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Global Justice & Anti-Capitalism
Police State & Prisons
Racial Justice
In The Riot, Nieto Lives On
Counter-analysis of the recent anti-gentrification and anti-police actions following the Giants victory at the World Series.
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.
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.
For more information:
http://www.fireworksbayarea.com
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It's about time for this sort of event -- this can be the wind in the sails of new energetic aggressive efforts to make what is still a predominantly non-white prole neighborhood unwelcome to speculator scumbags and their eager pawns, the yups.
Bourgeois types value convenience above all else. If it becomes clear to them that this neighborhood is going to be made extremely inconvenient for them, and on an ongoing basis, they will go away, and engage in their rituals of conspicuous consumption somewhere else.
Bourgeois types value convenience above all else. If it becomes clear to them that this neighborhood is going to be made extremely inconvenient for them, and on an ongoing basis, they will go away, and engage in their rituals of conspicuous consumption somewhere else.
First, since the author of the above article did not pay attention in school, here is your 5th grade English lesson: It's means it is; its is the possessive, the exception to the usual possessives. All you have to do is say it out loud; if the sentence already has a verb, then you probably mean the possessive, its.
Second, San Francisco has had a housing crisis and a police brutality crisis for as long as anyone can remember, and this writer remembers back to the days of Mayor George Christopher, circa 1960. These problems are caused by the profit motive of capitalism, and are not solved by engaging in fights with the armed thugs of the capitalist class, the police. They are solved by labor organizing. On an immediate level, you can vote Yes on Prop G on the November 4 ballot, for that is how we defend rent control, along with labor organizing.
Third, San Francisco is two-thirds tenant, only some of whom live in the Mission District. Yet the rest of the city did not experience this drunken hoodlum terrorism that we witness with EVERY SINGLE GAMBLING RACKET PARTY, using the gambling racket "sport" as a pretext. This writer easily remembers the 5 "football" riots of 1982, 1985, 1989, 1990 and 1995 as well as the 3 "baseball" riots of 2010, 2012 and 2014 ALL OF WHICH GAMBLING RACKETS WERE FIXED VICTORIES. And further, to call the garbage baseball a World Series, when all they have competing are American gladiators, is really ridiculous. This writer can also easily remember when there was no such thing as a Super Bowl for the football garbage; this all came as the TV became the focus of miseducation of this backward country that still has no socialized medicine and still has the death penalty because we have no labor movement.
Fourth, attacking our taxpayer funded buses, overwhelmingly used by the workingclass, immediately puts ALL WOMEN'S LIVES IN JEOPARDY who work or go to school at night and had no buses and could not afford a cab, if they could find one. No where in the above article did we see any concern for women.
Fifth, ALL OF THE FIRES SET BY THESE DRUNKEN HOODLUMS ENDANGERED ALL OUR LIVES as San Francisco is overwhelmingly made of wood-frame buildings. That is especially true of the Mission District.
Sixth, THE ABOVE ARTICLE REEKS OF CONTEMPT FOR THE WORKINGCLASS, as those of us who are lifelong members of the workingclass, the 80% of Americans who sell our labor for less than $80,000 a year, are not all drunken hoodlums engaging in fights with the police, destroying our buses, setting fires, shooting and stabbing people, driving round and round the City, honking horns all night long, and generally exhibiting anti-social behavior. Most of us from the workingclass did out best to be "A" students so we could live a better life. The people who engage in these anti-social activities have total contempt for education. We know that because we only have to look who saves our lives at hospitals; provides education to us; drives and repairs our buses; and does all the other work that makes for a functioning society. The rioters do not have the education to provide for a functioning society.
Seventh: From the horrifying description in the above article, it is very clear that ABSOLUTELY NO CHANGE FOR THE WORKINGCLASS will come from the drunken hoodlum riot with the pretext of the gambling racket victory. All of the businesses can easily sustain whatever damage was done to them; they are all insured. What we witnessed and heard all night long is part of the EXACT SAME ROUTINE THAT HAS BEEN GOING ON WITH ALL OF THESE GAMBLING RACKET RIOTS.
Here is the update on the gambling racket parade today, Friday, 10/31/14, brought to us not by the police BUT BY THE RULING CAPITALIST CLASS WHO BENEFITS FROM THE PROFITS FROM THESE GAMBLING RACKETS AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE. The 1 million screaming idiot fans, including but not limited to all the F students who did not bother to go to school, were still out in full force on Market Street in full gambling racket regalia until 1:45 p.m. since this City apparently could not get this garbage off the street in 1 hour, from 12 noon to 1 p.m. THEN THE TAXPAYERS HAD TO PAY FOR THE CLEANUP, as well as all the traffic police. The cleanup finally ended around 4; BUSES ON MARKET STREET FINALLY APPEARED AT 4:30 P.M. today, A WORK DAY AND A PAYDAY FOR MANY OF US. Market Street, the main parade street WHICH SHOULD NEVER SEE A PARADE ON A WEEKDAY, had all of the main buses that travel on it diverted ALL MORNING AND THE AFTERNOON UNTIL 4:30 P.M., making transportation to work, medical appointments and school difficult for thousands of workers and their children.
This writer is a native San Franciscan from a socialist family and finds these contrived analyses nauseating. The above article is an INSULT TO THE WORKINGCLASS. We are not drunken hoodlums, rioters, idiots who attack buses, engage in shooting and stabbing. We are hard-working students and workers, and proud of the education and job skills we have achieved. THE ABOVE ARTICLE MUST BE RETRACTED AS IT IS AN INSULT TO MY HOMETOWN OF SAN FRANCISCO AND MY CLASS, THE WORKINGCLASS.
Second, San Francisco has had a housing crisis and a police brutality crisis for as long as anyone can remember, and this writer remembers back to the days of Mayor George Christopher, circa 1960. These problems are caused by the profit motive of capitalism, and are not solved by engaging in fights with the armed thugs of the capitalist class, the police. They are solved by labor organizing. On an immediate level, you can vote Yes on Prop G on the November 4 ballot, for that is how we defend rent control, along with labor organizing.
Third, San Francisco is two-thirds tenant, only some of whom live in the Mission District. Yet the rest of the city did not experience this drunken hoodlum terrorism that we witness with EVERY SINGLE GAMBLING RACKET PARTY, using the gambling racket "sport" as a pretext. This writer easily remembers the 5 "football" riots of 1982, 1985, 1989, 1990 and 1995 as well as the 3 "baseball" riots of 2010, 2012 and 2014 ALL OF WHICH GAMBLING RACKETS WERE FIXED VICTORIES. And further, to call the garbage baseball a World Series, when all they have competing are American gladiators, is really ridiculous. This writer can also easily remember when there was no such thing as a Super Bowl for the football garbage; this all came as the TV became the focus of miseducation of this backward country that still has no socialized medicine and still has the death penalty because we have no labor movement.
Fourth, attacking our taxpayer funded buses, overwhelmingly used by the workingclass, immediately puts ALL WOMEN'S LIVES IN JEOPARDY who work or go to school at night and had no buses and could not afford a cab, if they could find one. No where in the above article did we see any concern for women.
Fifth, ALL OF THE FIRES SET BY THESE DRUNKEN HOODLUMS ENDANGERED ALL OUR LIVES as San Francisco is overwhelmingly made of wood-frame buildings. That is especially true of the Mission District.
Sixth, THE ABOVE ARTICLE REEKS OF CONTEMPT FOR THE WORKINGCLASS, as those of us who are lifelong members of the workingclass, the 80% of Americans who sell our labor for less than $80,000 a year, are not all drunken hoodlums engaging in fights with the police, destroying our buses, setting fires, shooting and stabbing people, driving round and round the City, honking horns all night long, and generally exhibiting anti-social behavior. Most of us from the workingclass did out best to be "A" students so we could live a better life. The people who engage in these anti-social activities have total contempt for education. We know that because we only have to look who saves our lives at hospitals; provides education to us; drives and repairs our buses; and does all the other work that makes for a functioning society. The rioters do not have the education to provide for a functioning society.
Seventh: From the horrifying description in the above article, it is very clear that ABSOLUTELY NO CHANGE FOR THE WORKINGCLASS will come from the drunken hoodlum riot with the pretext of the gambling racket victory. All of the businesses can easily sustain whatever damage was done to them; they are all insured. What we witnessed and heard all night long is part of the EXACT SAME ROUTINE THAT HAS BEEN GOING ON WITH ALL OF THESE GAMBLING RACKET RIOTS.
Here is the update on the gambling racket parade today, Friday, 10/31/14, brought to us not by the police BUT BY THE RULING CAPITALIST CLASS WHO BENEFITS FROM THE PROFITS FROM THESE GAMBLING RACKETS AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE. The 1 million screaming idiot fans, including but not limited to all the F students who did not bother to go to school, were still out in full force on Market Street in full gambling racket regalia until 1:45 p.m. since this City apparently could not get this garbage off the street in 1 hour, from 12 noon to 1 p.m. THEN THE TAXPAYERS HAD TO PAY FOR THE CLEANUP, as well as all the traffic police. The cleanup finally ended around 4; BUSES ON MARKET STREET FINALLY APPEARED AT 4:30 P.M. today, A WORK DAY AND A PAYDAY FOR MANY OF US. Market Street, the main parade street WHICH SHOULD NEVER SEE A PARADE ON A WEEKDAY, had all of the main buses that travel on it diverted ALL MORNING AND THE AFTERNOON UNTIL 4:30 P.M., making transportation to work, medical appointments and school difficult for thousands of workers and their children.
This writer is a native San Franciscan from a socialist family and finds these contrived analyses nauseating. The above article is an INSULT TO THE WORKINGCLASS. We are not drunken hoodlums, rioters, idiots who attack buses, engage in shooting and stabbing. We are hard-working students and workers, and proud of the education and job skills we have achieved. THE ABOVE ARTICLE MUST BE RETRACTED AS IT IS AN INSULT TO MY HOMETOWN OF SAN FRANCISCO AND MY CLASS, THE WORKINGCLASS.
SF Tenant, your ALL CAPS SCREAMING does not make your case stronger, just more annoying. most people will see that and avert their eyes.
you conflate too many things to address here, but some of the most striking are conflations of the two shootings, the stabbing, and everyone that was protesting and/or celebrating in the streets, as well as the hoo-rah parade. all of these are very different things. your bridge-too-far correlations between a burning bus or two and putting ALL WOMEN'S lives in danger don't help.
take a deep breath, then put some of that energy of yours toward FIGHTING THE CAPITALIST CLASS. use that supposed wonderful education of yours to STOP THE ONGOING AND LONG-TERM GENTRIFICATION AND POLICE BRUTALITY so people don't have to be so mad that they'd attack a real estate developer's building or police cars.
in short, lighten up, Francis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OnpkDWbeJs
you conflate too many things to address here, but some of the most striking are conflations of the two shootings, the stabbing, and everyone that was protesting and/or celebrating in the streets, as well as the hoo-rah parade. all of these are very different things. your bridge-too-far correlations between a burning bus or two and putting ALL WOMEN'S lives in danger don't help.
take a deep breath, then put some of that energy of yours toward FIGHTING THE CAPITALIST CLASS. use that supposed wonderful education of yours to STOP THE ONGOING AND LONG-TERM GENTRIFICATION AND POLICE BRUTALITY so people don't have to be so mad that they'd attack a real estate developer's building or police cars.
in short, lighten up, Francis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OnpkDWbeJs
Any and all attacks on our buses are by definition the work of agent provocateurs. We now have two reactionary idiots, the author of the original article, and one comment, telling us that they approve of attacks on buses. The only 2 goals you achieve by attacking our buses are to deny us our bus service and to cost the taxpayers money to replace our urgently needed buses. The above original article is an admission in writing that this destruction of our buses was a concerted effort. This can only be the work of agent provocateurs.
"An agent provocateur (French for 'inciting agent') is an undercover agent who acts to entice another person to commit an illegal or rash act or falsely implicate them in partaking in an illegal act. An agent provocateur may be acting out of own sense of nationalism/duty or may be employed by the police or other entity to discredit or harm another group (e.g., peaceful protest or demonstration) by provoking them to commit a crime - thus, undermining the protest or demonstration as whole."
Clearly, when defining who is and who isn't an agent provocateur there is a social behavior component. Is the provocateur *inciting* others, *provoking* them at the scene of a demonstration? Also, importantly, is that provocateur an agent of the state?
Francis here seems to think that because someone damages something he/she likes, such as a city bus, that that act of property damage in and of itself is evidence of provocateur behavior. Sorry, Francis, but it's not. A provocateur is defined in a social context, not just because they do something you don't like. Furthermore, an agent provocateur is defined as per their involvement with the state and, being that the agent is operating in an undercover capacity, that's usually much harder to prove conclusively.
Your certainty about anyone being an agent provocateur, without providing any evidence that fits the definition whatsoever, makes you look like a crank.
Again, Francis, lighten up.
Clearly, when defining who is and who isn't an agent provocateur there is a social behavior component. Is the provocateur *inciting* others, *provoking* them at the scene of a demonstration? Also, importantly, is that provocateur an agent of the state?
Francis here seems to think that because someone damages something he/she likes, such as a city bus, that that act of property damage in and of itself is evidence of provocateur behavior. Sorry, Francis, but it's not. A provocateur is defined in a social context, not just because they do something you don't like. Furthermore, an agent provocateur is defined as per their involvement with the state and, being that the agent is operating in an undercover capacity, that's usually much harder to prove conclusively.
Your certainty about anyone being an agent provocateur, without providing any evidence that fits the definition whatsoever, makes you look like a crank.
Again, Francis, lighten up.
The space called Station 40 is billed by the people involved with it as an "anti-capitalist social center." It is located on 16th Street at Mission, a figurative and literal stone throw from the most obvious public face of Mission District gentrification -- the bourgie restaurants and boutiques of Valencia Street. The "crew" at S40 have held numerous anti-authoritarian subcultural identity events there over a multiple year long period -- and none that I know of that in any way invited local working people into their space, and no willingness to hold or host any event relevant to the negative class transformation of the Mission District in particular and the Bay Area in general. This is over a four-year long period of time.
The relationship of this subcultural club house to the actually existing social reality outside their front door is a passively parasitic one. No doubt when their landlord gets around to evicting them they will holler about what an asset to the neighborhood they've been, and this will be an opportunity for more self-aggrandizing posturing and strictly on her blog resistance to the inequities of capitalism from Cindy Milstein.
The relationship of this subcultural club house to the actually existing social reality outside their front door is a passively parasitic one. No doubt when their landlord gets around to evicting them they will holler about what an asset to the neighborhood they've been, and this will be an opportunity for more self-aggrandizing posturing and strictly on her blog resistance to the inequities of capitalism from Cindy Milstein.
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