{"id":5338,"date":"2017-06-24T11:17:27","date_gmt":"2017-06-24T18:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=5338"},"modified":"2017-06-24T11:40:28","modified_gmt":"2017-06-24T18:40:28","slug":"sins-mayor-steve-martinot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2017\/06\/24\/sins-mayor-steve-martinot\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Sins of the Mayor” by Steve Martinot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slick manipulation of the agenda had already led to outrage. That was a month earlier, when 150 people had come to City Council to drag the city free of federal policing projects. The Mayor promised a \u2018Special Meeting\u201d dedicated to the issue, scheduled for June 20.<\/p>\n

Five hundred people showed up for that one, in a larger auditorium. And it ended with the police arresting a few, beating a few more, and dragging the poor City Council free of the people.<\/p>\n

* – * – * – * – *<\/p>\n

The sins of the mayor started at the beginning, and the people, who came to speak against Urban Shield and the federal Fusion Center (NCRIC), paid for them. All seven of the Mayor\u2019s sins.<\/p>\n

[1] He donated the first hour of city council to the police, to use for their own PR performances.<\/p>\n

[2] He renegged on an agreement with the Stop Urban Shield Alliance, manipulating the agenda against them.<\/p>\n

[3] He refused to give equal time to the opponents of Urban Shield, thus showing bias.<\/p>\n

[4] He had the council seated on a stage, high above the public\u2019s podium, so he could look down on the speakers from on high.<\/p>\n

[5] He stopped Cheryl Davila from speaking three times, to the extent that she had to point out, in her small voice, \u201cI feel like I\u2019m being silenced.\u201d<\/p>\n

[6] He made prior decisions concerning proceedings and motions with respect to the “Feds” (aka the NCRIC Fusion Center and Urban Shield), and five hundred people crashed against them.<\/p>\n

[7] In the end, the cops were called against the crowd, as a “punchline” to the council\u2019s votes in favor of the police state, about which the people had spoken and warned.<\/p>\n

The seven deadly sins are gluttony, envy, greed, pride, sloth, lust, and wrath. I\u2019ll leave it to the reader to affix them to their proper number above.<\/p>\n

* – * – * – * – *<\/p>\n

The Mayor\u2019s first sin was to use the hearing, demanded by the people, against them. With 500 people in the audience, he allowed the police and the fire department 40 minutes to present their endless case for why Urban Shield was important and essential. Did the Mayor need to provide the police a captive audience? Why?<\/p>\n

As a captive audience, we relived the old stories of emergencies, and how much help the police needed. As an argument for maintaining contract conditions with the “Feds,” it implied that assistance would not be forthcoming without those contracts. That is atrocious.<\/p>\n

The final sin was to vote to maintain those contracts. After over a hundred speakers detailed how that assistance seems unable to provide itself without violence, the vote was violence against the urgency of the people present. And the meeting ended with real police violence.<\/p>\n

The final vote on Urban Shield did not occur until 12:35 am, six and a half hours after the meeting had started. And as the mayor himself voted for maintaining Urban Shield, the people surged toward the stage, unfurling a banner 4 feet high and 40 feet long up on the stage itself, hiding this weak and meek council behind itself. The banner said, \u201cStop Urban Shield, End Police Militarization.\u201d It had been the backdrop for a demonstration held before the council meeting started. And here it was again, the silent voice of 500 people, draped in front of the council that somehow could not hear actual voices.<\/p>\n

Though the meeting had run its course, and there was nothing to disrupt, someone (presumably the Mayor) called on the police to clear the stage. A dozen cops stormed into the room, pushing people out of the way, and grabbing those youthful bodies that held the banner, twising arms painfully, ripping hands free of the cloth, handcuffing youthful wrists to be led away. To hold that banner had become a criminal activity.<\/p>\n

Outside, faces were bloodied by the police using billyclubs against people who still held the long banner and chanted, \u201clet them go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, the Mayor showed he knew what Urban Shield was all about, why he favored it, and who it “Shielded.”<\/p>\n

\u201cSubdue and arrest.\u201d<\/p>\n

* – * – * – * – *<\/p>\n

Five hundred came to oppose NCRIC and Urban Shield,, and demand that the city break its relations with them. The speaker\u2019s line was long. Each speaker got only one minute. People could cede their “minute” to others. But the maximum for any speaker was four \u2013 compared to the 40 minutes the police got to do their PR.<\/p>\n

The public speaking process lasted three and a half hours. Three and a half hours is over 200 minutes. Those speaking thus represented over two hundred people (themselves and those who ceded minutes to them). Only one person of all the speakers spoke in support of “the Feds.”<\/p>\n

Yet when the Mayor read his proposal for a compromise, he had it ready to hand, printed out, foreseen as his position even against the foreseeable two hundred people speaking against the “Feds” (in person or by proxy). To have had it in hand meant his decision was made without them, way before the hundred speakers began. Would nothing change his mind?<\/p>\n

That is a horrendous thing to contemplate \u2013 the machinery of non-representation.<\/p>\n

* – * – * – * – *<\/p>\n

\u201cSubdue and arrest.\u201d That\u2019s a more realistic motto than \u201cserve and protect.\u201d Protect whom?<\/p>\n

One hears a similar question when the city speaks about affordable housing. Affordable for whom? Below market rate? How far below? Protection for whom?<\/p>\n

Subdue and arrest. And cause pain in doing so. And bloody a few faces while defending the institutional right to cause pain.<\/p>\n

These young people, who came and spoke beautifully and eloquently about what it was like to face the horrors of police impunity and militarization here in Berkeley, knew what they were talking about. Against the police, there was no sanctuary.<\/p>\n

* – * – * – * – *<\/p>\n

The crowd followed the cops out into the night, chanting \u201clet them go.\u201d Once outside, the cops went berzerk, pushing and shoving those who still held the banner. Some were hit with nightsticks, others were pushed violently and with malice. We who stood in the second row behind the banner-holders caught them to keep them from falling. One cop came at us with such hate and anger in his face that I expected him to grab the banner itself and start tearing at it with his teeth, falling to the ground and growling as he chewed the banner in his rage.<\/p>\n

But there it was. Speaker after speaker had warned against the police state, and had explained what it was about, what the concept of a \u201cpolice state\u201d meant to political opposition. It meant the government gives the police the autonomy to do what they likes against the people. And there it was.<\/p>\n

* – * – * – * – *<\/p>\n

What was the demand of the people that was so unsupportable? It was to stop. Stop the brutality, stop the shooting, stop. \u201cStop stop stop urban shield.\u201d<\/p>\n

That chant \u2013 \u201cstop stop stop urban shield\u201d \u2013 had the same lilt and rhythm as that other chant, heard in so many other demonstrations, \u201cfree free free Palestine.\u201d One could hear each in the other.<\/p>\n

Stop stop stop urban shield.
\nFree free free Palestine.
\nStop stop stop urban shield.
\nFree free free Palestine.
\nStop stop stop urban shield.
\nFree free free Palestine.<\/p>\n

Written down like that, it begins to look like a tattered flag, somewhat the worse for wear from the battles it has seen. Trans-national liberation comes to Berkeley.<\/p>\n

The Trans-national police are what is behind Urban Shield. The FBI operates in Europe and Africa, the CIA interferes in elections on five continents, the DEA makes deals with drug producers throughout the third world, and the NSA surveilles us. The local police are their eyes and ears. Against them, we have been thrust into Trans-national battle.<\/p>\n

* – * – * – * – *<\/p>\n

But the police, during their PR performance in the meeting\u2019s first hour, gave it away. They went over all these emergencies that occur, or that can be imagined, in which they claimed to needed contract connections with the “feds” to get assistance in those emergencies.<\/p>\n

Are we supposed to believe that the “Feds” would not help Berkeley if it were not under contract to the Fusion Center (NCRIC) and UASI? Does this city have to take out membership in a federal police institution in order to get assistence from the government in an emergency? Really?<\/p>\n

You know what that means? It means that the federal government is a shake-down operation. It is there to help only those who sign up under federal agreements. It is like the rackets of the 1920s. In New York City, the mob (Meyer Lansky and Jake Shapiro) did the same kind of thing in the garment industry. They organized an employers\u2019 association, and told each garment shop owner, either you join our employers\u2019 association, or you will get no pick-ups and deliveries from the truckers. Is that what the Berkeley cops are telling the Berkeley City Council? If so, why would the city want to be associated with racketeers, even though they call themselves the federal government?<\/p>\n

But, if that is not so, and the feds would come to the assistance of any city that needed it anyway in an emergency, then the police, in their PR presentation, were running a number on City Council. It would mean they were giving a deceitful and fallacious report. How could city council grant the police any credibility if that were the case?<\/p>\n

Yet the Mayor had his proposal and his decision based on police credibility already in hand when he opened the meeting.<\/p>\n

* – * – * – * – *<\/p>\n

The speakers called upon the Berkeley City Council to do the right thing, to free itself from tutelage to the “Feds.” Young people and old activists, newbies and the politically jaded, all came together to demand a civil civilian government, not one controlled by the police. And we couldn\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n

Outside, after the police had taken control, and drove away with their captives, a new chant was spoken in the circle of the people. \u201cIt is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win.\u201d We stood in a circle, the 60 or 70 of us remaining, shoulder to shoulder with each other outside Longfellow Middle School on Derby St.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win.\u201d The words are those of Assata Shakur, an activist for black liberation, framed on a murder charge in New Jersey during the 1970s, and who escaped to Cuba where she finds sanctuary. The FBI has placed a 2 million dollar bounty on her head. And Trump has told the Cubans, \u201cyou want normalized relations and trade? Then you give us back our escaped slave.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cubans respond, \u201cpedal it elsewhere, Mr. Cop.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Note from Clark Sullivan:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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June 23, 2017<\/p>\n

I’ll be at Shattuck on copwatch at Peet’s Coffee if you want to come by. The Berkeley Police have been harassing unhoused people downtown.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Slick manipulation of the agenda had already led to outrage. That was a month earlier, when 150 people had come to City Council to drag the city free of federal policing projects. The Mayor promised a \u2018Special Meeting\u201d dedicated to the issue, scheduled for June 20. Five hundred people showed… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5338"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5338"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5342,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5338\/revisions\/5342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}