The People fight Back!!!!

pstrongThe "People" Protest for the right to be heard about a city budget that was created by the People, for the People..br / /strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/412/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Dave McGuire (Observant Participant Project/PNN)/p pThe San Francisco Board of Supervisors got a shock at 2:30pm on Monday July 16 whenbr / chants from several hundred demonstrators (myself included) disrupted the weekly Board meeting /p pThe demonstration shut down the Board of Supervisors chamber for aboutbr / an hour while sheriffs deputies conferred with Board Pre. Tom Ammiano andbr / city fixer Bill Lee (Chief Admin. Officer) on what to do./p pThe protest was against the failure of the Board to pass the People'sbr / Budget which includes funding for health care, homeless services, housingbr / and jobs for poor folks These will now have to be funded by "addbacks"br / which is at the discretion of each supervisor./p pThe fifteen people arrested included representatives from PODER, Mission SRObr / Collaborative, Homeless Prenatal Program and other community based organization who are members of the Peoples Budget Collaborative. Including Rebecca Vilkomerson,br / Bill Sorro, Rene Saucedo, representatives from from St. Peters Housingbr / Committee, David McGuire of Mission Agenda, Carl Kramer of the Living Wage Coalition, comic Bruce Allison,br / Riva Enteen of the National Lawyers Guild.Several other grassroots organizations were present in solidarity with the protest, such as POOR Magazine, POWER, PODER, Network Ministries and many more./p p Five men and ten women weretaken away by sheriff's deputies with their hands behind them tied verybr / tightly with tie-wraps/p pProtesters had whistles and blew them. Most of the press was kept out ofbr / the actual chamber, but there was some press in the chamber, as well asbr / community videoactivists whose work can be seen at: a href="http://www.videoactivism.org" title="www.videoactivism.org"www.videoactivism.org/a/p pThe fifteen protesters were transported to 850 Bryant (Hall of Justice)br / and held for about five hours. The women were held an extra two hoursbr / because they were singing organizing songs. They were booked,br / fingerprinted, photographed, given an American cheese sandwich andbr / released; at 9 p.m. for the men, 11pm. for the women. Tuesday morning,allbr / but one of the protestors returned to 850 Bryant for arraignment andthebr / charges were dropped at about 11:30 a.m./p pThis was the first CD (civil disobedience) inside the main Board ofbr / Supervisors chamber since about 1955 when the House Un-American Activitiesbr / Committee held hearings there during the McCarthy era, and anti-HUACbr / protestors were washed down the main steps of the City Hall withbr / firehouses, in a famous tableau./p pSupervisor Gavin Newsom sat writing a letter during the one-hourbr / interruption while other Supervisors looked on with curiosity and apparentbr / disbelief./p pi editor's note: It is interesting to me that after 3 years ofbr / tireless press advisories, press conferences and media events , it took civil disobedience to get the two words;br / People's Budget, actually said together and reported on in mainstream print, radio and television media/i/p p/p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p