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Add an Event9PM Reconvergence, Night the War Starts Demo
RECONVERGENCE CALL
- When: 9pm the day the bombs start falling.
- Where: Powell and Market
The night the war starts, people will converge at Powell and Market at 5pm. We will be there. But we cannot let the lessons of March 15th be lost on us. Police can and do attack demonstrations without provocation. Demonstrations can get split into pieces, and we can't let that kill them. If these maniacs running the U.S. government really do attack Iraq without U.N. approval, people will be pissed off! We can't let that energy be easily dispersed. Come prepared, organized, ready to continue the protest in smaller pieces if necessary. To aid in that process of converging dispersed groups of protestors, we are calling for people to meet at Powell and Market at 9:00pm, to continue the protests that may be dispersed.
Based on my experience with the breakaway march, I think the police may try to break up any spontaneous gathering without a permit fairly quickly. One time and place to reconverge may not be enough. We may need several times and places to reconverge, should the protests become dispersed, on an ongoing basis.... Or perhaps we should have an open-ended calls to reconvene somewhere whatever time it may be (within a particular time frame) to meet up for further actions.
I suggest multiple locations staggered throughout the day and night with about one hour separation, each location different from the last one. This would give us a chance to escape large mobilizations of police, chaotic situations, etc., and start again in a relatively free zone.
What I would call these is "conditional reconvergences," reconvergence calls that are conditional on the main protest being dispersed. In addition to that, it would be desireable to have a few unconditional reconvergences, like at 9 P.M., for people who are late and want to join in. If people are still marching together at this point, they can march en masse to the reconvergence locale.
I think some plan like this would be highly effective in keeping the police from breaking up protests. They wouldn't know in advance whether they would have to be with the march trying to stop it, or whether it would disperse, and they would have to move out to another location. This would make it hard for them to deploy advance units designed to stifle dissent.
Oh, here's an even more complex twist on this: We could have secondary reconvergence locations in case police try to prevent people from even converging in the first place, or in case converging at the first location ends up somehow being dangerous.
So here's an interesting idea: A series of conditional reconvergence calls and a few unconditional ones, along with secondary fallbacks.
but i do see some benefits to this. for example, at one march the bb tried to get to union square and were blocked by the cops. if people dispersed then reorganized at the square how would the cops stop them??
when there's something in the way, go around
i reccomend, and id like to hear comments:
temporary compliance with the police! if they tell us to get on the sidewalks, do so, they will consider their jobs done and we can start again, undevided.
if the police start arresting people like what happened at the end of the BB march on saturday, dont stop. only stand to observe if people are being arrested for direct action. if people are arbitrarily surrounded and arrested, it allows the cops to stop the march. and thats just what they did. the 150 people arrested off of market served to keep us all in the same place for a long period of time, eventually stopping our march. if people are being arrested for no apparent reason, then we should continue to march, because the cops would rather follow the march than stay idle for 2 hours arresting 150 random people...
to sum up, i say: we march. dont stop. keep moving, and hold continued meeting places to solidify our numbers. 'somegirl's idea of meeting at union square randomly, not trying to march and being blockcaded is a good one. follow along those lines.
the police WILL try and surround small groups to arrest arbitrarily and hinder our momentum, if we keep moving, then they are more likely to just stop with arresting the people they have surrounded.
oh, and deciding to run at key moments is REALLY effective too!!
ONLY LEAVE IF LEGAL OBSERVERS STAY BEHIND
But it could start at 8am Thursday morning because this is when night falls in Iraq after the 48 hour deadline set by resident Bush, and then what would happen with the day after plans. Would we wait till Friday, or start already on Thursday, given that so many are already taking the day off.
Another possibility is that people may jam the machines with wet tickets. The driver could go out on strike. Someone might throw a piece of chain onto the third rail, shorting it out. Someone might even take down the grid by throwing a bola made of dog chain and fishing weights at some high tension wires out in the country somewhere.
None of this would be good for the anti-war movement. BART greatly enhances the movement’s ability to move about from one action to another. And while a grid blackout would certainly make looting a lot easier, it would also cripple the movement’s ability to stay in touch and aware through SF-IMC and the various LPFMs that would otherwise be bringing news from eyewitnesses and participants. Don’t do it.
(1) The target of No Business As Usual and shut down tactics are the corporations and war machine. They don't take BART, but thousands of working people do. Working people from all walks are current or participants in the anti-war movement, but each not for long if the movement's tactical move is to impede them from getting home to their families after a long day of work.
(2) Many of us will be using BART to get to the city from various points in the Bay Area for the demos.
the government may shut it down
bomb threats
smoke in the tube
for sure they'll ban bicycles like they did at every big demo recently
do not rely on bart
DO NOT RELY ON BART
if you must be in the city, sleep over the day before
if you are stuck outside and want in, walk, march, bike, hitchhike, airlift, kayak, ferryboat, tarzan swing, or better yet,
GET BUSY IN THE EAST BAY!
but don't rely on BART.
don't.
p.s. what the fuck, "we need to get to work"?
So, my sympathies are most definitely in support of the global walk out from work, but I cannot join in, except in spirit.
A big hug and thanks to everybody who has or will be walking out....!
the links below all specifically document how the US government sold chemical and biological weapons and other related goodies (missle testing system components, etc.) to the iraqis, even after gulf war number 1.
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/03/119547.php
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0908-08.htm
http://mediafilter.org/shadow/S43/S43anthrax.html
and, actually, it wasn't the french, but the germans who were the biggest european sellers.
get your facts straight before you accuse others of myth and propaganda.
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