lansbury

I am a blue supremacist.

Giantaxe

I hope there's not going to be an "It's all kicking off in San Francisco, CA" thread after this weekend's rally here. I will be peacefully marching to the Civic Center counter-rally that's well away from the Crissy Field "Patriot Prayer Freedom Rally" (sic). I do like the list of prohibited items issued by the National Park Service for that rally:- no selfie-sticks but of course guns are fine. Only in America.

Edit" I'm incorrect; they've now added firearms to the rally permit banned list. I'm sure that's going to upset some folks.

Octang Frye

I heard there's a minefield of dog poop being laid down.
Will try and find a source.

Leslie

You'll be looking for a dog.

Octang Frye

Nice try, witchety woman. Your "humour" has no effect on me.

FlaviusAetius

I thought "witchety woman's" humour was both clever and spot-on.

Seems the rally was a bust by some standards. It's not "kicking off in SF." CNN must be disappointed, with some of the protesters/counterprotesters chatting and a few of them even hugging. What's this world coming to?

Giantaxe, did you make it to the park?

scrubbedexpat099

CNN are covering Texas, one story at a time.

Giantaxe

I made it to Civic Center. Fun peaceful rally with Michael Franti. Good to see so many folks peacefully protesting. The Patriot Prayer group bailed on their Crissy Field rally and "press conference" plans so the city was quiet. The only hint of aggravation I saw was some antifa people marching past a line of heavily armed police who most certainly weren't going to allow them to get access to the freeway.

dc koop

Now that pulling down statues of assholes is in vogue how about extending it beyond the civil war. Could start with those of Charles Lindberg, the flying Nazi.

dc koop

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dc koop

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FlaviusAetius

Good to see a potential confrontation resolve peacefully.

But will we ever again see a Speaker's Corner in the US (as there was in Berkeley until 1964 and in Cleveland) where someone can express non-PC ideas in public without having antifa,or other assorted thugs, threatening them with physical violence?

Are we seeing the approaching end of the free expression of ideas in this country as a whole? On many or most university campuses free speech has already been, for all intents and purposes, effectively extinguished when speech that doesn't conform is labeled "hate speech," and that carries consequences.

scrubbedexpat099

Not in anybody heres lifetime.

scrubbedexpat099

Black-clad anarchists storm Berkeley rally, assault 5 – The Denver Post

BERKELEY, Calif. — Black-clad anarchists on Sunday stormed into what had been a largely peaceful Berkeley protest against hate and attacked at least five people, including the leader of a politically conservative group who canceled an event a day earlier in San Francisco amid fears of violence.

The group of more than 100 hooded protesters, with shields emblazoned with the words “no hate” and waving a flag identifying themselves as anarchists, busted through police lines, avoiding security checks by officers to take away possible weapons. Then the anarchists blended with a crowd of 2,000 largely peaceful protesters who turned up to demonstrate in a “Rally Against Hate” opposed to a much smaller gathering of right-wing protesters.

FlaviusAetius

This is what concerns me about the death of freedom of speech and assembly in this country, where the mere threat that left-wing thugs from anti-fa will create mayhem is sufficient for the mayor of Berkeley to call on the University to cancel addresses by Milo Yiannopolis, Ann Coulter and Ben Shapiro. This is the Left shutting down free speech and we need to hear the Democratic Party denounce and distance itself from antifa and the black blocs. Or are they the Party's tip of the spear?

From the SF Chronicle:

In the aftermath of a right-wing rally Sunday that ended with anarchists chasing attendees from a downtown park, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin urged UC Berkeley on Monday to cancel conservatives’ plans for a Free Speech Week next month to avoid making the city the center of more violent unrest.

“I’m very concerned about Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter and some of these other right-wing speakers coming to the Berkeley campus, because it’s just a target for black bloc to come out and commit mayhem on the Berkeley campus and have that potentially spill out on the street,” Arreguin said, referring to militants who have also been called anti-fascists or antifa.