20,000 march against Bush in San Francisco
By Bill
Hackwell
San Francisco
"The one good thing about the selection of Bush to be
president by an appointed panel of judges is that it has
brought us all together here today in this spectacular
protest," exclaimed the Rev. Dorsey Blake as he opened the
counter-inaugural rally to an overflowing crowd of
demonstrators at San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza on Jan.
20.
Organized by the International Action Center, the march
and rallies here far exceeded expectations. Between 15,000
and 20,000 people converged in this opening salvo against the
new Bush administration and its right-wing agenda.
Most major news outlets reported 15,000 people attended.
And even spokespeople for the San Francisco Police
Department, notorious for under-representing progressive
demonstrations, said 10,000 to 15,000.
A wide range of people came from all over California. An
IAC-organized bus from Los Angeles brought a large contingent
of youths from the Orange County Gay Straight Alliance Youth
Drop-in Center and members of the Project 10 Safe Space for
Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans Youth of Cleveland High School in
San Fernando Valley.
Friends of the IAC in San Jose also brought a bus that was
subsidized by union donations. Car-pooling took place in
Sacramento, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, and in Mendocino and
Contra Costa Counties.
The first rally was in Civic Center Plaza, in the shadow
of city hall. There a number of speakers denounced Bush and
the reactionary pro-war cabinet he is assembling.
San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano welcomed the crowd.
San Francisco Central Labor Council Secretary-Treasurer
Walter Johnson addressed the rally. So did Willie Ratcliff,
editor of the Bay View Newspaper--an African American
newspaper in the Bay View Hunters Point district of San
Francisco. Other speakers included Joyce Miller from the Come
Into the Sun Coalition and spoken word artist Jime
Salcedo.
Cora Lee Simmons from the Round Valley Indians for Justice
told those gathered, "The first people are here to say that
this election is a shame. I'm here to stand with the African
American people of Florida whose votes were not counted. I'm
Native American and we know what it is like to not be
counted. I've been to a place called Cuba where every skin
color is treated the same."
Tahnee Stair, who had just gotten off a plane from the
fourth Iraq Sanctions Challenge of the IAC, told an approving
crowd, "We were in Iraq on the 10th anniversary of the Gulf
War. We saw first hand the effect of sanctions that have
killed 1.5 million Iraqi people, half of them children. The
people of Iraq are living with the legacy of depleted uranium
and 3,000 to 5,000 Iraqi children die a month.
"As George Bush Jr. takes office we must not let him and
his pro-war advisors think that they have a mandate to
continue sanctions and to start another war in Iraq."
At 1 p.m. the march stepped off from the Civic Center.
Protesters continued to pour in as the march wound its way
through the Western Addition district towards Jefferson
Square Park. It took the march 40 minutes to pass the point
where collection buckets were set up.
The front of the march was particularly militant and
visually powerful. Many banners raised issues and struggles,
including the racist disenfranchisement of the African
American vote, political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, the death
penalty and U.S. intervention in Colombia, Chiapas and
Cuba.
The multinational character of the march could be seen in
the wide range of contingents. Over 150 groups and
organizations endorsed the demonstration.
There were many labor unions marching under their banners,
including the Letter Carriers, Teachers, Carpenters, National
Writers Union, Postal Workers, Service Employees, and the
Plumbers, Steamfitters and Boilermakers.
Many women's organizations took part, including the
National Organization for Women.
But youths composed the largest part of the protest. Young
workers, college and high school students were there from
Berkeley, Oakland, Santa Barbara and San Jose. Youth
contingents included one from the Black Student Union of
College Park High School in Pleasant Hill. The young people
expressed their readiness to fight back against Bush.
Many people came with their young children in
strollers.
IAC organizer Nancy Mitchell noted, "It was not uncommon
in the week leading up to the demonstration for our office to
get calls from people saying that they were coming and that
this was the first time they had ever demonstrated against
anything."
'Fight racism and war!'
The main rally at Jefferson Square Park included a wide
range of speakers and performers.
Ted Frazier from the NAACP explained the lawsuit that his
organization and others have filed in Florida against the
racist election there. "We took two busloads of people from
San Francisco to Florida to protest the thousands of African
American and Haitian American votes that were silenced on
Nov. 7."
Frazier added: "There are rallies and marches taking place
today all over the country. There was a coalition in the
sixties that was successful and today is the beginning of a
new coalition. We are going to have to work together and
fight together to make sure that justice and fairness rule in
this nation."
Other speakers included Renee Salcedo, director of Centro
Legal de la Raza; San Francisco Supervisor Sophie Maxwell;
Carlos Padilla, Students for Justice in San Jose; Debra Glenn
Rogers, chair of the Reproductive Rights Task Force of NOW;
Nancy Charraga, San Francisco Zapatista Support Committee;
Pierre Laboissiere, Bay Area Haitian Amer ican Council;
Jackie Santos, Vieques Support Committee; and Kim Yee from
the Asian Left Network.
Gloria La Riva, speaking for Workers World Party, said,
"I'm proud to say that my name, along with Monica Moorehead's
name, was on that butterfly ballot in Florida. No one should
think that the 40 million people in this country who didn't
vote would've gone for Bush or Gore. That is why we began
organizing this demonstration back in September--because we
knew that it didn't matter who was elected. The struggle
would be the same and the main priority would still be the
struggle to free Mumia and to end the racist death
penalty."
Elias Rashmawi of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee said, "We are here to be with you to build the
bridge of social justice with all people. As Palestinians we
know only too well what it means to have democracy stolen and
to be exiled, like Leonard Peltier and Mumia are, in our own
homeland."
Alicia Jrapko of the IAC's U.S. Out of Colombia Committee
talked about Plan Colombia and the $1.3 billion the U.S.
recently gave the Colombian government to escalate the war
against liberation forces there. "The danger of a full scale
U.S. war in Colombia is imminent," she stressed.
"I have a 17-year-old son and I'm sure that many of you
have children that age too. We have to tell Bush we will not
allow our youths to go off to fight another Vietnam War in
Latin America to defend imperialist interests. The people of
Colombia are not our enemies," she said.
Performers at the rally included the Freedom Song Network
and spoken word artists Company of Prophets. Indigenous
musicians from Latin America performed with Native American
actor/singer and activist Floyd Westerman.
Westerman told the crowd, "As American Indians we have
always said that America has been bankrupt for leaders. That
the American leadership has the collective mental age of a
13-year-old and Bush Jr. is a perfect example. Because they
don't know how to treat the environment. If the leadership
had followed Indian ways we would not have this environmental
situation we are in now."
Westerman said Clinton could have done the right thing by
pardoning Native political prisoner Leonard Peltier but he
didn't have the strength to do it.
Co-chairs of the rallies were John Parker of the Los
Angeles IAC, the Rev. Dorsey Blake of the Church of
Fellowship of All Peoples, Chicano activist and KPFA radio
personality Miguel "Gavilan" Molina and Richard Becker, West
Coast coordinator of the IAC.
Becker summed up the activities: "We are here today to
just say no--right from the start. Gov. Death has gone to
Washington and along with him comes a cabinet filled with
lovers of the Confederacy, a team that wants to roll back
workers' rights, voting rights, women's rights, lesbian and
gay rights, disabled rights, immigrants' rights. In other
words, the rights of the people.
"But we say: We won't go back, send Bush back!"
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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