October 5th: Day of Mass Resistance!

Hundreds of Bay Area high school students walked out of class to demonstrate yesterday in downtown San Francisco.

Yesterday Angie, Debra and I all took the day off work to join the protest against the Bush Administration in a massive demonstration and march through downtown SF, organized by the national anti-Bush group The World Can't Wait - Drive out the Bush Regime. The protest here in San Francisco was one of over 200 protests nationwide, including all the major cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, and Washington D.C.; the anti-Bush message even stretched past the borders of the US with protests and rallies also held in Canada and Switzerland. The message behind this "Day of Mass Resistance" was clear: when hundreds of thousands of people make a small change in their lives by walking out of school and work to demonstrate their solidarity, a bigger change can happen.

The front page of today's Bay Area section in the San Francisco Chronicle is splashed with pictures of shouting demonstrators and the headline declares: "Protest No Washout Despite Rain: Marchers Call On Bush To Step Down." For the full article and more pictures click here. Lots of other news reports are starting to come in from the other protests around the country, I'm going to update this post with links as I find them.

The day started off rather dishearteningly when we woke up to gray skies and pouring rain, but after we got off the muni at the Embarcadero station, we were met by the sight of hundreds of people gathered at Justin Herman Square, quite determined to be there despite the sopping rain. The crowd was made up of people of all ages, backgrounds and nationalities, hip Bay Area intellectuals, artists and religious leaders, lots of hippies and 20-somethings, parents who had come with their young children, the elderly and retired including the self-proclaimed "Raging Grannies" group, ordinary workers, and an enormous amount of college, high school and even junior high school students from all over the Bay Area who had walked out of school to be there, some at the risk of disciplinary action. After a rousing finish to the rally with a "Youth Speak-Out" by students from different schools (the kids were practically flying with elation as they approached the podium one by one, nearly all of them concluding their words by screaming "FUCK BUSH!" into the microphone to wild applause and cheering) the crowd assembled at the end of Market Street and began to march up through the Financial district to the Civic Center Federal Plaza and all the way back again. We were bolstered by ordinary truck drivers and commuters going the other direction, honking their horns in support, people in the office buildings had draped posters of support from the windows or just cheered loudly, even the construction workers at the Ritz Carleton on Kearny and Market were whistling and clapping as we went by. The biggest showing of support came from the UC Hastings School of Law on McCallister; students, teachers, and administrators came outside or stood in the windows, clapping and waving.



The highlight of the march came just after we passed City Hall and the rain abruptly stopped; the organizers who were leading the chanting in both english and spanish through a massive loudspeaker on a truck at the very front of the line of marchers announced that we would pause in front of the Federal Building and really make some noise. We rounded the corner of McCallister and Polk, and the clouds which had stretched as far as the eye could see, mysteriously disappeared. As the line of marchers filling the street came to a stop in front of the Federal Building on Golden Gate Avenue, the sun was shining and the amount of noise we made was incredible, amplified by the towering buildings on either side of the street as everyone screamed, booed, whistled, shouted into bullhorns and banged on drums. We could see people inside the buildings standing in front of the windows looking down, and the roar of the crowd grew even louder. We continued down Golden Gate past the cheering supporters at Service Employees Union and all the way back to the Embarcadero. Angie, Debra, and I collapsed in our chairs at a nearby bagel shop, utterly spent and hoarse from cheering and chanting through the 3-mile march in alternate rain and heat, but proud of ourselves and the turnout for this historic event.


That's Angie and Debra holding those green signs at the back -- you can just barely make out Debra in the orange raincoat.