Last Night’s San Francisco Oscar Grant Protest
About 100 demonstrators protested in the streets of San Francisco last night in San Francisco’s first major Oscar Grant protest. Oscar Grant was the 22-year old man who was killed and shot in the back by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle early New Year’s day at the Fruitvale BART station with the shooting heavily seen afterwards in videos around the internet.
The protest was mostly peaceful in contrast to last week’s more violent protest that took place in Oakland.
The protesters began protesting at around 5:45pm at the Civic Center BART station and then marched from there down to the Powell Street BART station and then downtown around near the Sutter and Montgomery intersection. About 50 or so San Francisco Police Officers monitored the protest and accompanied the march down Market Street. The local news crews were out as well with cameras and microphones in the protest.
Except for a very small amount of graffiti that I saw spray painted downtown and a reported trash can fire, there were no other incidents of violence accompanying this protest. The speakers at the protest kept encouraging violence in their speeches though telling people that they needed to “tear s*** up,” but the crowd seemed to lack the momentum that turned Oakland violent last week. No one was arrested in this protest.
The protest was promoted earlier in the day on Indy Bay with the tagline, “The kids in Oakland know how to party. Let’s show them they are not alone.”
The protest did not seem very well organized and except for a small battery powered bull horn which kept losing power, there did not seem to be anyone really in charge.
A few of the comic moments for me came as the protesters passed the bull horn around to each other sort of randomly. In one case I think one of the guys who got a turn on the bullhorn wasn’t even part of the original protest. Before the protest had even started he seemed to be just hanging around Civic Center telling anyone who would listen about problems with his wife. When he got the bull horn I’m not even sure he knew what the protest was about, but he did get an opportunity to rant a bit about his wife.
Another comic moment for me came when the protesters seemed to get into some sort of an argument with each other over the fact that some of the protesters were wearing bandanas over their face to mask their faces. One of the protesters challenged the protesters wearing bandanas to remove them from their faces while a protester with a bandana on tried to explain why she had hers on handing out a leaflet explaining it.
It seemed early on that some of the protesters were trying to make the protest about other things complaining about Palestinian occupation and homelessness in San Francisco. At one point a protester shouted into the bull horn. “How many of you are homeless and living in Golden Gate Park?” No one raised their hand and so he said, “ok, well a lot of people are,” and went on with his speech.
A few of the protesters said that they knew Oscar Grant. Another gave a speech saying that his best friend had been killed by the cops. Mostly though they just shouted and chanted “f*** the police,” “we are all Oscar Grant,” and “no justice, no peace.”
The protest seemed to gain the most momentum down around Market and Sansome Street when the protesters took a turn into downtown and the police on motorcycles couldn’t easily follow them down a one-way street. The protesters then headed up Bush Street where the SFPD sort of cut the protesters in half completely blocking off the intersection of Sutter and Montgomery in riot gear for about 15 minutes. After that the protest just seemed to dissolve into thin air. A few folks headed back up Market Street but mostly people just went on their way.
I put together a set of 50 photos from last night’s protest that you can see here.
Turn the World Around
JPG Magazine Getting Closer to Selling
Laura Brunow Miner, JPG Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief sent the following email out this morning updating people on what’s going on with JPG Magazine:
We couldn’t ask for a better community. In the week or so since our last email, the outpour of support has exceeded our wildest expectations. Your efforts, such as starting savejpg.com, writing blog posts, commenting on Twitter and Flickr, and generally making your voices heard, have provided exciting new opportunities for us.
We’re thrilled to say that because of you, we have multiple credible buyers interested in giving JPG a home. We will be keeping the site up after all, and hope to have a final update in the next week or so on who the acquirer will be. Thank you for making all of this possible.
Laura Brunow Miner
Editor in Chief
Not sure who the possible buyer might be, but several names have been brought up recently. One possible suitor mentioned in the past has been Flickr, but I highly doubt this would happen. According to Heather Champ, who works at Flickr and is also a co-founder of JPG Magazine, Flickr “are not and never have been interested in bidding on JPG.”
My 20,000th Photo Uploaded to Flickr
The photo above marks my 20,000th upload to Flickr. My first photo uploaded to Flickr was uploaded on January 2, 2005, four years ago. Over the past four years, sharing photos online has redefined how I view my own work. I have found inspiration from other photographers daily and I’ve met some truly, truly amazing artists, photographers and people participating in this new world of social photography along the way.
Thanks to everyone who over the last four years has stopped by my photos and left a note, a comment, a fave — touch from one human being to another. Your testimonials, your emails, your blog comments, spending a few hours walking around San Francisco or Oakland or Berkeley or Hollywood or Sacramento or Las Vegas or Portland or Seattle or New York or New Orleans or anyplace else our paths have crossed, in real life or online have held great meaning for me. I’ve appreciated the feedback, I’ve appreciated the friendship, I’ve appreciated the support. It’s made me a better photographer. It’s made me a better person.
20,000 uploads to Flickr represents 2% of a goal that I’ve come to define as part of this process of learning about myself and my photography.
I’d like to publish one million photographs online before I die.
This means that I’m planning on shooting, processing, and publishing photographs every single day for the rest of my life. It means that I have to live a long time and be careful to maintain a pace that makes this likely based on human life expectancy. It means living my life with a camera constantly by my side. Permanently attached to my being. Framing my world hour by hour as I move about this planet. Every day a new opportunity to find and present new beauty to the entire connected world.
I’m optimistic about what the future holds. A phrase I’ve repeated often is that the best photographs in the world have yet to be taken. This phrase isn’t meant to discount the amazing work of so many great photographers of yesteryear that have paved the way for the world of photography today. Rather, it’s meant in a spirit of hope. Hope that tomorrow will bring still more opportunities to capture the human condition and the beauty around us. Hope in an evolutionary creative vision that lives in all of us and that is constantly finding new ways to express things artistically. Hope and a belief that in technological advances are born even greater ways to help us achieve our artistic passions.
And on the continuing ride that the next 40 years or so may have in store for me, I’m excited about how much of my life will overlap with the people that I continue to have the good fortune to run across in this world. As much as my photography allows me to constantly interact with people in the offline world, friends and strangers alike, as big a part of that overlap, at least for me, comes from this great big world of online photo sharing that we all share with such generosity.
Photographers Criminalised as Police ‘Abuse’ Anti-Terror Laws
Photographers criminalised as police 'abuse' anti-terror laws – Home News, UK – The Independent:
"'The car skidded to a halt like something out of Starsky & Hutch and this officer jumped out very dramatically and said 'what are you doing?' I told him I was photographing the building and he said he was going to search me under the Anti-Terrorism Act,' he recalled.
For Powell, this brush with the law resulted in five hours in a cell after police seized the lock-blade knife he uses to sharpen his pencils. His release only came after the intervention of the local MP, Simon Hughes, but not before he was handcuffed and his genetic material stored permanently on the DNA database."
More madness from the Photo Police. Photography is not a crime.
Thanks, Gary!
Netflix Watch Now Outages Hit Saturday Night
I was disappointed last night to spend over two hours, including three customer service calls (holding up to 20 minutes in one case), in order to try and get Netflix’s “Watch Now” service to work on my XBox 360.
On the first customer service call the rep suggested that my internet connection wasn’t fast enough. But with a UVerse fiber connection (and a speed test to verify) this was not the problem. On the second customer service call, the rep had me uninstall my XBox 360 memory files on my XBox 360 and reinstall them.
After about an hour and a half of trying to troubleshoot why my programming would just stop, I went to Twitter and searched for Netflix and found that there were several other people Twittering about having problems with “Watch Now” last night as well.
When I called Netflix the third time they confirmed that they were having problems with their watch now servers last night.
Overall I’ve been pretty happy with the Netflix Watch Now service so far. Fast forwarding and rewinding are a bit of a chore, but other than that, once you’re watching your show it’s seemed to work pretty well.
Having their service go out for much of last night (and a Saturday night at that) is a huge fail though. If Netflix wants people to seriously consider their service as an alternative to cable/satellite (and the market for Netflix is huge if you think about them that way), then they need to do a better job both with their main streaming service as well as their customer service when their service fails. Particularly being 20 minutes into a TV show and at a very tense point of the show, to have Netflix hang for two hours and fail (finally giving up in frustration) doesn’t score any points with trying to convince the wife on why this service is better than cable/satellite service.
Hopefully last night’s experience won’t be a repeated one for Netflix and hopefully it’s not just the tip of the iceberg in terms of their problems in meeting viewer demand for streaming content.
One Blogger’s Perspective of the Oakland Riots
fem.men.ist: Reportback From The Oscar Grant Protests/Riots.
I’ve been pretty carefully following various news reports and blog reports following the Oakland protest and riots this week. I thought this post by Richard at fem.men.ist was a particularly well written heartfelt first hand report of the scene on Wednesday night.
“So yeah, at this point I think i’m about ready to head back home now. I see friends Bea and Inez, and tell them that I have seen enough for tonight, and that i’m going home. A young sista overhears me, and says with a half joking voice “you should give me your candle then.” I turn and look at her.
“Do you really want my candle?” I can see that she has been crying all night.
“Yeah.”
“Blessings.” I reach out and give it to her, and she looks into my eyes and smiles in a way that warmed my whole soul.”
The Angry Whopper, Preferred by Angry Rioters Everywhere
The Angry Whopper, Flavor You’ll Burn For.
Saw this advert in the BART stations and on BART trains this morning. Something tells me this might not be the most appropriate advert campaign for Burger King to be running in the BART system right now given the rioting that’s been going on in Oakland and the anger that people have directed at BART.
Ironically, in the riots from the night before last, the McDonalds in downtown Oakland got trashed and had their windows broken while the Burger King on Broadway seemed to get by unscathed.
Quieter Night in Oakland Last Night
I spent a bit of yesterday afternoon shooting around Downtown Oakland and stayed down there until about 6pm or so. Things seemed much more peaceful, but there was still a lot of tension in the air. The above photo was taken from a group of peaceful protesters near the corner of Broadway and 14th Street.
A lot of police where still out and stores were boarding up their storefronts with plywood in anticipation of another night of violence when I left downtown. KTVU reports that later another smaller protest was out with people throwing some trash cans into Broadway and more arrests were made, but that last night was not near as violent as the night before.
From KTVU on last night:
“Police in riot gear shut down Broadway and other surrounding streets for a time after about 50 protesters tried to stop cars, threw trash cans into the street and lit several small fires while protesting the fatal New Year’s Day shooting of 22-year-old Oscar Grant by transit officer Johannes Mehserle at the Fruitvale BART station.
Officers in riot gear moved in to disperse the crowd and detained or arrested several people.
But the protests were calmer than the previous night when some 120 people were arrested following a rampage that damaged about 300 businesses and numerous cars.”
I suspect things may quiet down a bit for a while on the streets of Oakland, but I do worry that once former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle is brought to trial for the killing of Oscar Grant, that far more violent riots will erupt if he is acquitted of murder. I think the verdict of a trial like that will be watched very closely like the Rodney King verdict was, with people ready to take to the streets again if they don’t get the outcome that they want. I also think convicting an on duty cop of murder will be a very difficult thing for prosecutors to do.