"

"The Whole World is Watching"

As heard in late November 1999 in the streets of Seattle.

Seattle FCC Hearing:
Listen Now on Reclaim the Media!

"March 7's FCC Hearing on media ownership and the companion event Shaping the Media Landscape of Seattle attracted a participating audience of around 350.

Over 800 turned out that evening for The Future of Media: Action for Media Democracy.

The overwhelmingly anti-consolidation character of public comments is making a strong impression on FCC decisionmakers, and may turn the tide of this debate as hearings continue.

Listen now to streaming recordings from these Media Democracy events on Seattle. "

"Trust me, the recession is over. Money will be trickling down on all of you really soon!"

Alternative Spring Break!

Emergency Campaign of Lobbying and Nonviolent Direct Action

"We call on the tens of thousands of students who walked out of school on March 5th to organize your campuses to take part in an *Emergency Campaign of Lobbying and Nonviolent Direct Action to Stop the War and Fund the Schools!*"

1) Get Transmitter and Microphone

2) Get Backpack

3) Make Room on the Dial

4) Liberate the Airwaves!

On 3/16/2003 an American woman in Gaza protesting the occupation was murdered after being run over by an Israeli bulldozer. Witnesses said Rachel Corey, from the state of Washington, was trying to stop a bulldozer from tearing down a building in Rafah, Palestine. A witness,Greg Schnabel, 28, from Chicago, said: "[Rachel Corey] waved for the bulldozer to stop. She fell down and the bulldozer kept going. We yelled 'stop, stop,' and the bulldozer didn't stop at all. It had completely run over her and then it reversed and ran back over her."

It was nice hearing live music on the streets.

I encourage more people and bands to entertain us as we march for peace. Thank You!

I wonder if the Police/Military/Prision/Industrial/Complex is building files on 4 year-old activists?

Cynthia McKinney 2004!
GREEN PARTY Candidate for President!

Martin Sheen's first arrest for civil disobedience came for protesting "Star Wars" along with Father Daniel Barrigan.

For more information on upcoming protests against "Star Wars," please see the Vandendenberg Action Coalition:

http://www.mgpnofate.org

For more information on Martin Sheen, including photos of him from various demonstrations, please visit his biographical website:

"Give the Corporations some Complications."

-Rock the Nation,
Michael Franti and Spearhead

Direct Action to Prevent War on March 5, 2003 in San Francisco with Warren Langley:

"Most of my life I've followed the rules," said Warren Langley, a retired Air Force colonel and former president of the Pacific Stock Exchange ,who said he represented the Establishment. "But this is so important I had to get out of my comfort zone." Langley was among those arrested later in the morning. "There are a lot of people just like me. This is the heart of democracy," he continued. "We're going to make it hurt here" if Bush continues his drive to war.

Who are the Five?

"They are five Cubans who were trying to stop the ultra-right terrorist groups in Miami from carrying out violent actions against the people of Cuba."

For more information, please visit:

Free the Five:

"Millions March Against War on March 15 in Over 2,000 Cities Worldwide

Over A Quarter of A Million March in The U.S.: 100,000 in Washington, 100,000 in San Francisco and 50,000 in Los Angeles

Well over a quarter of a million people demonstrated in the U.S. today against a U.S. war with Iraq. 100,000 demonstrated in Washington, 100,000 came out in San Francisco, and 50,000 people braved the driving rain in Los Angeles in massive emergency mobilizations called on short notice by the ANSWER coalition."

New Anarchist Anti-War Site

Anarchists have been pushing radical, class war politics in the growing anti-war movement. Black blocs and anarchist contingents have been popping up in every major city and in many small towns across the world. This site is intended to encourage communication, resource-sharing and discussion about strategy and tactics among groups and individuals trying to radicalize the anti-war movement, in anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian directions.

Please contribute your news, pamphlets, posters, contact info and ideas so they can be made available to everyone.

THE LOVEPARADE HISTORY

"It all started in 1989 when a couple of crazy technofreaks walked behind an old vw-bus together absorbing loud bases coming from the open back doors.

"Friede - Freude -Eierkuchen" (peace happiness and cookies) was the motto and nobody seemed to be aware of the size this event would be 10 years later and what giant impact it would have on german and global musicculture."

There is evidence, however, that the protests lengthened the war and that more people were killed on account of them.

How so? Political scientists talk about the phenomenon of a "negative follower group,” which is defined basically as any group that ticks others off to the point that they become the friend of that group’s enemy. All the data we have from the time, and since, show that the obscenity, illegality, and raging anti-patriotism of the antiwar protesters made them the most hated group in America during the late 1960s and early 1970s. When police beat up protesters in the park across from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, most people who were watching on television sympathized with the police.

The backlash had significant repercussions on the national political scene. Without the antiwar protests, which were associated in the minds of the “silent majority” with a militarized black power movement that had somehow metastasized from the civil rights movement, George Wallace could never have become a national political figure, if only for a while. Nor would Richard Nixon have won the White House in 1968. Furthermore, the antiwar movement undermined the Democratic Party and hurt Hubert Humphrey’s bid for the presidency in a very tight election.) The political reaction to the radical antiwar protests aided both the Johnson and Nixon administrations' efforts to manage growing public disquiet over the war. More Americans would have opposed the war sooner had they not been put off by radical protest tactics.

The truth is that the antiwar movement actually helped elect Richard Nixon to the presidency not just once, but twice. By 1972, the movement had gained enough power in the disheveled Democratic Party to see that George McGovern was nominated instead of a more mainstream candidate who might have kept the party’s labor and middle-class constituency intact. And who believes that a Humphrey administration or a Humphrey- like Democratic administration that would have begun in 1969 or 1973 would have fought the war in Vietnam with the intensity that the Nixon administration did, looking for a "peace with honor” that fell to ashes on April 30, 1975?

http://www.fpri.org/ww/0108.200006.garfinkle.mythedopportunities.html

"The truth is that the antiwar movement actually helped elect Richard Nixon to the presidency not just once, but twice"

There is some truth to this. The antiwar movement also helped elect Reagan, but to say it extended Viet Nam war is illogical. Johnson could not pull out of Viet Nam since once a war starts pulling out would have been seen as losing. Nixon had an easier time politically with pulling out of Viet Nam (since the opposing party put the US troops into the conflict) and one could argue the antiwar movement made this harder for him, but I really doubt that Nixon would have pulled out at all if he thought there was a chance of winning. The war ended for two reasons. One was that the US was losing to the Viet Cong and the other was that continued loses were not politically possible at home DUE TO THE PROTEST MOVEMENT that was causing political unrest and polarizing the US population (which in and of itself was seem as a danger by the State Department). If there had been no antiwar movement the loses would have been easier to take for longer and the US could have held the North out indefinitely (the US was trying to invade the North so this would have still been a loss but a different type of loss). Perhaps Nixon wouldn’t have been elected if it hadn’t been for the antiwar movement, but the opposing candidates wouldn’t have been antiwar if it hadn’t been for the antiwar movement so...

The argument that the antiwar movement prolonged the war seems logical on the surface (since the crazy prowar Americans were in some sense created by the antiwar movement), but it really doesn’t make any sense when you look at the facts (and look at the length of many European colonial wars and the dynamics domestically that was required for European nations to be willing to stop fighting to maintain their colonies)

The argument about the creation of the antiantiwar movement also has another major logical flaw. It sees the protests as an independent variable and the proWar crazies as an effect. Yet one could similarly see the antiwar movement as a given resulting from a draft and a losing war (one does see similar reactions in Europe and the former USSR to loses in war). So then the cause of the domestic unrest and the rise in right wing nationalism would be a result of the war rather than the result of the antiwar movement (which was inevitable). Even this makes little sense when you really get down to it since the war was also a result of the domestic and international political climate at the time. Political science always has this flaw in its arguments since there really are no exogenous variables. One can argue that Nixon prolonged the war, or that the antiwar movement lead to Nixon which prolonged the war, or that right wing US policies and repression at home lead to a radicalized antiwar movement and this prolonged the war etc.. The war would have been over sooner if the N Vietnamese gave up, or if Johnson wasn’t so worried about how pulling out would make him look bad, or if the US hadn’t gone into Viet Nam in the first place. One could argue the war wouldn’t have occurred if it hadn’t been for French colonialism or that the war wouldn’t have occurred if it hadn’t been for Japan's actions during WWII (or US policies in Japan in the 1860s that lead to the rise in expansionist Japanese nationalism).

Anyway, the arguments about the antiwar movement prolonging Viet Nam is mainly an attempt by the US right to argue against dissent. Its similar to arguing that Nazi Germany wouldn’t have been able to kill millions of innocent people if all dissidents and Jews had just voluntarily moved out of Germany. Perhaps Stalin wouldn’t have carried out purges if it hadn’t been for the left opposition that he had to purge but that hardly lets Stalin off the hook or argues for the population to save itself by being "good little Nazis"

Reminds me of the Palistinians who made the israeli elections totally unwinable for the Labour party not once but twice.
Also as with the above example the labour party seems to have been pulled towards hard to defend positions by its fringe groups anyway. That is from an outsiders perspective.
In particular, a little bit of tactics would have had them declaring a ceasefire right before the elections where sharon got into power even if they were offered nothing in return.