Anarchists, Cops, and The San Francisco Identity
In today’s Chron, columnist Cinamon Stillwell’s piece looks at the recent Mission mob attack of an SFPD officer that resulted in his fractured skull and a fresh round of cop criticism.
Still traces the history of groups like Anarchist Action in San Francisco and the special challenges facing law enforcement in the nation’s most intolerably intolerant tolerant city (she’s to be commended for her use of links as well):
So what accounts for this apparent inability to enforce the law? In a city whose politics are distinctly anti-authoritarian, the decks are stacked against the police department. When police officers do take strong yet legal measures to curb demonstrators who break the law, they are almost always censured for it. The Office of Citizen Complaints, while addressing some valid concerns, seems never to have met a complaint against the SFPD it didn’t like. The legions of liberal lawyers and community volunteers from the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild who are conveniently on hand during such occurrences add to the “gotcha” atmosphere. In fact, the NLG had such “legal observers” on hand the night of the anarchist march and were quick to offer those arrested help in finding a lawyer. The local activist Web site IndyBay.org, in its version of the night’s events, even provides the NLG phone number for any witnesses or suspects.
So what do you think about the intersection of activism, authority, and accountability in San Francisco? Anyone attend the march? I believe I ran through its staging area the morning of the event while on a marathon training run and remember being glad I’d be away from the neighborhood as fast as my little legs could carry me (runners and protests don’t mix). Who was there? Who’s read read good coverage? Bad coverage? What should the city, police, and responsible activists do?
Update: And speaking of community outrage, in a related-yet-indirectly post over at sister site Blogging.la, Sean Bonner links to some powerful bloggage on recent violence in LA and the willingness of citizens to rally against the cops, but not to “be more vocal in our condemnation of the person who would shoot a gun on a busy street.”
Related posts:
It bears noting that Stillwell leans quite consistently to the right and I personally think this should be taken into account when reading just about anything she writes.
Or says, such as was the case when she appeared on a Forum show about military recruiting practices, absurdly professing that she would be shocked to find out that military recruiters routinely mislead potential recruits.
It’s true that Stillwell is the paper’s “conservative” columnist (ie: token Reep/Reep-like-object), but regardless of her opinion as expressed or implied in the article, the general topic is worth musing. You can use her piece as a jumping off point for discussion why either a)Anarchists are mucky hoodlums who deserve to be arrested and whose expulsion from the city would benefit us all; b) SFPD and all cops routinely abuse protestors and average citizens expressing themselves and exercising their rights; c) Both sides are bad and should just move along; d) whatever, insert own thoughts - I’m just tossing stuff out for your consideration . . . .
The subject is worth discussing, regardless of the author’s partisan leanings. I don’t think this is a case of her making an issue where there is none.
I didn’t mean to cast doubt on the validity of the issue or even the column that was linked…just think it’s worth keeping her general leaning in one’s mind when one is reading her assertions as to how SF’s political culture creates an “inability to enforce the law”.
From what I’ve seen, the mainstream of “a city that prides itself on being a center of left-wing politics” sees the rioting anarchists as a bunch of counter-productive idiots.
I’m with Chester. Over the past decade or so, the “black bloc” or so-called “anarchist” crowd has pretty much ruined every protest, effectively giving ammo to their enemies and turning public opinion against whatever cause the protest was attempting to address.
Additionally, because this particular radical subculture is so focused on destruction, the cops pay extra attention to them, so they pay extra attention to the cops. So the protest becomes *about* the police, not the cause.
That Cinnamon Stillwell is the closest the Chron comes to having a token Right wing kook columnist doesn’t offend me. What bothers me is how ignorant she is about the various groups and subgroups of the “protesting class.” Perhaps she also needs a crash course in boolean-type logic.
The Black bloc type only appeared around the time of the Seattle WTO protests in 99. They consider themselves Anarchists. The protesting class can be generally divided into 3 major political affiliations: the liberals (who made up the largest numbers to the anti-war protests a few years back), the Socialist/Communists (they tend to have signs with clenched fists) and the anarchists, of which the Black Bloc type are only one faction, and a number of other self-described anarchists find themselves at odds over Black Bloc tactics.
To reduce anarchists to the Black bloc and imply that all anarchists engage in violent behavior or thoughtless property destruction (there’s actually a bit of ethical judgment that goes into any decision to engage in “property crimes”) is akin to saying all African-Americans are violent criminals.