Publish to Newswire
Add an EventFrom the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature
Battlecry--SF Chronicle
What really happened
From SFChronicle March 26, 2006
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More than 25,000 teens converged on San Francisco's AT&T Park on a windswept Saturday for a daylong rock concert -- with none of the sex and drugs that go hand in hand with rock 'n' roll.
Kids screamed and swooned while smoke poured from the stage and electric guitars screeched. But the lyrics could have been ripped from a hymnal, and one rocker actually took a break to read from the Bible.
It was part of "Battle Cry For A Generation," an event to encourage evangelical Christian youth to fight back against a pervasive popular culture they say promotes sex, violence, drugs and alcohol. While anything-goes San Francisco may seem an odd place for a Christian youth rally, organizers said they have a great deal of support in Northern California. Similar events drew 7,000 youth to the Cow Palace three years ago and 9,000 to Sacramento's Arco Arena last year.
"We're in the middle of a spiritual battle but also in the middle of a cultural war," BattleCry leader Ron Luce, a Concord native who runs the Texas-based Christian group Teen Mania, told the crowd. "Your generation is being pounded with sexual messages. ... All the messages being sent through the movies, the Internet, point-and-click pornography. It's literally destroying your generation."
Nathanael Ramos, a 14-year-old Roseville (Placer County) freshman, admitted he does watch MTV, which Luce's organization says features nine sexual scenes and almost as many "unbleeped" profanities each hour.
But Ramos vowed to stop.
"It really isn't helping me out," he said. "I'm going to start watching better stations He (God) would want me to watch."
Lacey Runik of Cameron Park (El Dorado County) said she was initially drawn to the event to see some of the top Christian rock and rap acts including tobyMac and Jeremy Camp. But being surrounded by Christian peers and hearing BattleCry's message caused her to have a revelation.
Dressed head to toe in black, with dark eyeliner and a studded belt, the 13-year-old seventh-grader said she even plans to change the way she dresses.
"This isn't me. This is the way people want me to be," Runik said. "I gave in to this look."
The teens were greeted Friday at a kick-off rally at City Hall by an official city condemnation and protesters who called them anti-gay, anti-choice and intolerant. Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, suggested they "get out of San Francisco."
While youth did travel from throughout the Western United States for the two-day event, which cost $55, Leno may have been surprised how many live in the Bay Area, and even in the city itself.
No protesters were on hand Saturday, and the vibe was not one of condemnation, but of celebrating the fact that it can be cool to be Christian.
Crystal Lee, 14, a freshman at San Francisco's School of the Arts, said she wanted to be surrounded by the "incredible energy" of like-minded believers.
She was especially buoyed by the abstinence message of Lakita Garth, a 36-year-old former Miss Black California, who lost her virginity only after she got married seven months ago.
"Do you know what I do means? It means I do you, you do me, and we don't do nobody else," Garth told the appreciative crowd, peppering her talk with scared-straight statistics on teen sex and warnings that condoms don't prevent all sexually transmitted diseases.
Lee, herself a virgin, said casual sex at her school is rampant, with girls trading oral sex for CD players or even car rides.
"Already, half our class has lost our virginity," she said. "It's scary."
She said some of her friends are influenced by "rap, hip-hop and the booty shakers on MTV."
MTV isn't BattleCry's only enemy. The group says teens see 14,000 sexual scenes and 10,000 violent ones on TV each year. Ninety percent of 8- to 16-year-olds have seen pornography online, and many are exposed to violence and sex in video games, they say.
While Saturday's event -- which will be repeated in Detroit and Philadelphia -- was largely preaching to a choir of already converted Christians, BattleCry, and the teens themselves, have plans to spread their message.
Saturday night, Luce unveiled a new battlecry.com, which he called "My Space with God in the middle." Teens and youth organizers also plan to return to BattleCry cities this summer for service and other activities.
In addition, some 2,500 teens answered Luce's call to go on missions this summer to spread Christianity. They circled the Giants' playing field while the crowd raised their arms to pray over them, and then plunked more than $90,000 into passed buckets, with the proceeds counted on the spot.
Patrick Himenes, 18, of Fremont, said he was willing to take a break from a summer of houseboating and hanging out to join the crusade.
"I want to make a difference," said Himenes, sporting a black T-shirt reading, "The devil's a pimp. Don't be his ho."
Later, Emilio Bustos, 18, swayed and sang along with Jeremy Camp, his arms raised and eyes closed.
"This is Generation Y -- why bother?" said the high school senior and youth leader from Iglesia De Dios in Hayward. "The desire I have is creating a youth that is no longer apathetic about life. The only way to do that is through God."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So apparently there were no homophobic messages or condemning sermons. These teens are standing, changing, travelling overseas this summer to help people in nations like Botwanna, South Africa, China, and Peru. I was at Battlecry, and I hope this Chronicle article gives a better clarification to what TeenMania, and more importantly, God, is all about. Love. Not hatred or condemnation.
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/26/BAGRLHUDM81.DTL&hw=Battle+Cry&sn=004&sc=601
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More than 25,000 teens converged on San Francisco's AT&T Park on a windswept Saturday for a daylong rock concert -- with none of the sex and drugs that go hand in hand with rock 'n' roll.
Kids screamed and swooned while smoke poured from the stage and electric guitars screeched. But the lyrics could have been ripped from a hymnal, and one rocker actually took a break to read from the Bible.
It was part of "Battle Cry For A Generation," an event to encourage evangelical Christian youth to fight back against a pervasive popular culture they say promotes sex, violence, drugs and alcohol. While anything-goes San Francisco may seem an odd place for a Christian youth rally, organizers said they have a great deal of support in Northern California. Similar events drew 7,000 youth to the Cow Palace three years ago and 9,000 to Sacramento's Arco Arena last year.
"We're in the middle of a spiritual battle but also in the middle of a cultural war," BattleCry leader Ron Luce, a Concord native who runs the Texas-based Christian group Teen Mania, told the crowd. "Your generation is being pounded with sexual messages. ... All the messages being sent through the movies, the Internet, point-and-click pornography. It's literally destroying your generation."
Nathanael Ramos, a 14-year-old Roseville (Placer County) freshman, admitted he does watch MTV, which Luce's organization says features nine sexual scenes and almost as many "unbleeped" profanities each hour.
But Ramos vowed to stop.
"It really isn't helping me out," he said. "I'm going to start watching better stations He (God) would want me to watch."
Lacey Runik of Cameron Park (El Dorado County) said she was initially drawn to the event to see some of the top Christian rock and rap acts including tobyMac and Jeremy Camp. But being surrounded by Christian peers and hearing BattleCry's message caused her to have a revelation.
Dressed head to toe in black, with dark eyeliner and a studded belt, the 13-year-old seventh-grader said she even plans to change the way she dresses.
"This isn't me. This is the way people want me to be," Runik said. "I gave in to this look."
The teens were greeted Friday at a kick-off rally at City Hall by an official city condemnation and protesters who called them anti-gay, anti-choice and intolerant. Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, suggested they "get out of San Francisco."
While youth did travel from throughout the Western United States for the two-day event, which cost $55, Leno may have been surprised how many live in the Bay Area, and even in the city itself.
No protesters were on hand Saturday, and the vibe was not one of condemnation, but of celebrating the fact that it can be cool to be Christian.
Crystal Lee, 14, a freshman at San Francisco's School of the Arts, said she wanted to be surrounded by the "incredible energy" of like-minded believers.
She was especially buoyed by the abstinence message of Lakita Garth, a 36-year-old former Miss Black California, who lost her virginity only after she got married seven months ago.
"Do you know what I do means? It means I do you, you do me, and we don't do nobody else," Garth told the appreciative crowd, peppering her talk with scared-straight statistics on teen sex and warnings that condoms don't prevent all sexually transmitted diseases.
Lee, herself a virgin, said casual sex at her school is rampant, with girls trading oral sex for CD players or even car rides.
"Already, half our class has lost our virginity," she said. "It's scary."
She said some of her friends are influenced by "rap, hip-hop and the booty shakers on MTV."
MTV isn't BattleCry's only enemy. The group says teens see 14,000 sexual scenes and 10,000 violent ones on TV each year. Ninety percent of 8- to 16-year-olds have seen pornography online, and many are exposed to violence and sex in video games, they say.
While Saturday's event -- which will be repeated in Detroit and Philadelphia -- was largely preaching to a choir of already converted Christians, BattleCry, and the teens themselves, have plans to spread their message.
Saturday night, Luce unveiled a new battlecry.com, which he called "My Space with God in the middle." Teens and youth organizers also plan to return to BattleCry cities this summer for service and other activities.
In addition, some 2,500 teens answered Luce's call to go on missions this summer to spread Christianity. They circled the Giants' playing field while the crowd raised their arms to pray over them, and then plunked more than $90,000 into passed buckets, with the proceeds counted on the spot.
Patrick Himenes, 18, of Fremont, said he was willing to take a break from a summer of houseboating and hanging out to join the crusade.
"I want to make a difference," said Himenes, sporting a black T-shirt reading, "The devil's a pimp. Don't be his ho."
Later, Emilio Bustos, 18, swayed and sang along with Jeremy Camp, his arms raised and eyes closed.
"This is Generation Y -- why bother?" said the high school senior and youth leader from Iglesia De Dios in Hayward. "The desire I have is creating a youth that is no longer apathetic about life. The only way to do that is through God."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So apparently there were no homophobic messages or condemning sermons. These teens are standing, changing, travelling overseas this summer to help people in nations like Botwanna, South Africa, China, and Peru. I was at Battlecry, and I hope this Chronicle article gives a better clarification to what TeenMania, and more importantly, God, is all about. Love. Not hatred or condemnation.
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/26/BAGRLHUDM81.DTL&hw=Battle+Cry&sn=004&sc=601
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!
Donate
$135.00 donated
in the past month
Get Involved
If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.
Publish
Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.
Topics
More
Search Indybay's Archives
Advanced Search
►
▼
IMC Network
White Night Riot
It was a warm evening. I was a student at San Francisco State but that afternoon I was heading down to the Strand Theatre on Market Street across from U.N. Plaza to see a couple of movies. I remember one of them was Hearts and Minds, the documentary about the Vietnam War. I had already seen it, but my girlfriend hadn't and she was an intense movie fan. My flat-mate Peter was joining us. As we rode on the bus a young man, quite agitated, jumped on and blurted out "It's only manslaughter!" We all knew, and quickly confirmed, that it was the Dan White verdict, which had been expected for several days.
Less than 6 months earlier, former cop, resigned supervisor, and conservative psychotic Dan White loaded his pistol, put some extra rounds in his pocket and drove over to City Hall to exact revenge. He felt he had been bitterly betrayed by Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk when they agreed to appoint a political ally to political enemy White's resigned seat. He entered through the unmonitored side door and proceeded to Moscone's office, shot him in cold blood, and then, reloading his gun, he walked down the hall to Milk's office and blew him away, too. He ran away and surrendered to an old friend in the police department a couple of hours later. Dan White gave his old (and clearly sympathetic) friend a rambling, incoherent confession, occasionally crying, freaking out over the disintegration of his life.
The defense invoked the now-famous Twinkie Defense, that Dan White was losing it because of the pressure in his life, eating too much junk food as one of the symptoms and causes of his temporarily insane behavior. The law-and-order, family-values, Ollie North clone (but clutzier), Dan White was a walking time bomb, gradually exploding under the pressure of failing to succeed on the system's terms. He embodied the violent backlash of straight society against the gay community's success, and the death squad approach of the powers-that-be toward individuals that seriously threaten their prerogatives. Dan White's murders of Moscone and Milk drastically altered the political direction of San Francisco, from a pro-neighborhood, populist regime to the traditional conservative, Chamber of Commerce administration of Dianne Feinstein, but that outcome seemed incidental to the psychotic breakdown suffered by Dan White and the ensuing havoc he wrought. No plausible conspiracy theory has emerged linking White to a plan to remove the progressive leadership of the city. Fifteen years later we can see that is what he did. He can't since he committed suicide in 1986.
As soon as we heard that verdict, we jumped off the bus and began walking quickly up Market toward Castro, expecting a spontaneous demonstration. When we crossed Church Street a wall of people across all of Market came angrily over the hill, heading down to the Civic Center. We quickly fell in to the raging crowd. A few buses had their overhead wires ripped down, but mostly it was a lot of fist shaking and chanting: "No Justice, No Peace!" and so on.
Twenty-one were arrested that night, mostly around the Civic Center, including my house-mate Peter (two and a half years later, his four-felony case was settled as misdemeanor/probation pleas). The Chief of Police Charles Gain was blamed for being too wimpy and holding back his troops when he should have attacked. He defended himself by pointing out that no one was dead and only a few had minor injuries. We started the May 21st Defense Fund but most of our benefits over the next few months failed to raise any money. We got few donations. There was no community, gay or otherwise, that would stand in support of the people arrested that night, mostly because only a few of them were gay. The riot had progressed, as San Francisco riots do, from the initial angry crowd (in this case, of gays) to a gradual influx of angry young black and brown men who are spoiling for a chance to even the odds with the cops. The amazing sense of community that had existed during the riot evaporated within 24 hours. Many of us were confused by the contrast: the riot's euphoria temporarily intoxicated us with the sensation of true community. The aftermath returned us with a hard thud to a city full of barren crowds of disconnected people.
--Chris Carlsson
http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/03/1809715_comment.php#1811795