How BART protest devolved into anarchy, rioting

[Newsjock]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

The man who organized Wednesday's BART police protest said he broke down in tears when he saw his peaceful march turn violent as some participants began throwing bottles, spitting on police cars and setting small fires.

Evan Shamar said he left the demonstration and saw the mayhem get worse on television.

"I was devastated by it," said Shamar, 24, the organizer and a photographer who lives in Oakland. "I worked diligently for the past 72 hours, and for it to be destroyed by a group of anarchists was extremely upsetting. I felt like my integrity had been compromised."

... When the marchers reached the Lake Merritt BART Station around 6:15 p.m., Shamar saw things start to go bad. Marchers began kicking newspaper stands and using papers to start fires. As he saw them throwing bottles and spitting on police cars, Shamar said he wept and returned to the Fruitvale Station.

For the next four to five hours, marchers smashed and burned cars, shattered storefronts and clashed with police. Eventually, police arrested 105 protesters.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/08/MNON15696D.DTL&tsp=1

[ColbertWatcher]

1. Ooh, I know: the cops shot a kid in the back! n/t

[BlooInBloo]

2. Yup...

Though WTO-style fuckwits make things worse.

[anigbrowl]

13. You fail.

What part of 'peaceful protest' don't you understand? The mother of Oscar Grant, who has enough misery to deal with, was on TV tonight in tears begging people not to tarnish the memory of her son with this. Furthermore, the Oakland police were not the ones who caused this incident in the first place.

I live in the Bay Area and have been at that BART station many, many times, I have friends in that neighborhood. Protesting the incident and expressing the community's upset over this death was NOT meant as an excuse for a violent free-for-all, which was ended up happening. Not only were there assaults on the police and police cars, but damage to surrounding property and parked cars of people who live and work in the area, which had exactly NOTHING to do with the incident.

[Gwendolyn]

3. Did Revolution Books get their windows smashed? Lol, thought not.

These kind of things are always more fun when others get the beat down and it's someone else's stuff that gets destroyed.

I feel for Evan Shamar. He seems very sincere in his hope to get justice in a peaceful way. I hope with him.

[Jamastiene]

4. Those masked rioters show up at the WTO too.

They show up at all peaceful protests to give the news media something to show while they repeat the same canned speech over and over again about how violent we "liberals" are. I swear I think they are hired just for that purpose - to subvert the message, to cloud the message, to make the peaceful protestors lose focus.

Until the masked violence ones are caught and tried for their rioting at all peaceful protests ( again, I do believe they are hired to usurp the message), our protests are not going to show the world the message that we want out there.

There must be some way to keep the protests on message and defeat the violent protest crashers. I wish I knew the answers. I don't.

[ColbertWatcher]

6. Agents Provocateurs?

Wouldn't surprise me.

There were reports that soldiers were going to be deployed in the U.S., but nothing after that.

[JohnyCanuck]

7. Former Italian President explains how to use agents provocateurs

Security Blanket: Western Democracy and the Strategy of Tension
Written by Chris Floyd

SNIP

We've written often here of the Pentagon's plan to foment terrorism where needed to achieve the goals of the "National Security State." This is but one of a staggering array of examples of the use of "the strategy of tension" by the "advanced" Western democracies of the modern world. This week came yet another. As Robert Mancini reports in the Guardian, the former president of Italy, Francesco Cossiga, let a great many cats out of the bag when he gave some sage advice to Italy's current interior minister, Robert Maroni, on how to deal with the ongoing protests by students and professors over funding cuts for higher education. As Mancini notes, Cossiga -- who had once been interior minister himself, as well as prime minister -- told the Quotidiano Nazionale:

"Maroni should do what I did when I was secretary of the interior. He should withdraw the police from the streets and the universities, infiltrate the movement with secret (provacateurs) agents, ready to do anything, and, for about 10 days, let the demonstrators devastate shops, set fire to cars and lay waste the cities. After which, strengthened by popular consent, the sound of ambulance sirens should be louder than the police cars. The security forces should massacre the demonstrators without pity, and send them all to hospital. They shouldn't arrest them, because the magistrates would release them immediately, but they should beat them up. And they should also beat up those teachers who stir them up. Especially the teachers. Not the elderly lecturers, of course, but the young women teachers."

Mancini notes that Cossiga's advice tracks closely with his own experience at the head of Italy's security organs in the 1970s:

For students of Italian political history, the interview is fascinating for the light it sheds on Cossiga's political views and in particular his activities between 1976 and 1978 when he too was interior minister, presiding over the police. In 1977, a demonstration by the Radical Party (partito radicale) was attacked by armed individuals who opened fire causing the death Giorgiana Masi, a 20 year-old girl.

Cossiga could not, or would not, explain what took place that day. More specifically, he was unable to shed light on whether the attackers came from within the police force....

Hence the interest in the recent interview, which sheds light on one of the most secretive periods of Italian history - the so-called "strategy of tension" that began with the 1969 bombing of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Milan (carried out by the far-right and blamed on anarchists) through to the events at the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001 where the mysterious right-wing "black-blok" group created the mayhem and destruction which brought forth the police violence against thousands of anti-globalisation protestors.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1650-security-blanket-western-democracy-and-the-strategy-of-tension.html

[Jamastiene]

10. The police also uses that same tactic.

The idea is that they can send the agents into the peaceful protests to act violent. That gives police the "go ahead" to start violently attacking protesters. The idea they use is that if the cameras are down in the crowd, the camera angles will not show that the police are actually just attacking the protesters. The idea behind the tactic of sending in the agents in black masks, is that in the melee, who can tell who the police are beating and gassing? That gives them leeway to do whatever they want to silence dissent.

[Jamastiene]

8. I think they are.

I remember the WTO global summit meetings where the protests started out with all of the different peaceful organizations protesting peacefully, then in a little while the rioters/agents/provocateurs show up and start hurling bottles and fighting with the police.

Had the protests gone according to plan, the message would have gotten out. Because those masked rioters began displaying violence and causing problems, the message never really got out. All the news aired was the violence.

Some people have theories on this other than just me. If you search WTO+"black masks" you can find quite a bit of information about it. They have disrupting peaceful protests for years now. I'm highly suspicious of them because they seem to show up at every peaceful protest and do not seem to be affiliated with the individual movements.

[EFerrari]

15. Maybe, but it sounds like he didn't have trained people along the route

or with the marchers. I don't like that he blames other people when he seems to have dropped that ball first.

[anonymous171]

11. Uniforms and organized pre-determined action.

Unfortunately, not many groups can do that.

[Cid_B]

16. The razor.. use the razor... nt

[RandiFan1290]

18. Police provocateurs caught on tape

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow

[Starry Messenger]

5. Grant's family had a very moving statement today.

I saw it on the news this afternoon, but I don't know if it's online yet. They called for peace.

[my2sense]

9. This is such a tragic story K & R

[frylock]

12. Evidence of Police Provocateurs at Montebello

time to dust off this little chestnut.

Evidence of deployment of provocateurs mounts

Did the various military and police forces in charge of “security” for the SPP Summit in Montebello this past weekend deploy agents provocateurs in order to instigate violence?

There is mounting evidence that this is the case. Many people have already seen powerful video evidence posted to the YouTube website by independent journalist Paul Manly. The five-minute clip shows a remarkable scene near one of the green zone police lines, where a set of three “provocateurs”, dressed as protesters and wielding rocks, are confronted by a group of trade unionists and young protesters, who suspect them of being police agents.

There are several very suggestive elements in that video, notably the fact that when challenged by the crowd, the obviously uncomfortable trio do not deny they are police or otherwise identify themselves and instead move slowly to the safety of the line of riot cops. Once there, and briefly exposed, there are several seconds where it is very clear that the individual closest to the SQ riot cop speaks quietly and calmly to him, out of earshot of the others. Shortly afterward, all three move past the same officer, and are then taken to ground, handcuffed, and “arrested”. At no point do they identify themselves, or deny being police.

http://mostlywater.org/evidence_of_police_provocateurs_at_montebello

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S1nHvvkzvA

[lies and propaganda]

14. Its hard to tell everyone how to feel..

I know i was crying, enraged and angry as fuck watching those videoes. I cant even imagine what would have happened to me if i was there.. I am SO sorry that their grief was overtaken by this, but it was a HEINOUS illegal act and people are going to react.

Cops are NOT above the law.

That cop KILLED a man. MURDER.

[cboy4]

17. Poor guy....there are always a bunch of thugs who join

ANY protest just to to cause havoc and ultimately destroy the message.

You see it all the time turing peace demonstrations.

Talk about an oxymoron. :puke: