Demonstrators in S.F. march in support of Palestinians
By Sandra Gonzales
Mercury News
In what organizers called one of the largest showings of solidarity for Palestinians in this country, thousands of demonstrators descended on San Francisco streets Saturday, marching and chanting a rallying cry against Israeli and U.S. action in the Middle East.
They waved the Palestinian flag, sang and beat drums, and even did the tango as protesters urged peace in the region, not war.
The estimated 15,000 participants spilled onto the streets and blocked traffic as they marched more than two miles from Dolores Park to Civic Center.
The rally was largely peaceful. No major arrests or incidents of violence were reported by San Francisco police, who deployed more than 60 officers to patrol the rally. But there were a few tense moments.
As the first wave of marchers approached Civic Center for the rally, they pumped their fists and shouted down a group of about 12 counterprotesters who had been standing in front of City Hall, waving the American flag and voicing their support for the United States. To avoid any physical conflict, police wearing riot gear quickly ushered the small group of counterprotesters inside City Hall and stood in a single line blocking the entrance as the pro-Palestinian protesters chanted, ``Free, free Palestine,'' in cries that grew louder by the moment. The crowd eventually moved away from the City Hall steps as the rally at Civic Center began, with speakers demanding an end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank in what demonstrators called a U.S.-Israeli war against the Palestinian people.
The San Francisco rally, one of two major protests organized in the country Saturday, was sponsored by a national coalition that calls itself ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism). The coalition was formed, its leaders said, in response to the war in Afghanistan and racist attacks against Arab Americans in the United States after Sept. 11.
In Washington, D.C., as many as 70,000 gathered for a similar protest.
Urging an end to aid to Israel, a spokesman for the group told the San Francisco crowd that the war could not go on without the billions of dollars supplied by the United States. ,p>``There is only one force on Earth that can stop it, and it's not the Democratic Party. . . . It's the people. . . . That's the only thing that's ever changed things in history,'' said Richard Becker, a spokesman for ANSWER, who also serves as western region coordinator of the International Action Center, a peace and justice organization.
Eman Desoukey of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in San Francisco also stirred the crowd. ``We stand in fierce solidarity with our indigenous brothers and sisters who have been struggling bravely for 509 years of colonization of this land that we stand on today,'' Desoukey said.
Organizers said more than 40 buses brought people from around the state and as far away as Seattle and Salt Lake City to the event.
Though the primary theme of the rally was support of Palestinian rights, other causes abounded. Vendors sold bumper stickers and T-shirts and handed out fliers on everything from nuclear policy to Mumia Abu-Jamal, the death-row political activist and journalist. Suzanne Saliba, who was born in Ramallah, on the West Bank, was encouraged by the large gathering.
``Seeing everyone here from different nations makes me feel good. All I've been doing is crying. It just shows that a lot of people are disenchanted with what the U.S. is doing,'' she said.
Many in the crowd wore a black and white covering on their shoulders or heads to symbolize the Palestinian struggle, and others carried banners. Not all, of course, agreed.
Patricia Brickman of San Jose, one of the dozen who had gathered for the counterprotest, said she was there to support the United States and the its troops.
``It's really sad,'' she said, ``that they don't have a concept of what America stands for -- freedom.''