FRFI 172 April / May 2003
The Californian economy is the fifth largest in the world and many military contractors operate in the state. Some 900 companies in the San Francisco Bay area supply $4bn worth of supplies and equipment to the US Defence Department. In addition, the Department of Energy’s contracts with local organisations total $2.3bn for nuclear weapons labs. Additionally, huge sums are being disbursed by the new Department of Homeland Security. Much of the new high-technology equipment being used in Iraq has been developed here.
Protest against oppression and defence of democracy are also rooted in the area. There is a long history of labour militancy, revolutionary protest and gay rights activism. The San Francisco labour movement was, until the 1970s, fiercely militant, led by the longshoremen – the dockers. Berkeley was the birthplace of the student free speech movement in the 1960s and is still known as the People’s Republic of Berkeley, while the revolutionary Black Panther movement was born in neighbouring Oakland. The whole area strongly opposed the Vietnam war. For over 50 years, the area has given support to the gay rights movement, particularly in the 1970s with the assassination of Supervisor Harvey Milk by an off-duty cop. A natural development has been AIDS activism. In short, the Bay area is probably the most progressive and politically active area in the US.
It is therefore no surprise that downtown San Francisco, the heart of the city’s financial district which bankrolls Silicon Valley, was a virtual no-go area for motorists for three days between 20-22 March. During that time there were 2,150 arrests of protesters. The 2,200-strong city police force deployed 1,700 officers almost continuously in a desperate attempt to stop the protests. Local prisons overflowed and prisoners had to be shipped out to prisons and detention centres 50 miles away. Police reinforcements came from the California Highway Patrol, who tried to prevent protesters from blocking the strategic Bay Bridge, which connects San Francisco to Oakland.
On Thursday 20 March, the headquarters of the Chevron oil corporation and the Federal Building were a focus for protests. On Friday it was the turn of the headquarters of the Bechtel corporation, a company bidding for the contracts for rebuilding Iraq, as well as providing ‘anti-terrorist’ technology. A series of operations were conducted by protesters wearing road crew outfits who spread orange traffic cones, accident flares and diversion signals across key on-ramps before sprinting away. These snarled commute-hour traffic. Anti-war activities culminated on Saturday 22 March with a huge march and demonstration of about 100,000 people to a massive meeting in Civic Centre Plaza.
In addition to the San Francisco protests, spontaneous demonstrations of school students have taken place across the Bay Area, with students walking out of schools and marching through their cities. More formal protests such as demonstrations, vigils, pickets and church services have taken place in Berkeley, in Oakland, San Jose in the south of the bay, in Napa – the wine region – and Marin in the north of the Bay. These have included the families of service-men and women who oppose their sons and daughters being sent into an unjust war. The anti-war movement is gathering strength.
From our San Francisco correspondent
