Public Comment

You, in your skinny black jeans, designer black hoodie and face hidden behind a fashionably folded scarf probably thought it's real cool to drag those construction barricades from the 39th street BART project into Telegraph avenue with your little clique and STICK IT TO THE MAN.

Me, I thought you were fucking with the purpose of the marching, so I blocked your path with my bicycle. You sucker punched me in the face. WTF?

I know you're tough guy, dressed for anarchy, testosterone streaming, girls watching and all that, your black bloc fashion show allows you to sucker punch an old guy, a veteran of the struggle. But if you really have some cajones, go assault a cop one on one and see how you come out of that. 

Now I'm an old guy, but as a 14-year old, I marched against the Viet Nam war in Golden Gate Park. I mopped up oil in the San Francisco bay oil tanker spill in 1970. I'm a Critical Mass veteran, arrested protesting gulf war one, arrested for my union actions, founder of the Green Party. 

But I'm not resting on my laurels; I'm not posing about how great the sixties were. I hate that shit. I'm marching in 2014 against police brutality, and I'm marching in the tradition you seem to have missed. 

I was a juvenile delinquent once, until, on the eve of my eighteenth birthday, I got my ass kicked by two plains-clothes San Francisco cops and spent the night in juvenile hall. I learned that politics requires respect, discipline and non-violence. 

And guess what. People behind you in the march dragged the barricades, trash and recycling bins back to the sidewalk, so your petty little efforts at rebellion were less than powerful, your childish destructive acting-out only fucks up the cause of the protests and give fodder to the mainstream media. 

I didn't plan to interfere with your fun, I'm just sick and tired of your kind of mostly white prics taking over the very serious activism against police murder for you own juvenile smash-up. I watched your kind smash window and light fires on Sunday the seventh, all well-dressed white boys, and asked myself is this vanguard of the revolution, or are they infiltrators, or the quislings we should shoot first when the revolution triumphs? 

After you sucker-punched me, I was a bit in shock a bit concussed. Two people apologized, one asked if I needed medical attention, the other said I didn't deserve it and should just move on, I was lucky I was wearing a bike helmet or you might have killed me. 

As I walked along further down Telegraph, I followed you, I took your picture. I had a Leatherman multi-tool on my belt and in my punched-up state, I seriously considered opening the blade and giving you two or three fast jabs in the liver. I might have killed you. 

But the story is this; violence, even simple property destruction like yours, has no place in any street movement. Violence against a fellow protester is the worst kind of internecine conflict that will destroy our movement before it is born.