— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
In my vast experience of standing on the sidelines and gawking at protests, I've noticed that there are generally three types of rallies: 1) winning the hearts and minds, 2) building awareness, and 3) catharsis and opportunism. The first type of protest is fairly obvious: most anti-war protests attempt to do this through speakers and music in public parks, although they generally miss the mark. Protests designed to build awareness generally use spectacle and absurdity to give the media something to talk about, as exemplified by the Arab Spring, the Mission's anti-gentrification protests of the late 90s, or various street art campaigns. Catharic protests exist merely to burn it all down when people feel like they have nothing left, and maybe get a new pair of shoes.
People somehow manage to convince themselves that protests are designed to win public support and forget about other potential objectives, which is why at first glance, #OpBART appeared to be a complete failure. No signage, no organized message, no speakers, no obvious rallying point, no clear objective, less than 100 people turned out, and the 5 idiots from Oakland that carry around a banner covered in Swastikas and anarchist circle-As hijacked a protest about free-speech, turned it into a protest against cops with guns, and began marching down Market Street roughly 30 minutes after the protest was scheduled to begin, fracturing any critical mass that could have been established. Then to top it off, they closed off the Ferry Building and access to BART to the majority of San Franciscans.
However, as the obviously irritable and impatient people such as Jason Permenter seem to miss, the goal wasn't to win over the hearts and minds of mid-Market coffee snobs and downtown accountants. That's not why websites were hacked, personal information leaked, and public transportation crippled. No, the fact of the matter is no one in this city would be talking about egregious violations of our right to assembly and free speech unless a few dozen sexless nerds in Teva sandals and Vibram toe shoes made it so Jason had to take the bus home for work. Admittedly a fate worse than death in San Francisco, but it's only one day.
(Also, deeply sorry to use a hashtag in the post title. This is truly a sad day.)
Comments (16)
I don’t know, Kev. If the goal of this whole thing was to get people “talking about egregious violations of our right to assembly and free speech,” that could have been achieved without disclosing people’s private information on the Internet without their consent. The people who had accounts on myBart.org certainly weren’t the problem, and fucking them over did nothing to enhance the conversation or even make a point related to the cell-phone jamming.
The protests were closer, but still could have been better targeted. How about protesting at BART headquarters in Oakland instead? That’s presumably where the actual decision to jam the cell phones was made. 30 protesters chaining themselves to the door would have garnered just as much media attention without pissing off thousands of people who might have even been sympathetic to a message of right to assembly and free speech before they got fucked with.
“the fact of the matter is no one in this city would be talking about egregious violations of our right to assembly and free speech unless […]”
Really? That’s what the people you know are talking about? ‘Cause the people I know are talking about how a bunch of assholes are fucking up BART and trivializing the cause of protest and free speech in oppressed nations, all in the name of a psychotic hobo brandishing a broken bottle.
I wasn’t there, but from what I heard, it sounds like BART shut down the SF stations preemptively. It doesn’t sound like the protesters did anything to disrupt service or block peoples access. The decentralized nature of Anonymous doesn’t seem to lend itself to well-organized protests.
Either way, the people I know are talking about how BART security has the power to unilaterally cutoff cell phone service to limit free speech. Checking Facebook on BART isn’t the most important thing in the world, but this is a clear free speech issue. If BART is going to do this, it needs to at least be a policy decided by our elected representatives on the BART Board of Directors.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation put it well:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/bart-pulls-mubarak-san-francisco
“Cell phone service has not always been available in BART stations.”
That’s the key point, to me. If they didn’t provide it, it wouldn’t be available. Not so long ago, phone service on BART was an iffy possibility, at best. BART did not block cell phone service, they turned off a service that they provided, in an attempt to facilitate public safety. A fine distinction, yes, and a bad public relations move. But it seemed to work, and showed more sense and responsibility than anything the protesters have done. Those people seem more like the worst part of Critical Mass.
There are videos from yesterday that show protesters at Civic Center holding doors and refusing to let the trains leave until cops stepped in and removed them from the train. That said, I’m not sure how preemptively closing the other stations, just in case the same thing happens, makes any sense. Seems like the cops just gave the protesters exactly what they wanted without even making them work for it.
Well, considering the “egregious violations of our right to assembly and free speech” made the front page of the Chronicle this weekend, I DO think we’d be talking about it without a bunch of opportunistic, misguided and unorganized protesters getting in the way of my right to get home from work Monday.
Oh and by the way – anyone who disputes that the protesters were not trying to put innocent riders’ safety at risk has obviously never been on the platform when something crazy was going on. Feeling like you are about to get pushed onto the tracks by a surging crowd and can’t escape is pretty damn terrifying.
CG - and that’s exactly why this isn’t entirely a free speech issue. Just like the first amendment will not protect you when yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, communicating in order to create an unsafe situation on a Bart platform isn’t necessarily protected speech.
I don’t understand why they didn’t have the protest at BART HQ where decisions are made. Would it not have been more effective to make the commute home for the bosses and their spokesdroids Hell instead? I mean, duh….
And no, they didn’t stop the trains. They just blasted on through past the SF stations. A couple of hours disruption by out of towners who don’t even understand what BART is, and who hacked a marketing site for people who enter contests for A’s tickets.
Meanwhile in Syria people are being shelled and bombed by their own government. Hmm….
What I witnessed @ Civic Center yesterday was a bunch of selfish pricks out for a thrill.
I agree that protesting at BART headquarters makes a lot more sense. Mark your calendars for August 25th for the next BART Board of Directors meeting: http://www.bart.gov/about/bod/meetings.aspx
But my bottom line is that the authorities (BART police, SFPD, FBI, whoever) should not be allowed to turn off cellphone service. Period. Full stop. This is the first time this has happened in the U.S., and it should be the last.
And this is beside the point, but I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out how turning off cell phones makes anyone safer.
wait, this is about free speech? i obviously missed something along the way.
It is an important ability of the government to cut off social media when the social order is threatened. The people need that safety and order prevail.
切断社会媒体，社会秩序受到威胁时，它是政府的重要能力。人民需要安全和秩序为准。
There are 74 people with bart.gov emails in the leaked database, including one for BART interim general manager Sherwood Wakeman. (His login and password worked on mybart.org for HOURS after the leak. I mean, come on BART.) Linton Johnson is in there, too. Few people have acknowledged this – I don’t know why, since anyone can look at the database. TK writes, “The people who had accounts on myBart.org certainly weren’t the problem” but Johnson claimed credit for the idea (he got it while lying in bed!) and Wakeman signed off on it and they’re both in the database.
This article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is worth reading:
So, get a grip, folks. You whine like babies about being inconvenienced while cheering on the abuse of power by arrogant public officials who violate the public’s trust and and make people unsafe because they don’t want a Constitutionally-protected protest about their cold-blooded killing of a drunk guy happening in their station!
Another smart post, Kevin. More people ought to try thinking critically about an issue for a change. Whenever confronted with a difficult topic too many just lazily fall back on defending the status quo. Which in SF basically goes like this: “DON’T ROCK THE BOAT GUYS!! LET’S GET BACK TO TALKING ABOUT BACON!!!! ANONYMOUS MADE ME LATE TO MY BACON!!!!!!! BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON!!!!!!!!!!”
A few points:
- luckily for the very irritable and impatient Jason Permenter (who, in the interest of full disclosure, happens to be my husband), he must walk to and from work every day. That’s 30 minutes each way, no bus, BART or other vehicle necessary. I feel certain, however, that he appreciates your concern;
- demonstrators deserving of that name had better get on with the program in this town. You want to be clever about it, you *do* find a way to organize, communicate and mobilize by appealing to the most civic-minded residents of the East Bay. And I suspect they are legion. A failure it was, one that did a disservice to the cause. The reason people are talking about free speech and the right of assembly is not because a few thug wannabes paralyzed the BART, but because of how amateurish it all was. Certain things cannot be improvised. This country, San Francisco in particular, has a proud history of militancy, most of which occurred in times before mobile phones existed. You’d expect a few confused nerds to educate themselves in the matter rather than act as if they had invented the whole exercise, crying “foul” at the first sign of signal blockage;
- last but not least, what makes you think whining about people whining gives anyone any credence? A holier-than-thou “people only pay attention when their little routine is disrupted” stance is as facile and predictable as the apathy of any tired commuter trying to get home. I know this for having tried it in my high school days (being French and all, I very much enjoyed taking to the streets). In order to effectively place yourself above the masses, I encourage you to push your thinking a little further and come up with more inventive ways of inspiring the rest of us faceless, thoughtless strangers, to get our asses in gear when it matters. Cos this sure as hell won’t get you far.
Respectfully,
Anna.
jason, way to “stand up for the people who can’t stand up for themselves” (TM) (all rights reserved) (textbook passive agressive liberal sf douchebag). pregnant women and elderly folks everywhere applaud your courage to stand up and… er… whine on twitter… on their behalf. how…. er…. incredibly empowering. #notspeakingforoithers