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Anti-G8 Fallout: Learning from Past Actions in San Francisco: An Interview with Josh Wolf
Fault Lines interviewed Josh Wolf and Gabe Meyers, the two people targeted by the federal and local authorities after the July 8, 2005 Anarchist Action Anti-G8 demonstration in San Francisco. Anti-capitalist protests and demonstrations
against the G8, WTO, and other institutions that represent neo-colonial domination and corporate globalization
have always been met with more aggression and hostility than normal marches for peace. Granted, these demonstrators are often much more militant. With a police officer injured and a police car damaged, the authorities felt
a need to subpoena and prosecute.
Fault Lines: The consensus is you were
committing an act of journalism, and were
protected under the California Shield
Law. In some interviews you said that the
Feds were on a witch-hunt. What kind of
witches do you think they were after?
Josh Wolf: It seems they were after anarchists and anarchism in general. But it
also seems like a multi-level attack on civil
dissent, and on anyone who demonstrates
against this administration going all the
way up to the US Attorneys who were
fired. Which couldn’t be that much farther from anarchism.
FL: Were you surprised at the support you
received from the mainstream media?
JW: Yeah, I guess pleasantly surprised
would be a good way to sum it up. It didn’t
seem shocking; it seemed sensible. It sort
of mitigated some of my distrust around
the mainstream media, and its entirely being fucked to the core.
FL: You have described your video blog as
transparent journalism, transparent in that
your biases are open and transparent to all.
What is the significance of radical media,
independent media, and other media that
is not afraid about taking stands in social
justice movements?
JW: When it comes to civil dissidence,
the mainstream media only covers from
the cops’ perspective – to reinforce the status quo. Half of the dialogue is missing,
so independent media and the alternative press fills in the other half of the
conversation...
The mainstream news sources do
serve a purpose, but if you look at it like
there is a pie of information, that’s just
one-eighth—one slice—out of the giant
pie of things that we, as educated and informed people, should really stay abreast of.
FL: Going back to the Anarchist Action
demonstration in San Francisco against
the 2005 G8 Summit in Gleneagles, it
seemed like two police officers in one cop
car were the catalyst of the violence, by
breaking ranks and going after the protesters instead of letting it die down on its
own.
JW: That’s partially right. It’s not that the
two police officers broke ranks with the
tactical police force covering the demonstration; they were actually on duty patrolling the Mission. They were responding
to a 911 call about vandalism by people in
black, which was not at that time known
by the dispatch to be a part of the demonstration.
FL: Not to justify violence against the
police, but was the fallout caused by the
police being overly aggressive in trying to
disburse the remaining demonstrators?
JW: When you look at the policemen,
you have to look at Shields and Wolf, who
were the police officers involved in that
thing, arriving on the scene. Prior to that
[the police] were almost respectively...it
was weird, when they called over the loudspeakers to disperse, they were like, “The
officers from the San Francisco Police Department order you to disperse. Failure
to do so will result in you being arrested.”
That sounded like something they don’t
say, it was far different from their normal
shouts. Then Shields and Wolf showed
up and I guess got freaked out and decided that the best approach was to accelerate the car in the hopes it would force the
protestors to disperse. Which is obviously
a highly dangerous tactic. And their response to that was to chase after the two
people they almost hit...was just obscene.
To give some context: The year prior
there was a Reclaim the Streets demonstration on June 8, 2004, to correspond
with the G8 Summit in on Sea Island.
The police mass arrested 120 people.
They surrounded everyone at 5th and
Market and then arrested everyone who
was there--there was no disperse order or
anything. A number of those people did
not want to give their names to the police
so in a jail solidarity action about 40 people identified themselves as Jane and John
Doe. The government refused to release
the protesters until they gave their names.
They eventually worked out a deal
that they would drop the charges, prior
to them giving their names, which would
be retroactively reversed if they didn’t give
their names. So here we have a situation
where some government entity was prob-
ably seeking the names of protesters on
June 8, 2004. So this just reinforces the
thought that this was again just some sort
of witch-hunt to identify those who were
protesting.
FL: So the reason you stayed in jail for
so long was not because you didn’t want
to release your unpublished video, but be-
cause you did not wish to testify in front of
the grand jury about your video?
JW: They wanted the footage because
they wanted all of the intelligence they
could gather, but what they really wanted,
which never really came out in court, was
for me to testify and give the identities of
those on the footage. After we had lost
the fight in the 9th circuit level to protect
the footage, we actually offered to show
the US Attorney that there was nothing
on the tape. We submitted a declaration
saying there’s nothing on the tape. [My
lawyers said] how about we just turn over
the tape and you let Josh go. [And the US
Attorney responded] “No, we need his
testimony.”
FL: What do you say to those who say
that your case was a waste of time because
you weren’t protecting anything?
JW: There are some things that are worth
fighting for, but when you lose the fight
seeing that you are only protecting the
right to fight it, you might as well just
show them that you have nothing in your
hand. It’s kind of like when you’re playing
a poker game, you might want to bluff a
hand, but when it comes to all in and you
really have nothing, then there’s no reason
to stay all in.
FL: It seems the federal government will
continue to crack down on civil dissent, especially on those who should be protected
and aren’t professional journalists. Do you
see anyone else being put through the ordeal that you were put through in the near
future?
JW: It will probably be someone related to
the something like the Wen Ho Lee case,
and I imagine it will be highly unlikely
that it will be an independent journalist.
Read Gabe Meyers' interview here.
From Fault Lines #21
Read Gabe Meyers' interview here.
From Fault Lines #21
For more information:
http://indybay.org/faultlines
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