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Elections 2008 Zombie Chronicles the Olympic Torch Relay in SF As the Olympic flame passed through the city by the bay on April 9, Zombie stalked the crowds that gathered to protest China's oppression of Tibet.
Visit Our Advertisers "Olympic Torch Relay Detoured Through San Francisco Back Streets," screamed the headlines. That's the basic gist of what happened in San Francisco on April 9 All very neat and tidy, it would seem. If you took the time to read the full news accounts, you would have also learned that tens of thousands of demonstrators from around the country had gathered in San Francisco to protest against China's human rights record. But fearing a public-relations disaster if the torch was extinguished or seized by the unruly crowd, the mayor and city officials at the last minute secretly changed the previously announced route of the torch relay so that it completely bypassed all the protesters, who had lined up hoping to get a glimpse of the torch and draw attention to their cause. With the torch route diverted, all the protesters (and supporters) of the relay were left in the lurch, feeling confused and angry. The assembled global media, perhaps hoping for more exciting disruptions (as had happened in Paris and London over the previous days), were disappointed as well, and portrayed the whole day as a misfire. The media inevitably resort to generalizations when describing complicated events. At a major protest like this, when tens of thousands of people gather in one place, when emotions erupt and a million little vignettes unfurl, no simple headline can fully describe all that went on. Hell, even with a full-length photo essay like this, I can't fully illuminate the day's many facets either. Even so, I'll try my best to find the story behind the news. What started as a stage-managed Olympic photo op first descended into political chaos, then in an instant became an irrelevant sideshow as the relay went in a different direction altogether -- and the day ended with a desperate cross-town footrace as relentless protesters (and yours truly) managed to outrun the Olympians and catch the torch at the finish line.
jpg I arrived over an hour before the scheduled relay start time only to find, to my initial surprise, supporters of the Beijing Olympics lining the route. The fact that they all had identical oversized Chinese flags, souvenir t-shirts, and even little paper American flags led me to believe that the Chinese government had organized the whole scene.
jpg I quickly discovered that the anti-China protesters were massed a short distance away. Not only did they already outnumber the China supporters, but the crowd was growing minute by minute as people streamed toward San Francisco's Embarcadero (on the waterfront) to join the protest.
jpg As the crowds swelled on both sides of he political aisle, mere disapproval rapidly escalated to all-out confrontation. Arguments between China supporters and detractors broke out all over the Embarcadero.
jpg There was no strict physical separation between the opposing sides, though at first the China supporters tended to stay on one side of the Embarcadero while the protesters clustered on the other side with occasional forays into the street. Though even this unofficial arrangement disintegrated fairly quickly.
JPG As the time for the relay grew closer, the conflicts between the two sides grew more heated. Discussions became arguments became mass screaming matches whenever two opposing groups came near each other -- which became unavoidable as hundreds more people poured into the area with every passing minute. The Protesters Typical news reports about protests never tell you the exact nature of who's protesting or why. Mainstream media outlets inevitably focus on whether or not there was violence, and how many people were arrested. But they'll rarely discuss the issues underlying the protest in the first place. I counted at least 20 different causes being championed at the protest, on a dizzying array of topics.
JPG First, of course, were the Tibetans and their supporters, who were there in force: thousands upon thousands of people showed up to condemn China's actions in Tibet, starting with Mao's invasion in 1950 up to yesterday, when dissidents were shot and killed in a fresh round of repression.
Their cause is not widely known in the US -- the Uyghurs are a Muslim minority group in far western China that want independence, or at least greater autonomy. China labels Uyghur separatists as Islamic terrorists, though it's doubtful there's any substance to the accusation.
JPG Taiwanese Nationalists turned up en masse to warn China: Keep your hands off. The Communist government still regards the island of Formosa as a breakaway province illegally occupied by a defeated rebel army. All sorts of Vietnamese protesters showed up by the hundreds, drawing attention to myriad causes little known outside the Vietnamese community.
JPG The Paracel and Spratly Islands took center stage in one area of the rally. The dispute over these tiny coral reefs in the South China Sea might seem a bizarre issue to get worked up over, but the islands' potential global significance has become clear in recent years, as they are now thought to sit atop huge underwater oil and natural gas fields. China illegally seized the Paracels from the crumbling South Vietnamese government in 1974 and never gave them back, while the oil-rich Spratlys are claimed by China, Vietnam, and several other nearby nations.
JPG The littlest protester stood up for the lives of Vietnamese deep-water fishermen who reportedly have been massacred on the open sea recently by predatory Chinese ships operating under instructions from the government -- an apparent attempt to wrest fishing rights away from Vietnam. The excellent sign depicts one of the cutesy 2008 Olympic mascots as a vicious monster holding a burning human bone instead of an Olympic torch as it sinks a Vietnamese fishing boat. But it was more than just Asian nations pointing out the evils of the Chinese government.
JPG Several protesters encouraged people to buy American-made products and boycott Chinese goods, to reverse the lopsided trade imbalance between the two nations and to stop the Chinese economic juggernaut.
JPG The Chinese government supplied oversized heads of the Olympic mascots, which were designed to make everyone feel warm and fuzzy but only ended up looking out-of-place and discordant with the deadly serious tone of the protest. Huanhuan is supposed to represent fire, and Yingying (I kid you not) is supposed to be, of all things, a Tibetan antelope.
JPG There was some kind of official Olympic performance going on nearby in Justin Herman Plaza, but it was very ill-attended -- most of the people in the audience seemed to be the troups of performers themselves. The vast majority of those who came to the Torch Relay came to raise a political ruckus -- not watch a canned propaganda show.
JPG Before the protesters showed up and ruined everything, the Embarcadero area was supposed to host a celebration of traditional Chinese culture at the closing ceremony of the torch relay. And even though everything had gone to pot, the scheduled performances went forward anyway, mostly ignored by the huge crowd. Here, traditional dragon dancers walk warily near the protest, doing very little in the way of dancing.
JPG One of the Tibetan groups drew a large crowd throughout the day with an impressive bit of rolling political street theater involving a faux Chinese tank and Chinese soldiers beating and torturing protesters dressed as Buddhist monks.
JPG Notice the Grade-A moron on the left, who made the brilliant decision to wear a Chairman Mao shirt to the rally, as some kind of birdbrained fashion statement -- even though he was hanging around with the anti-Chinese Tibetan protesters.
JPG The dolt also stood directly between the street theater and the faux tank for most of the performance, smirking the whole time and completely ruining the scene for all the other photographers.
JPG When there were no opponents in the immediate vicinity to challenge, they chanted slogans in Chinese...
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