On the Open Salon site, Clio Tarazi, writing as “Stellaa,” wrote this morning about witnessing an incident on the town square in Healdsburg, a wine country town about 70 miles north of San Francisco on US 101, where every Thursday at 6 pm some residents of the town gather for an hour-long peace vigil. Last night, she writes, a group of out-of-towners, possibly people on a wine country tour, began yelling insults at the demonstrators — some ten townspeople — then crossed the street and began screaming in their faces.

The vigil holders stood up to them … pulled away a woman who was the most aggressive, and they walked away shaking their heads and fists. Their faces were contorted from anger.

The bullies had this look on their face of having done something virtuous — a gleeful, high-five, we-kicked-their-butts look. I had my phone, but did not think of taking pictures of the brutish expressions on their faces. I cussed at them as they walked by and glared at them. There were not enough people on the square to shame them.

There was something grotesque about them calling the man holding the “Hiroshima, Never Again” sign all kinds of vulgar names in the name of patriotism and America.

The writer goes on to wonder whether this confrontation was an outgrowth of the protests against health care reform orchestrated by business interests and lobbying groups.

It will be interesting to see what happens during next week’s peace demonstration in Healdsburg.

The California governor’s race is the subject of an upcoming article in the NYT Magazine, listing San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom as “among the colorful candidates.”

Master of the Universe

Here are some of the things I learned:

• Obama and his administration are pawns of the international banking conspiracy, and it’s all led by former Jimmy Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and the many “secret societies” from the Trilateral Commission to the Bohemian Grove.
• The reason Ron Paul supporters also have UFO conspiracy DVDs at their booth is because if the government let us know about and learn alien technology, it could go a long way toward solving our country’s energy problems.
• No plane actually struck the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001; the damage was the result of planted explosives. This was vouchsafed to me by an extremely energetic and dedicated young man who was giving his DVDs away for free. He had a very elaborate set of xeroxed photographs with the “real” flight path of the airliner, a professionally-produced series of animated graphics which showed the difference between the fake flight path and the real one, and so on.
• If you experience sudden headaches or body heating as you walk down the street, this is called “electronic harassment” and is the work of the NSA, which can read your driver’s license from space.

This last was given to me by a very sane-appearing man, who said it in the same tones you might use to explain how Twitter works for someone who’s never used it. Everyone was very nice, and very talkative. All I had to do was say to someone, “You seem to have a lot of literature here,” and they’d talk for five minutes without taking a breath.

The best moment was during a presentation by one Webster Tarpley, an animated gent who made a presentation on the conspiracy between Obama and the bankers. At one point he showed pictures of the heads of Citigroup, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs. When no one in the audience could identify all three, he began ranting, “These are the people who rule the world! Never mind the politicians, these are the real rulers! Maybe if you put down your UFO book and paid attention we’d be better off!”

ConspiracyCon continues today at the Santa Clara Marriott.

Here are some blog accounts of people who got arrested at yesterday’s Prop 8 protests in San Francisco:
- Will Scott
- David Nahmod
- David somebody.

The Public Press has a straightforward account here (Thanks, Darren). Also, here’s an account from San Diego of a sit-in at the county clerk’s office. Arrests were threatened but everybody decided to leave quietly instead.

If you blogged about getting arrested or being at the demonstrations in San Francisco, email me at prop8protests at yahoo.com and I’ll add a link to your entry.

The website Yelp earlier today sent out email to San Francisco members with the headline Put the Fun Between Your Legs:

Provocative, yes — too much so for the sponsor, San Francisco Women Against Rape. A few hours later, Yelp sent out this corrected version:

Nevertheless, even the corrected email is full of references to cute boys and double entendres like “Rachel L likes to strap hers on knowing “there isn’t another person out there” with the exact same one” — messenger bags, that is. Well, if the email didn’t get attention the first time, it is now.

In a 6-1 decision announced at 10:00 a.m. today, the California Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8, a ballot initiative passed in November that outlawed same-sex marriage in the state. Here is the opinion (PDF file). Marriages performed before Nov. 4, 2008 are still valid, the court ruled.

• Day of Decision photo pool on Flickr.
• Salon’s Katharine Mieszkowski reports from Civic Center.
• 3:00 pm: The mid-day protests are now over; SFist has a list of tonight’s protest locations in SF.
• Live blog of arrests on Van Ness Ave.: SFAppeal
• Twitter hash tags being used are #rejectprop8 and #noprop8. Best tweet so far: “First Adam Lambert doesn’t win American Idol, now this?! Fuckin’ breeders..”
• SF Chronicle staff are twittering the scene on the street, publishing the stream on SFGate.
• The SF Chronicle posts the first substantial story on the ruling.
• The Day of Decision website has a list of over 100 demonstrations planned in cities across the nation, from Anchorage to Atlanta.

The California State Supreme Court tomorrow will issue its decision on the constitutionality of the state law banning gay marriage, which was enacted by the voters as Proposition 8 in November. Some local activists are meeting tonight to plan civil disobedience after the announcement if the decision upholds the law, and another group announced plans to march no matter what the outcome.

The court convenes at 10:00 a.m. and the decision should be known shorter thereafter.

Drivers should avoid the downtown area between Van Ness Ave. and Second St., covering Civic Center and the retail center, where large demonstrations are expected.

In a bit of good news for filmmakers trying to shoot projects in San Francisco, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors today approved a major change to the rebate structure so that film projects can get up to $600,000 in tax rebates as opposed to the $100,000 maximum previously allowed (which Milk received). These sums represent taxes and fees that City Hall is forgoing. Here’s an article on Examiner.com that explains why this is a good idea despite the budget shortfall. The short version is that city rebates encourage filmmakers and TV producers to bring their productions to San Francisco, which stimulates the local economy. City Hall’s own Office of the Budget Analyst estimates that Milk — a $22 million production constrained to shoot on location for obvious reasons — brought $4.8 million in business to San Francisco.

The recent vote by the New Hampshire legislature to legalize gay marriage in the state was ““an attempt by liberal Democrats to impose what he calls their San Francisco agenda on the state of New Hampshire.”

Next, we make their official state meal the burrito.

Meanwhile, here’s another out-of-stater’s take on visiting San Francisco. My favorite sentence:

For a foggy interlude visit Ocean Beach and stroll the wide sands or trace the outlines of the ruined remnants of the Sutro Baths, an old pleasure ground.

Heh! Yes, and sometimes a new one, too.

An anti-war march with at least a couple thousand diverse participants ventured up Market St this afternoon. The organizers were mostly focused on the sixth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, but the marchers expressed a wide variety of dissatisfaction with numerous foreign & domestic policy issues. The contingent was loud, but peaceful, if not festive at times, replete with marching band and numerous chants bandied about the slow moving crowd that stretched for a couple full blocks.

the ongoing War the US started in Iraq some six years ago was the main impetus for the demonstration.

Unlike recent splintered demonstrations in Oakland, a fairly large contingent of dozens of overtime collecting SFPD officers on foot and motorcycles seemed prepared to quell any possible property damage or disturbances from the bandana’d few who tend to ignite trash cans and engage in the more annoying and disruptive behaviors.

The march assembled near Justin Herman Plaza circa 11am and ended with a rally at Civic Center Plaza at about 1:30 , where a contingent of pro-Palestinian marchers were met with pro-Israeli occupation demonstrators stationed in front of City Hall.

Other marches took place concurrently in locations such as the Pentagon just outside of Washington DC, and in LA, while another protest is scheduled for tommorrow in Fresno.

Bringing up the rear, just behind the infamous Bay Area Women in Black, was this masked lone wolf demonstrator.

Thou Shall Not Kill My Hope