Thousands of anti-war protesters poured into San Francisco on Thursday, fulfilling their promise to disrupt life in the city as they occupied intersections, blocked buildings and tried to shut down the Bay Bridge in protests that occasionally turned violent.
Sirens wailed throughout downtown and helicopters whirred overhead most of the day as police in riot gear hustled to keep up with bands of demonstrators. Often they were unsuccessful, as small groups of protesters scurried into place in intersections or dodged around corners to elude police.
At least 1,025 people were arrested by early evening. Demonstrators said there would be several days of civil disobedience to come as they protest the U.S. war in Iraq.
"This is a total shutdown,'' said Benna CQ Kollinsky, part of a group of protesters who held the intersection of Montgomery and Clay streets for more than two hours. "I thought we'd be lucky to close it down for an hour. We've run this block all morning.''
Twice on Thursday night, protesters tried to take over the Bay Bridge. Police and highway patrol officers thwarted the effort, but the crowd managed to snarl traffic.
The strongest attempt came shortly after 6 p.m. when hundreds of protesters marched up Essex Street toward three bridge on-ramps. Some blocked intersections while others made a run for the bridge.
They were quickly apprehended by about 100 officers.
"We tried all three ramps,'' said a young male protester who was arrested. "But nobody got anywhere near the bridge.''
Traffic on and off the ramps was halted until the protesters marched off. Dozens of officers remained stationed at the ramps to turn back further attempts to take the bridge.
A smaller group tried again around 7 p.m.
At the Transbay Terminal, police used tear gas to break up a crowd that was storming the Fremont Street off-ramp of the Bay Bridge.
With the fluid nature of the demonstrations, estimates on the total number of participants were hard to come by.
"We don't really know how many people are out there or where they're going next,'' Ladan Sobhani, an organizer with Direct Action Against the War, said shortly before noon. "People make that decision on their own.''
Although the protesters were largely well-behaved, splinter groups shattered windows, heaved rocks and bottles at police and left graffiti in their wake.
Some protesters were clearly prepared for violence. Sheriff Michael Hennessey said some protesters had fired bolts from slingshots, and others had slashed the tires of squad cars. One protester tried to take an officer's handgun, he said.
The demonstrations were the largest in San Francisco since the 1991 Gulf War and were marked by a sense of anger unseen at peace rallies earlier this year.
The demonstrations were centered in the Financial District, Civic Center and Mission District. Protesters shut down Market Street and many surrounding intersections and streets while marching through the city.
It left drivers fuming in traffic and the Municipal Railway scrambling to reroute buses. Cable cars and the historic F-line trolleys were shut down, and buses were wildly off-course all day. The 38-Geary and 7-Haight, for example, were seen on Mission Street throughout the day.
"We don't want to alienate people. I hope people realize that political murder merits action that inconveniences them,'' said Quinn Miller, 32.
His hope went unanswered among some of the people who were late to work or unable to maneuver through downtown.
"You suck,'' yelled Larry Chu, stuck in his car outside the Transamerica Pyramid. "Why don't you all go to North Korea and do this?''
Hot spots cropped up all over the Civic Center and downtown through the day. One of the hottest was Seventh and Mission streets, where scores of baton-wielding police surrounded some 200 demonstrators in a tense standoff that lasted about two hours.
Police corraled the protesters, refusing to let them pass and, witnesses said, hit many of them with their batons. At least one person escaped after breaking a window in the federal courthouse and climbing into the building.
One of those arrested was Wendy Norris, a graduate student in museum studies. "I was just here observing, and the police told me to go this way, so I did,'' she said. "But there was another line of police, so I couldn't go anywhere.''
Protesters also gathered by the hundreds outside the Federal Building on Golden Gate Avenue and around Union Square, where dozens of police struggled to push back the advancing demonstrators.
Mayor Willie Brown said in no uncertain terms that, although he opposes the war, he had no patience for the demonstrators.
"I must express my frustration at the tactics of some protesters, who have chosen to specifically try to disrupt this city, rather than gather peacefully to voice their desire for peace, at the expense of the day-to-day lives of ordinary San Franciscans … and at great cost to the city,'' he said in a statement.
The tide of anti-war sentiment also was met by counterdemonstrations, most comprising no more than a handful of people, defending the Bush administration and U.S. soldiers.
"Now, at a time of war, these people out here protesting are behaving like traitors,'' said Russian immigrant Alexander Gosen. He spent the morning at Franklin and Fell streets waving a sign reading "Viva Bush'' on one side and "Go to hell, peaceniks'' on the other. "They should all be arrested. They don't know what it's like to live under a tyrant.''
The civil disobedience started at dawn and kicked into high gear around 7 a.m. as groups of protesters fanned out en masse to locations chosen in recent weeks in a well-planned campaign to shut down the city.
"It's going to be a long day,'' grumbled a California Highway Patrol officer at a roadblock protesters erected on the Eighth Street exit of Highway 101.
Indeed it was. Nearly all the Police Department's 2,300 officers were on the clock Wednesday, joined by scores of CHP troopers.
"We're going to keep the city streets open,'' Assistant Police Chief Alex Fagan Sr. said early in the day.
That proved to be wishful thinking. Although police braced for the worst, they found themselves scrambling to keep up with the wide-ranging demonstrations.
By shortly after 7 a.m., protesters had flooded intersections throughout downtown, tying up traffic as they sat, arms linked, in the street as horns blared and fists waved around them.
At some spots, firefighters had to assist police by using bolt cutters to separate protesters who had locked their arms together in metal sleeves.
The process went slowly. At Montgomery and Clay streets, about 15 demonstrators linked arms through lengths of 3-foot-long plastic tubing … requiring four dozen police in riot gear to carefully and gingerly saw them apart. The whole procedure took more than an hour.
"I'm definitely anti-war, but at the same time, we're trying to live our lives here,'' fumed Mark Thedis as he spent 30 minutes in his idling Range Rover in an alleyway off Folsom Street. "If they're trying to get people on their side, it's not working.''
A few blocks away, protesters strung police tape and rainbow-colored yarn across Fifth and Mission streets, blocking the intersection for about an hour.
"My brother is on his way to Kuwait next week. He's in the Army,'' said Lea, a 34-year-old protester who declined to give her last name. "He doesn't support this war. No one in our family supports this war. I just want my brother to come home.''
The ranks of protesters swelled as the day wore on. A boisterous crowd of about 500 marched down Mission Street shortly after 11 a.m., chanting, cheering and dragging news racks and other obstacles into the street. A masked demonstrator armed with spray paint marked bus shelters with slogans such as "The war stops here and so do you.''
At about the same time, dozens of CHP officers lined Fremont and Howard streets to turn back a throng of 400 demonstrators that tried to shut down the Bay Bridge.
The demonstrators, united in their cause, were varied in their tactics. A band calling itself "Pukers for Peace'' vomited on the steps of the Federal Building. The "Crafty Bitches, Knitting for Peace,'' knitted at Fourth and Market streets. Down the street a bit, a lone trumpeter performed a solemn rendition of "We Shall Overcome.'' on his trumpet. At First and Market streets, a handful of women did yoga -- earning them some sexually suggestive comments from passers-by.
Many protesters were confrontational. Some were violent. All were boisterous as they waved signs, chanted slogans and sang songs.
Brad Kelly, a tourist visiting from Phoenix with his wife and three children, watched the protests from Chinatown.
"This is a great education for our kids,'' he said as he explained the protests to his 9-year-old son, Brandon. "It's like we're watching the news as it happens. There's nothing like this in Phoenix.''
Brandon wasn't impressed. This story was reported by Chronicle staff writers Nanette Asimov, Michael Cabanatuan, Bob Egelko, Kevin Fagan, Joe Garofoli, Rachel Gordon, Julian Guthrie, Anastasia Hendrix, Henry K. Lee, Ilene Lelchuk, Steve Rubenstein, Katherine Kathleen Seligman, Katherine Kathleen Sullivan, Jaxon Vanderbeken and Jim Herron Zamora. It was written by staff writer Chuck Squatriglia. Chronicle Wire Services contributed to this story.
Thousands take to the
streets in protest as war begins
John Vidal, Anne Perkins,
Gerard Seenan and Martin Wainwright
Friday March 21, 2003
The Guardian
Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters filled streets and squares, blocked
roads, walked out of schools and universities and temporarily stopped work
yesterday.
Trade unionists, students, hospital staff, civil servants and students joined hundreds of noisy, spontaneous demonstrations across the country. A crowd of more than 5,000 gathered in Parliament Square, London, festooning statues with posters and stringing up a "Stop the War" banner in Whitehall.
Police cordoned off the area immediately in front of Westminster, but demonstrators blocked streets around parliament. Whistles, drums, megaphones and chants penetrated the soundproofing of MPs' offices overlooking the area.
Police drew their truncheons to turn back a crowd of demonstrators who tried to force their way into Whitehall. Officers were pelted with bottles and sticks torn away from banners.
Amnesty International organised a peace vigil in the square yesterday evening, during which the mainly young demonstrators listened to speeches from veterans of the anti-Vietnam war protests.
The Stop the War coalition, which had called for nationwide stoppages before tomorrow's demonstration in London, said last night that it had been besieged by reports of people taking personal and group action in every city and in dozens of small towns and workplaces.
"This is a day of shame for Britain," said the coalition's chairman, Andrew Murray. "The war is an outrage against world peace, the population of Iraq and law and democracy in Britain. Our country has been dragged into a ridiculous war."
Lecturers, students and children were at the front of many of yesterday's protests. Helen Salmon, an executive member of the National Union of Students, said: "We think that people from every university and college of further education in Britain joined the protests. There has been a huge turnout."
Children continued to defy their teachers for the second day running in mirror images of protests across Europe.
In Manchester, several thousand young people chanting "Not in Our Name" met in Albert Square and blocked several streets before moving to Oxford Road, where there was a scuffle with police.
Beth Coyne, 20, a student, said: "Today is the day we have to make a difference. They have declared war without our agreement. We want to make our voices heard."
Mat Sereech, a university lecturer, said he was "furious" with the government.
Leeds students chained themselves to motorway railings and at least 500 people walked out of Exeter University. All inner city London colleges and most schools reported walkouts. Many sixth-form colleges said that students had occupied canteens.
In Yorkshire, protests arranged by demonstrators communicating by email and websites caused rush-hour traffic jams. Traffic was backed up for three miles along the M621 approach route to Leeds.
Demonstrations also broke out across Wales. Up to 300 students from Newtown high school, Powys, protested after an exodus from the school, and in Swansea hundreds of pupils at Olchfa comprehensive staged classroom sit-ins after being stopped from joining a protest in the city centre.
Up to 100 council staff left their desks to join school students and other demonstrators disrupting rush hour traffic in Bradford and York. Drivers queueing along the Leeds Road approach to York were flanked by students from the Quaker Mount school, who held a silent protest supported by teachers.
In Scotland, Stirling University closed to allow staff and students to take part in a rally. Students and children also protested in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness and in the Shetland capital of Lerwick. West Dumbartonshire council gave its staff paid leave to attend rallies. Medical staff at Aberdeen Royal infirmary demonstrated and gave out anti-war leaflets to patients.
In Bristol, 500 people pro tested and more than 100 gathered at Sheffield town hall.
Unions also reported big numbers of people taking time off work. Civil servants, including some working in the offices of the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, and the environment secretary, Margaret Beckett, demonstrated during their lunch breaks.
Many tube, rail, post office and communication staff left their workplaces around the country to protest. In London, editors and staff of the British Medical Journal and BMA joined hundreds of RMT workers and civil servants in Tavistock Square, London. Most had been given time off.
Tony Blair's official spokesman last night said that the prime minister was aware of the protests. "He respects their right to protest. That has always been the case. But equally... he does believe that now is the time, with our armed forces involved in a conflict situation, to get behind them."
But the Labour MP George Galloway challenged the government: "We are not going away. We will protest every day. We will demonstrate until this war is stopped," he told the crowds in Parliament Square.