May Day in the Bay
Last night on the eve of May Day, a rabble of vandals marched through San Francisco's Mission District, launching paint bombs at storefronts, smashing in car windows, and shattering the window of my favorite bakery, Tartine.
The SF Chronicle captures the reactions of devastated business owners trying to make sense of the destruction.
Jeremy Tooker, owner of Four Barrel Coffee, was wiping paint off his store's windows as broken glass crunched beneath pedestrians' feet. He said a friend had alerted him of the damage after stopping a protester from smashing the glass storefront with a crowbar - and taking a hit to his arm.
"This just seems like they're frustrated with their impotency at this point," Tooker said. "It's like, 'Look at me, I'm still here, I'm still occupying.' "
As Koskoff smoked a cigarette by the damaged Aston Martin, he said he didn't understand protesters' motives.
"They're coming through the Mission, where there aren't any corporations, just a lot of small businesses, which is what they're all about," he said. "It doesn't make sense."
[...]
"Occupy is saying it's not them, but we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Occupy, now would we?" Michelle Horneff-Cohen, a real estate broker, said as she shivered next to the broken window of her workplace, Property Management Systems.
She said she had been dragged out of bed to deal with the damage. Although her company has insurance, she said, it will have to pay for much of the cost of repairs.
"I think it's [expletive]," Horneff-Cohen said. "We are the 99 percent, and this is [expletive]."
Democrats have thus far been at least loosely supportive of the Occupy Movement, employing the populist 99 percent language for their own political aims. But the cognitive dissonance revealed here—i.e. "We are the 99 percent, and this is [expletive]"— by the San Francisco small business owners who are spending their day dealing with damage to their property, makes me wonder if Democrats will continue to treat the Occupiers as political kin going forward into this year's election. I can't imagine that would be a good move.
Meanwhile, today in Oakland a group of about 100 protesters are busy harassing the banks. One of the protesters explains his motives thus:
"We are here today because capitalism has destroyed basic human need," said a 20-year-old protester who only identified himself as Connor.
"I am sort of into the libertarian/communist thing myself," he said. "I am an advocate of human need, not monetary need.
Libertarian-communism. Only in Oakland.
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May '10
Re: May Day in the Bay
"God is great, beer is good...and people are crazy. "
- Billy Currington
Aug '10
Re: May Day in the Bay
Yabbut, is it really any different from the rhetoric of FTAA/G7/G8/G20 protests in 2001, 2007, 2009, 2010, etc, etc?
Is it very different from the rhetoric of the Battle in Seattle of 1999?
Is it really any different from the rhetoric of the 1968 Democratic Party Convention protests or Hunter S. Thompson?
The sheer number of young Baby Boomer protesters in the late 60s dwarfs the number of college-age kids protesting today, so is it truly reasonable to fear these kids more than the kids of the past.
Personally, I don't fear the protesters of today. They agitate. They break a few windows. They inconvenience people. They smell bad. However, they aren't as scary as the violent protesters I remember from the late 90s. Those goons scared me.
The difference, one might argue, is that today's kids have "one of their own" in the White House. He scares me much more than they do.
Dec '10
Re: May Day in the Bay
The crowd is now assembled at Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of Oakland's City Hall. The cops are keeping them contained, although at some point I am sure the protesters will attempt a rampage through downtown, as is their wont.
Jan '12
Re: May Day in the Bay
Two words with respect to the occupy cadre and their ilk: useful idiots.
Oh, just in case you think I make too much of Hegel's explication of history as the outward form of the development of Reason, let me add that he lamented that, in their particulars, events are also at the whim of contingency, the violent conflict that he called, quite graphically, a "slaughterbench."
If you find Hegel too heterodox, you might ponder the verse in Apocalypse where it is written (AV 20:3) that the Devil must be "loosed a little season."
Th-th-that's all, folks!
Edited on May 2, 2012 at 6:24amApr '12
Re: May Day in the Bay
Misthiocracy
Not that uncommon, really, when defined as the belief that "individuals" should be able to do whatever they want and "society" should pay for the consequences.
Utterly incoherent, but not uncommon. · 17 hours ago
A friend lists socialist-libertarianism as her political views on Facebook. Best I can figure she means that she doesn't want anyone telling her how to live her life, but since she has found the best way, she wants to make everyone else do the same.
Aug '10
Re: May Day in the Bay
The store owners decrying the b.s. they themselves have supported. How ironic. They vote for San Fran Nan and then are shocked--shocked I tell you, to find themselves in the one down position.
May '10
Re: May Day in the Bay
Liberals have an unfortunate romantic view of mobs.