The San Francisco branch of Indymedia (sf.indymedia.org) has an hour-by-hour rundown of yesterdays’ protests in the SF streets. It makes for harrowing reading. The website is hard to get on to, apparently the servers are being hammered. I’m mirroring a snapshot of that page here if you can’t get through to the real page.

8AM: Arrests beginning.500 people (police say 300)blocking Market at Sansome. Cop violence reported outside UK consulate and outside Bechtel

Today is promising to be another long one for San Francisco, with more protestors reportedly converging on the bay area all the time. I’m not sure how many can be left. The police are reporting the largest number of arrests “in 30 years”. Tomorrow (Saturday) there is a planned rally at Civic Centre Plaza which should be more organized, less confrontational. That will be my first time in the big city since the start of the war. Yesterday I was in Sacramento, and it was great.

9:50AM: 1000 at Mission & 1st headed towards Market to meet about 1000 people that have taken over Market & Montgomery and have formed a liberated zone.

Davis was relativley quiet, with most dissenters heading out early yesterday morning to San Francisco. Some of the solid core of older people who have been the overwhelming majority of the peace presence in campus-town Davis (don’t ask me what happened to the student, but good for the old people) maintained (and are maintaining) a 24 hour vigil downtown, where children are making signs and flagging them at traffic. The first first-hand accounts of Davis residents’ experience in San Francisco are nasty: police aggression and violence starting early and a long list of area arrestees. Which is why me and my visa weren’t there.

1:30PM: Crowd is getting rowdy at 7th & Market. One cop down.

Word has it the Oakland area and East Bay Area generally are quietly going off as well. Maybe quiet isn’t the word. There it is reportedly the highschool students of 3 or 4 schools who are leading the protests, with the Berkeleyites backing them up. Raising up the next generation of resistance.

6:09PM: Upwards of 6000 people running down 2nd Street towards Folsom

I don’t mean to sound too radical, but this war has been more than enough to radicalize normally calm citizens.

8:00PM: 6000 strong at Castro & Market Streets – unsuspecting onlooker assaulted by police on the sidewalk.

Indymedia.org has reports on major protests across America, including:

San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, New York, Chicago, Eugene, Portland, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Richmond, Boston, Urbana Champaign, Milwaukee, Baltimore/Towson, Maine, New Mexico, Atlanta.

This doesn’t cover any of the smaller protests that I know are on across the country.

11:30PM: 600 People marching through the Haight.

Updates for the Bay Area can be had at KPFA 94.1 out of Berkely, or from Enemy Combatant Radio, who are running a pirate radio station with internet relays, reportedly straight out of Market St the Mission district. How are they managing that? One internet relay for ECR (in Ogg Vorbis, Winamp can open it) is casting at: http://stream1.transbay.net:8100/sflr.ogg.

Tomorrow is yet another day.

FRIDAY 3/21: We Need to Keep Our Voices in the Streets! 7AM – Assemble at Justin Herman Plaza