First-Person: Protestors Disappointed by Olympic Torch Route on San Francisco Waterfront

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has been promising for weeks that protests of the People's Republic of China publicity run of the Olympic torch would be allowed within sight of the torchbearers. He lied.

I arrived at the Embarcadero foot of Market Street at 11 a.m. at Justin Herman Plaza, where the run was supposed to end was filled with red flags. With a "Free Tibet" headband, color coded as a Darfur demonstrator (green) an carrying a "China: Extinguish the Flames of GENOCIDE in Darfur" sign, I walked around the plaza without incident. The only persons who talked to me were Taiwanese activists whom I know.

The noise level in the plaza was too high for me, and I wanted to see turnout along the route. I was walking along the Embarcadero toward McCovey Cove, where the run was supposed to start. There seemed to be as many people with Tibet flags as with PRC ones, but there were not very many people then. Even at 1 p.m., when the opening was supposed to be sending the torch our way, the crowd was considerably less dense than the crowds for the Gay Pride Parade or for the 49ers Superbowl victory parades (yeah, I know there hasn't been one in a while!). A crowd of ten thousand (the official estimate) is not particularly large by San Francisco standards. Indeed, the number of employees of the City and County of San Francisco who earned more than $110,000 in 2007 is half that.

I saw some unoccupied benches above the sidewalk. Back support was too inviting (an unexpected) to pass up. I was across from the Ferry Building, able to see the intersection of Market and Embarcadero by standing on the bench.

Gradually, four TV news crews showed up and set up where I was. I congratulated myself on picking a good location. A crew member put up yellow tape emblazoned "Hot Set" the discouraged some people from going into the area, though others went over or under the tape.

I thought I'd have the added advantage of being close enough to hear what the tv news staff heard. One confirmed that the torch had left McCovey Torch, but not up the route. No one at KPIX (her station) knew where it had gone. (It was snuck into and through a pier and onto a bus.)

Rather than a news organization worker, it was someone communicating by cell phone who first (within in our area) got the news that the torch was going up Van Ness Avenue (a few miles away).

Over the course of two hours, I saw many celebrants and protesters pass and others politely waiting next to each other. One Asian man asked politely if he could take a picture of my sign. I didn't even feel that anyone scowled at me. Maybe some of those with red flags were smiling nervously, but I thought the level of civility was high -- surprisingly high. Officials have claimed that the mood was "tense," but this was not evident in the stretch of the route I saw. Indeed, it seemed to me that those waiting -- to protest or applaud -- were bored with the wait even before we began to realize that Godot was more likely to appear than the torch.

Those there to greet the torch were disappointed along with those there to protest PRC ethnocide (Tibet and Singjiang), PRC arming and trading with the Khartoum regime committing genocide in Darfur, arming and trading with the Burmese junta, etc. (Surprisingly, I did not see a Falun Gong group protesting.)

The closing ceremony which was supposed to be at Justin Herman Plaza (to which the PRC consulate had bussed Chinese from all over the Bay Area) has just been officially canceled (while I was writing this at 3 PM PDT). The torch was whisked to the airport, with an area of the international terminal closed off.

Also, San Francisco police escorted some Free-Tibet demonstrators out of the plaza earlier, although the plaza was supposed to be open to anyone and everyone, not a pro-PRC demonstration site. The mayor had said that demonstrators would not be confined to "free speech zones" away from what was being protested, but approved a feint along an undisclosed route making the announced route one of those remote "free speech zones."

From my vantage point (an exceedingly good seat! with a view of a long stretch of the Embaradero), there was no public safety danger or even any suggestion of a riot. Rather than protecting anyone, it seems to me that the move was to keep protest invisible. I am in accord with the chair of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Aaron Peskin, who blasted the mayor in the following words:

"Gavin Newsom runs San Francisco the way the premier of China runs his country - secrecy, lies, misinformation, lack of transparency and manipulating the populace. He misled supporters and opponents of the run. People brought their families and their children, and (mayoral officials) hatched a cynical plan to please the Bush State Department and the Chinese government because of the incredible influence of money. He did it so China can report they had a great torch run. It's the worst kind of government - government by deceit and misinformation."

The Bush-Cheney way and the way of the San Francisco Democratic Party mayor, Perhaps Bush and Newsom can go to the Genocide Olympics together?

The elaborate torch route was a PRC propaganda plan (that like many PRC plans, such as the Great Leap Forward, failed to consider realities). San Francisco and Buenos Aires (or, for that matter, London and Paris) are not between Greece and Beijing. Moreover, the whole carrying the torch show was devised for the Nazi showcase Olympics, the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. It has always been about politics and nationalism... and greeting it is every bit as "political" as protesting it is.