San Francisco Rides Against the G8

From a member of Bay Rising Affinity Group

Painted yellow flags flapping in the evening sun read "V8, not G8," "No G8, No Climate Change," "Climate Justice," "Rising Tide," "Bay Rising; Not Capitalism, Not Rising Bay," and Flood the Streets Before the Ocean Does." The resurgent European global justice and anti-capitalist movements successfull battle with the G8 were being celebrated in San Francisco along with other cities across the planet.

Towards a hundred bicyclist participated through the evening's solidarity anti-G8 and anti-climate change ride in a winding ride through the street and neighborhoods of San Francisco. Rising Tide, a radical international anti-climate change network, had called for a day of action, and cites around the US and the planet responded.

The local Bay Rising Affinity Group call read in part:
"Use pedal power to challenge oil addiction, to show solidarity with anti-G8 mass mobilizations in Germany and resist the polluting economic and political system of the G8. This global system is at the root of our ecological and social problems; climate chaos, lack of heath care, housing and education, war and empire, more prisons, the rich getting richer, low wages and lousy jobs, pollution, and attacks on immigrant, worker and civil rights. As the megalomaniac G8 leaders meet in police-state Germany, behind fences, cops and soldiers, intent on leading us further towards catastrophic and irreversible climate chaos, we must shout, scream and roar 'no more'."

Occasional chants of "fight warming, not wars," Fuck the G8" and "we all live in a police state" to the tune of the Beatles "yellow submarine" as a heavy presence of police in cars, on bikes and on motorcycles, Highway Patrol and Sheriffs following the ride, harassing a few band a motorcade of block away for much of the ride. People ignored their provocations as the mobile pedal powered festival snaked through the city. Neighbors and tourists stopped watched, took photos or waved.
Leaflets were passed out. City busses honked support. We ended the ride with a bike drawn soundsystem at at Dolores Park, the heart of the city and across the street from the house where Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman contributed to "The Blast" newspaper on the verge of the worldwide revolutions of the early 1900's.

At the beginning of the ride Bay Area anti-capitalist activists calling from Germany described the mass blockades of all roads leading to the G8 with ten of thousands with bikes playing a key role. Their short sentences over a cell phone were repeated, yelled out to the assembled bike mass.

A widely circulated letter from the same activist reported on the massive G8 blockades:
Because today's planned march to the fence had been banned, blockading
the gates had been taken up again. Five hundred campers stayed at Gate
1 last night and 1200 at Gate 2. In the early morning hours,
thousands returned to the gates from the nearby camps. It's a two-hour
walk in the hot sun with limited water supplies.

We head over to Gate I on the west side of the fence surrounding Bad
Heiligendamm. Again, we bike over gentle hills, passing through wheat
fields and by farmhouses with thatched or red-orange brick tile roofs.
The towns en route - Reddelich and Steffenshagen – are home to 300
residents each. The entire way there consists of narrow country roads,
often made of cobbled stones.

Arriving at the blockade, we see a young woman being pulled through
the police lines by three cops. She has just been pepper-sprayed and
is screaming in agony and cannot stand. The police drag her over to a
nearby tree, where two medics dowse her face with water and a few
photojournalists lean in for a close up. Three, no four, green water
cannons target the crowd with highly pressurized water that emits a
low mechanical hum as it is released from the turrets. In front of the
behemoth cannons, lines of cops. Methodically, the cannons and cops
push everyone back. Spray. Push. Pause. Spray. Push. Pause. Slowly,
the police retake the hill and the road leading to the gate, which
yesterday the blockaders had occupied.

Then comes a police announcement: "Gatherings of more than two are not
allowed in Zone 2. This is an order to disperse." Numbers begin to
dwindle seriously. Should we stay or should we go? To the left, among
a cluster of trees, two squads of heavily protected police await
orders. To the right, more cops and eight mounted police horses at the
edge of the meadow. It looks as though they're surrounding us.

Water cannons again douse the crowd. People run. They wind up in the
field shivering uncontrollably, their teeth chattering loudly.
Affinity groups organize as medics quickly arrive and provide blankets
for warmth. A man stumbles past with a terrible gash on his head. A
friend tends to him.

"The battle is lost. The battle is lost," says a hippy in a tie-dye
looking up the hill toward the towering vehicles. Streams of people
flow through the fields away from the fence.

The violence has been heavy at Gate 1. Yesterday, police attacked
blockaders with clubs and pepper spray. Today, it is with water
cannons. "It was less violent today than yesterday," says a young
German woman. A protest medic sums up the day's casualties: a broken
arm, one broken shin, many concussions and broken eardrums, and
someone who lost an eye.

But as hundreds retreat, the hardcore make barricades, some five feet
high and six feet long, of logs and brush along the road leading to
the gate. A small cadre of black-blockers and some militant clowns are
making a stand. Had the past two days emphasis on non-escalation
reached its conclusion, or was this a tactic meant only to delay the
advancing cops? Before a coherent picture can emerge, squads of cops
move in, re-take the road, and dismantle the barriers. We retreat
farther back.

As we walk our bikes, we come across the woman who had been
pepper-sprayed earlier. She's putting her shoes on over a pair of
mismatched socks. Her knee is heavily bandaged and her face is red
from the burning. As she hops up to join the line of blockaders taking
up a new position down the road, she says: "Its important to give
everything you can." Undoubtedly, she'll be back tomorrow, at the
gates, like the thousands of others heading returning to the camps to get some sleep, water, and food before coming back for another day of blockading.

Blockade Photos/Video:
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/06/372723.html
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/06/372740.html
 http://g8-tv.org/index.php?play_id=1729&clipId=1734