Middle Age Torch Runners, Free Speech Initiation. and a Switcheroo
So no sooner than I return to SF than I discover a friend of mine, Helen Zia, writer and lifelong civil and human rights activist, decided to run the O torch for 2 blocks through San Francisco. She is concerned for her safety given what's been going on in London and Paris (where the second day was cancelled). Moreover, Helen has been receiving disturbing e-mails about her decision and was driven to craft an Op-Ed which ran in Tuesday's SF Chornicle, the main local daily. (www.SFGate.com/Helen Zia
I volunteer to run with her (as did her wife Lia), but the SFPD will phalanx every slow step of the way that her self-described sedentary middle-age body will carry her. "I think I'll power walk it acutally." she confides to me.
Anyway, the Mayor wisely does a switcheroo and both Free Tibet/Darfur/Burma protestors and the pro-China Olympics groups with their own flags and signs (with me videoing) are left to express themselves freely and fully at the original site of the torch ceremony. A good time was had by all on a bright, sunny San Francisco Day. The Free Tibet/Darfur/Burma folks were more organized, louder, and mobile initially. But by 2 PM, the pro-China Olympics folks got the hang of free speech good ole' USA style -- and especially in San Francisco where this is a recreational art -- and pretty much gave back some "what for" by the end of the event. At this time, the O torch is on an Air China flight towards it's next destination, Buenes Aires, Argentian. I'll try to upload the video to this site tonight - about an hour long, all raw.
My demonstration sign today? Usually the peace symbol when I felt someone was getting out of hand. There were a few scuffles and I help to break up two before it got serious. Lots of cool cops and so, no one was arrested around my raucous epicenter. When I subwayed home, a number of protestors on both sides were sitting in the station and then riding in the same train car home, as if the job was over, and no need to razz each other anymore. Everyone looked spent but fulfilled.
Idn't that great! Only in America! Or at least, San Francisco.
Oh -- to see the raw video: www.TheEighthPromise.com/Where's the Torch?!?
(C) 2008. William Poy Lee
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Steve Hauk says:
I guess, William . . .
. . . if you make a stand, as Helen did, threats are going to be forthcoming. I was a journalist only a year or two when I decided it would be better for the safety of my family _ not to mention myself _ to get our address out of the phone book. The incident that did it was someone calling and threatening my very young daughter for something I had written. You were brave to break up those scuffles.