Patriots Rally For America San Francisco version 4/20/02

Today the main Freepers rally to counter the Palestinian/Anarchists/”Peaceniks” /whatever was in Washington D.C. There was a west coast version in the Baghdad-by-the-Bay (San Francisco).

Deeel-me-in (David), Pat, and myself commuted up from San Jose to voice our disgust with the opposition. Perhaps it was an omen, but we barely escaped getting sideswiped by a pickup truck that spun out of control on the I-280 freeway and ended up facing the other direction without rolling over by the time he or she stopped.

We arrived the civic center parking lot at about noon, our rally start point. Drango and mac_truck were all ready for us and somehow our patriotic garb gave us away. :-)

By about 12:20, we had our signage and bullhorn all set for Freeping in front of City Hall. The other side was doing a 2-mile march from Dolores Park to the Civic Center Plaza, across the street from City Hall. But there was already a large contingent of Palestinians and supporters across from us who weren’t doing the march. We could see many Palestinian flags as well as the various left-wing booths, soundstage, and of course buses.

Soon we caught them off guard with our pro-America/pro-Israel group that was about ten strong at this point. Once American Preservative and Syncro (a.k.a., Dr. Zoo) arrived, we gave them a good showing.

The media, KPIX-5 and Spanish language station KDTV-14, along with the San Jose Mercury News, covered and interviewed our unexpected group. Other stations had coverage too but probably followed the parade of fools and were too late by the time all hell broke loose at City Hall.

Early in our rally, the police captain came over to strategize with our group, fearing for our safety with our small numbers compared to their thousands in what the news coverage had described as the “largest march in twenty years,” which is saying something in lefty demonstration friendly San Francisco. The captain was friendly to us and we were equally concerned about our safety. He said if the other side was to get out of hand, which of course was probable, then our group would retreat inside City Hall until things calmed down.

By 1:45pm, the Paleswinians were about halfway across the street chanting inane and hateful slogans toward us and then the parade of fools veered left and headed for City Hall instead of the park. At that point the police officer gave us the sign to move back and then inside City Hall for our own protection. So the leftists trumped our First Amendment rights, not too unusual.

While we were huddled inside near the doors, there was a wedding inside the central part of the building, so we had to keep the noise down in the echoing building. The members were, I think, Japanese, so the police were able to use a little racial profiling to know which ones to let in the building in which ones to keep out.

We looked around and noticed Syncro was missing from our group but were relieved to see him outside playing the part of photographer, documenting the insanity close up.

After a while, the head of security inside City Hall was uncomfortable with our presence at the front and gave us options of either hanging out in the cafeteria downstairs or leaving out the back. About half of us split and the other confabbed downstairs. The catch was that we had to leave our signs off to the side at the front of the building, not being allowed to carry them inside.

So in the cafeteria, a.k.a., The Bunker, myself, Joseph, Pat, deeel-me-in, American Preservative, and eventually Syncro. Also in the bunker were other cops on break before they headed out to join the insanity outside. We could hear over their radios that an Israeli flag was being burned, which Syncro was able to catch on film.

After a while when it seemed too risky to go back out to finish our protest, we gathered back our signs and headed out the side door and stored them in Syncro’s Dr. of Phenomenology vehicle and, except for Joseph, went out for lunch at a Japanese restaurant and shot the breeze. By the time we got done, about 5pm, the leftist swine were taking down their soundstage and stuff, with the park looking like a mess, as usual. And so we live to fight another day against the hateful left in our closest call thus far.

Here is todays letters to the editor section of the Chron:

Marchers for peace should be peaceful

Editor -- What does it say when a group of people need to be protected from "peace" demonstrators ("Thousands march in S.F. protest," April 21)? Is someone unclear on the concept of peace?

The threatening "peace" demonstrators were Palestinians, Arab immigrants and their supporters. The endangered persons carried Israeli flags and were dispersed by the San Francisco police "for their own safety."

No one was ever imperiled by Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. Those leaders based their movements for social justice on the principle of nonviolence and were recognized for holding the moral high ground.

If the Arab Muslim world were to produce a leader who could persuade with the principles of nonviolence, the moral equation would be turned upside-down to its favor. However, that possibility is unlikely, given a culture that glorifies the terrorist Osama bin Laden as a great hero.

People who say that they are for peace, but intimidate with violence, are merely unprincipled thugs who are probably too benighted to recognize the hypocrisy of their own actions. Persons who demonstrate in the name of peace should act in peace.

DANA GARCIA

Berkeley

A PEACEFUL CROWD

Editor -- While I appreciated The Chronicle's coverage of stories this Sunday on historical atrocities in South America, I was disappointed with the cover photo of the rally held last Saturday portraying it as extremist and hateful.

I was at the rally all day -- I'd set up a place for people to paint their own signs and it was wonderful: teenagers cautiously approached and painted, people needing more tape came over, people adding peace symbols to signs they already had, even a homeless person painted his own sign -- and I never saw anything as full of hate as your photo made it out to be.

I really worry about our city, our home, when the truth of our rally is subserved by profit or bias through a photo of one burned flag in a peaceful crowd of more than 20,000.

VICTORIA ASHLEY

Oakland

A SENSE OF FAIRNESS

Editor -- I am glad to see that readers' representative Dick Rogers acknowledged the serious oversight of The Chronicle (Opinion Pages, April 21) to provide equal coverage to a pro-Israeli rally (received no coverage) and a pro-Palestinian rally (received front-page coverage).

However, if The Chronicle is weighing the opinions of the readers in its decisions as implied in Rogers' article, The Chronicle will continue to lose a sense of fairness. That is because of a simple fact; Palestinians and many Arabs are taught hatred from childhood and do not possess a sense of fairness and will always say that the news is biased against them.

Jews, on the other hand, are taught fairness, tolerance and compassion. That is why some Jews speak out against Israel. That is why Jews fought for the cause of civil rights for American blacks. You don't see any Palestinians condemning terrorism. What you see is rationalization.

RICK KOHL

Los Gatos

INSIGHT ON POLICY

Editor -- Saturday, thousands of protesters with anti-Israel and anti- American sentiment marched in San Francisco. Their pictures and story dominated the front page of The Sunday Chronicle. Last week, a similar number of pro-Israel, pro-American demonstrators rallied in San Francisco. The Chronicle gave that rally not one word, not one picture of coverage.

One reason for this, Chronicle readers' representative Dick Rogers suggests,

is that the pro-Israel rally was not violent. I guess that was our mistake: Perhaps we should have attacked police or tried to burn some buildings. Thank you, Mr. Rogers, for such illuminating insight into Chronicle reporting policy.

SCOTT ABRAMSON

San Mateo

I was puzzled by the reference to Dick Rogers, who apparently is the apologist for the Chron. (I boycott the Chron due to its bias). In any case here's what he said...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/04/21/ED35579.DTL

********************

When my phone rings these days, it's a good bet I'm about to hear one of two things: The Chronicle's Mideast coverage is pathetically pro- Palestinian, or The Chronicle's Mideast coverage is pathetically pro-Israel.

One reader demands to know: "Why do you call Hamas a militant group when President Bush says they are terrorists?" Another reader, equally fervent, can't abide the fact that we refer to Israeli soldiers as soldiers at the same time as we call rifle-carrying Palestinians "gunmen."

In the superheated atmosphere of the Mideast crisis, every word, paragraph, graphic and image comes under a microscope. The placement of stories on a page is seen as evidence of the paper's tilt, or worse, its campaign to twist public opinion.

The other day The Chronicle carried a front-page story under the headline "Sharon says 'terror' justifies assault." An East Bay reader, angered by the single quotation marks around the word terror, scolded us for reporting that "harmonizes well with Palestinian propaganda, which tries to divert attention from the terrorist campaign against Israel (which enjoys almost unanimous support among Palestinians, all the way from Yasser Arafat to the 10-year-old who dreams of blowing himself up one day), and instead describe Israel's military moves as groundless, evil bullying tactics."

The explanation that the headline writer used quotes for the conventional reason -- to signal that Sharon used the precise word -- carried no weight.

Here, as in newsrooms across the country, one person's neutrality is another person's bias. So, while we can listen to the hundreds of calls and read the hundreds of e-mails that have come in during the past two weeks, it's not likely that The Chronicle will satisfy each of its readers no matter how it alters its coverage, its use of language and its selection of photos.

But before you come away thinking that this is just a sanctimonious defense of my employer, here's a confession:

The paper made a bad call last week.

Last Sunday, thousands of pro-Israel demonstrators from San Francisco to the Salinas Valley gathered at Justin Herman Plaza here to rally peacefully. The event was news (just a week before we carried a report on a pro- Palestinian demonstration with far fewer people). Yet last Monday, the paper didn't have a word on the pro-Israel rally. This wasn't fair and balanced coverage.

There isn't a good explanation for the decision. The event was judged by the usual standards in a city where demonstrations are as common as coffeehouses. The city desk mistakenly decided that it wasn't all that big. And there was no violence. Those may be valid criteria in some cases, but not this one.

At least one reader cites the lapse as evidence of deeper bias. She goes so far as to accuse the paper of fomenting anti-Semitism. (It should be noted that The Chronicle also did not cover a smaller pro-Palestinian rally that same day.)

I understand the emotion, but I don't buy the argument. From my corner of the newsroom, The Chronicle has tried to present as many aspects of the story as possible. Most often it succeeds. A few weeks ago, in response to allegations that our photo coverage was one-sided, I invited five readers to take a deeper look. The readers had diverse backgrounds and starkly differing views of the Mideast situation. We asked them to look at 79 photographs published between January and March and tell us whether they thought that the pictures reflected sympathy toward Palestinians or Israel, or whether they were neutral.

One reader saw a big pro-Palestinian tilt. Another saw the opposite. Two detected a slight shading toward the Palestinian side. The fifth considered the photographs largely neutral.

But added together, the individual judgments came out almost exactly equal - - one-third pro-Palestinian, one-third pro-Israel and one-third neutral.

There was nothing scientific about our experiment. But it shows that five people can look at the same things and come away with very different reactions.

And it shows something else: If the paper is trying to mold public sentiment on the Mideast, it's not doing a very good job of it.

So let us know what you think. But understand that sometimes we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Dick Rogers is the Readers' Representative at The Chronicle. If you have comments on The Chronicle's coverage, standards or accuracy, please e-mail readerrep@sfchronicle.com.

#44-It's like all that my grandfather and his peers worked and died for in WW2 is gone.

It sure felt that way out there. : ( I'm glad you saw deeel-me-in's #51, thunderdome. (And, did you see #65?!) Thanks for your support from afar! Sending good wishes to your and your family. ; )

#46,47-Good questions, Carry_Okie.

Hi CCC, thanks regarding Melanie! I didn't hear anything this morning....did you? Brian was great last night, and made a brief mention tonight in reply to a caller. Thanks for all the pictures!

deel-me-in - #51!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!EXCELLENT UNDERSTANDING!!!!!!!!
A MUST READ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Thank you for being out there!!!

#52-Good question Drango.

#62-Thanks Mama_Bear. : )

#65-After we split up inside city hall, Ron, Carol, Darren and I were led through the basement then back upstairs to the Van Ness side of the building. As a precaution, we removed or covered clothing and items which might distinguish us as patriotic americans. Darren was ready to give up his american flag, but Carol said no, she would carry it. As we were leaving a well meaning officer from SFSD said to Carol, 'you might want to hide that flag', to which she retorted 'I'm an american, I will NOT hide this flag!'. mac_truck, thanks for telling us. WOW! Unbelievable!! : (
Thank you for being there mac_truck! : ) (And thanks for the info in #92 - for those of us who don't bother reading that paper any more.)

#95-Thanks Drango! (See above regarding #92 comment) : )

#96-"Dr. Zoo 'splained to me that Brain Marrow transplants can only be done on boneheads. "
Dr. Zoo, ya got a grate way with words! : ) And, your photos were phenomonol too! : )

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