[Back to Starhawk's Home Page]
On Monday, November 18, at 7 AM, the Bay Area Anti-War Coalition held a
rally in downtown San Francisco, me grumbling all the while about the good
old days when we could just hold hands and sing "Give Peace a Chance" and
not be carting around drums, lockboxes, duct tape and the entire contents of
a modern art gallery at the crack of dawn, not to mention mounting what was
virtually a small para-military (but nonviolent) operation. combined with a
theatrical production on the street, just to register our opposition to the
war. Nonetheless, we arrived at our destination with a van full of hand
painted signs, including acrylic portraits of entire Iraqi families,
hand-painted scenes of devastation in Palestine, landscaped depicting the
other world that is possible, enlarged phptos of Iraqi women and children,
two large banners that said ‘No War in Iraq’ four giant bird puppets, one
Living River consisting of large panels of various shades of blue gauze
supported by light poles, with mylar fish suspended from them, and a bucket
full of fake blood made of cornstarch and red food coloring to make a River
of Blood. We met up with our fellow protestors who had among them numerous
drums, and a brass marching band.
We held a short rally, which mostly consisted of Marisa singing a haunting,
wailing song into a bullhorn, and then marched off, in the opposite
direction of our target, while several affinity groups got into position and
blocked the entrances to the building that houses Chevron. Some of them
linked arms and others inserted their arms into lockboxes: arge plastic
tubes with a metal rod inside tow which they could lock their wrists, so the
police would have to cut the tubes off, (and hopefully not the wrists!)
thereby prolonging the blockade.
We didn’t have huge numbers, and the rallyers were split between the front
doors and the back. The brass band played first at one entrance, then the
other. Carwill, one of the organizers, had written a ritual, for which
people holding the enlarged photos of Iraqis stood together in a circle,
holding the pictures up, while he read a moving liturgy about unblinding
ourselves to the reality of the human beings we were looking at and whose
lives are threatened by the war. The overall theme of the action was Rivers
of Blood transformed to Rivers of Life. I quickly made up a chant:
Open your eyes, open your eyes,
No rivers of blood,
We want rivers of life
Not, perhaps, the most brilliant, poetic chant ever, but sung to Standard
Pagan Chant Tune Number One, it worked fine.
At some point, Mary Bull, a local organizer of the Boycott the Gap campaign,
picked up the bucket of fake blood and dribbled it across the entry point to
the Chevron plaza, creating the River of Blood. Unfortunately, she was
right in front of the police who grabbed her and arrested her, rather
roughly.
We circled around for a long time, chanting, and then handing the microphone
over to various people to speak or chant or express themselves however they
liked. Police and workers tracked fake blood over the pavement every time
they crossed the line, leaving bloody footprints. Meanwhile, behind us we
could see our friends getting arrested. It took the police quite a while to
get the lockboxes off, but they eventually took everyone away. A security
guard came out and dumped a bag of sand over the blood, which struck me as
extremely symbolic given that in the first Gulf war US troops bulldozed
sand over thousands of bodies of Iraqi troops to hide the corpses. Some of
the troops were buried alive.
Then the rest of the rally joined us from the back of the building, and the
brass band and banners and drums led the way down Market Street, our main
central avenue. We were just a block away from the building that houses
Dianne Feinstein’s office. She is our Senator who voted for the war in Iraq
in spite of major opposition from her constituents. She is also a big
supporter of the Sharon government in Israel.
The Palestinian justice affinity group had run ahead, and by the time the
rally reached the building, they had succeeded in getting inside the lobby
and were blockading the elevators. We rallied in front of the building,
chanting "Hey, hey, Feinstein, We want justice in Palestine!" and classics
like, "Hey hey, ho ho, your oil war has got to go!"
One young man in the action had worn a business suit, and he’d gotten into
the lobby and was trying to get an appointment to go up and see Feinstein—or
her aide, and getting a lot of respectful help from the security guards who
didn’t realize he was a protestor until one of the cops recognized him from
the Chevron building, got mad, grabbed his tie and tried to choke him. They
soon had him down on the ground with five cops kneeling on him and
handcuffing him, while we watched through the glass walls shouting, "Shame!
Shame!"
Finally they took everyone away, and we closed with a spiral dance. Then
some of us went down to the jail to wait for people to be released.
Everyone except Mary Bull was released quickly, but Mary was charged with
two felonies: vandalism and intent to commit a crime, and held on $21,000
bail. We spent a good part of the afternoon trying to get her released,
unsuccessfully, and soon the District Attorney’s office was inundated with
calls urging him to drop the charges. Mary was held overnight naked in a
room padded with rubber, because they claimed she was a psychiatric risk. A
group of people spent the day at the courthouse, trying to raise bail money
and trying to contact lawyers. Finally late Tuesday evening she was
released without bail, on her personal promise to appear for court. We will
continue pressuring the DA to drop the charges, and are considering a class
action suit about the bad treatment in jail.
All in all, we considered the action a great success. In spite of small
numbers, we succeeded in disrupting a major oil company and linking the war
to oil and larger economic issues, and disrupting Feinstein’s office,
holding her accountable for her lack of responsiveness to the people she
supposedly represents. And we gave many new people their first experience
with nonviolent civil disobedience, and built trust and connections among
our coalition here in the Bay Area.
-- Starhawk
Copyright (c) 2002 by Starhawk. All rights reserved. This copyright protects Starhawk's right to publication of her work. Nonprofit, activist, and educational groups may circulate this essay (forward it, reprint it, translate it, post it, or reproduce it) for nonprofit uses. Please do not change any part of it without permission. Readers are invited to visit the web site: www.starhawk.org.