Angela Bacca

I am very disappointed in the city government of San Francisco, and all the parties involved in conning the public and ass-kissing of the Chinese government.

I haven’t seen this yet anywhere in the news, but the mobs of protesters along the Embarcadero yesterday were not always non-violent, and I have already heard a few rumors that the Chinese government organized and paid pro-Chinese protesters to stake out large spots along the route. I witnessed one angry, younger, group of pro-Chinese supporters tear apart a large “Free Tibet“ poster and shout angrily at the Tibetan supporters. This ended in hitting, yelling, and shoving. Remarkably, everyone still had out their video cameras, cell phones, and SLRs- it will only be a matter of days before the world sees what happened inside every scuffle in every part of all the crowds.

It was impressive to see the mix of people who had shown up. It was a bit of the typical San Francisco public event crowd- including the faint smell of pot and drunks with the words “Free Tibet” written on their face shouting as if they were really at a big public frat party. More than this however, I saw business people holding signs saying “Another Admin for a Free Tibet”, high school aged kids with “Another Latina for a Free Tibet”, “Another Student for a Free Tibet”, dread-locked hippies with “Another Vegan for a Free Tibet”. All of San Francisco was there to show the world what they thought.

Still, the situation held an air of hypocrisy, not only because perhaps about 25% of the pro-Tibet protesters couldn’t point it out to you on the map, but also because San Francisco is still an American city. Do Americans have any right to protest China, when we violate the human rights of our own right here, in Guantanamo Bay, and around the world. We are no better than the Chinese ourselves.

Chinese capitalism, its government dominance of the media, and its strong arm against those who challenge it isn’t too far a cry from our own corporate owned, commercial driven news media and election-rigged democracy whose strong arm will strike even those who don’t particularly threaten us. We have turned our greatest redeeming factor- our love of free democratic society- and imposed it on the unwilling in order to dominate them through globalization and conglomeration.

So no wonder our city and federal governments chose to deny the public the chance to see the actual torch. No wonder they wasted countless tax dollars to get us to hang out on the street and fight at each other fruitlessly for awhile. And no wonder the most you see on the TV is a reporter talking about how nice a day it is in San Francisco- 10-15 feet above and away from the crowds.

Just as we know we cannot believe what the Chinese government tells the world through their manipulation of the media of the event, we cannot believe what American media says about it either. They played along to help mask the true light of the event into a casual stroll along the streets that were unusually empty- due to the whole city being on the waterfront.

What we can rely on is that no one goes out on the streets of London, Paris, San Francisco or anywhere else to see that torch without cameras in their hands and internet on their phones.

The one redeeming event of the day was seeing a group of older, mostly Chinese, people in matching outfits doing tai chi to Cypress Hill’s “Insane in the Membrane”, an almost metaphor for the whole event– one big laugh for a joke that wasn’t even told.