Resent from FNB-San Francisco <sffnb at iww.org> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 11:02:16 -0700 (PDT) From: Ken McCarthy <ken at e-media.com> To: stadium at e-media.com Subject: violence from the mayor's office
(For election fraud subcribers, I send this report about the police attack on Food Not Bombs along to advise you about what you can expect if *you* were to attempt to organize a serious public demonstration against the theft of our elections and tax dollars in San Francisco.
If you think I am exagerating, take a look at this unusual SFPD mobilization that occured June 21, 1997 when a member of the Committee to Stop the Giveway was speaking speaking outside the Mayor's Conference about the details of the 49er stadium fraud. http://www.e-media.com/stadium/exhibits/demonstration.html
Unpopular opinions and facts in SF are first marginalized, then brutalized.)
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Officially-sanctioned political violence
continues in San Francisco
Local media looks the other way
July 22, 1998
The Bay Guardian, as is becoming increasingly common, is writing its stories without including the pertinent facts.
The following is what was NOT included in the Guardian's "report" on the SFPD attack on Food Not Bombs. For context, I attended the Food Not Bombs dinner (part of their national convention) a few days before this event occured. It would be hard to imagine a more peaceful, good willed group of people. Their crime: gathering donated food and giving it to the hungry.
The descriptions of the tactics used, dangerous neck holds, compliance holds used to inflict excessive pain and injury etc. are consistenct with our documentation of how the SFPD attacked Critical Mass riders last July.
The people doing this are not professional police officers. They're thugs in uniforms and they're specifically put in a position to do harm because Willie Brown does not like the political opinion of the people being attacked. The local media, including the so called "alternative" papers, go along with the cover up of the facts by marginalizing the victims of the violence and not giving these groups the opportunity to explain themselves and their work.
Officially-sanctioned violence, election fraud, financial fraud, and official media compliance *always* go hand in hand. You don't need to go to Indonesia or Nigeria or El Salvador to see these phenomena at work.
Ken McCarthy
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Information supplied by a subscriber
The missing information:
A total of 40 police vans and cars drove into and surrounded the UN Plaza area. Approximately 70 to 80 San Francisco City Police and US Federal Police, many of them in riot gear, arrived to arrest the demonstrators. At least one helicopter, which appeared to be a police aircraft, flew over the UN Plaza area during the demonstration. The police threaten many of the peaceful protesters and swung their battons at them. One police officer with a batton struck a disabled, wheelchair-bound activist and quickly swung again, but missed and hit a barricade with such force that it shattered the batton into at least two pieces. The police arrested all of the protesters that sat on the grass and even violently pulled an activist out of a tree. Several demonstrators suffered cuts and bruises from the brutal police action. One woman had her neck twisted by the police during her arrest, and FNB-San Francisco activist Jeff Larson was sat upon by at least four police officers and repeatedly subjected to numerous twists of his wrists, arms and legs. Jeff was subjected to " pain compliance holds " even when he was completely cooperating with the arresting police officers.
A total of 28 FNB and homeless activists were taken into police custody within 90 minutes of the arrival of the police. Even before all of the arrests were completed, DPW workers were brought in to reposition the DPW barricades and secure all of the grassy areas in UN Plaza. The protesters were charged with failure to leave the scene of a riot and with resisting a police officer. Most of the protesters were released within 9 hours of their arrest and are scheduled to appear in San Francisco Municipal Court on 31 August 1998.
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================================================================== It's time to overturn San Francisco's fraudulent stadium election Copy of petition: Dougcoms at aol.com Web info: http://www.e-media.com/stadium/petition.html ==================================================================