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Turd Reich: San Francisco dog owners lay minefield of poo for rightwing rally

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/24/san-francisco-dog-poo-protest-patriot-prayer-rally

When a group of far-right activists come to San Francisco to hold a rally this Saturday, they will be met by peace activists offering them flowers to wear in their hair.

Also, dog shit. Lots and lots of dog shit.

Hundreds of San Franciscans plan to prepare Crissy Field, the picturesque beach in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge where rightwing protest group Patriot Prayer will gather, with a generous carpeting of excrement.

“I just had this image of alt-right people stomping around in the poop,” Tuffy Tuffington said of the epiphany he had while walking Bob and Chuck, his two Patterdale terriers, and trying to think of the best way to respond to rightwing extremists in the wake of Charlottesville. “It seemed like a little bit of civil disobedience where we didn’t have to engage with them face to face.”

Tuffington, a 45-year-old artist and designer, created a Facebook event page based on the concept, and the dog owners of San Francisco responded in droves. Many have declared their intention to stockpile their shitpiles for days in advance, then deliver them in bags for the site. (The group is also planning to reconvene on Sunday to “clean up the mess and hug each other”.)

The presence of Patriot Prayer, whose “free speech” events in the Pacific north-west have frequently sparked violent street battles, in notoriously liberal San Francisco has city authorities on edge. Elected officials unsuccessfully pressured the National Park Service to deny the group a permit, and the police department is planning to deploy every available officer.

But for many San Franciscans, an unwelcome visit from members of the “alt-right” is an opportunity to fight back in the spirit of the city by the bay – with flower power, drag queens, a little creativity, and an assist from the animal kingdom.

Shannon Bolt, a behavior scientist who works at Crissy Field, intends to confront Patriot Prayer in the spirit of the Summer of Love. “As white supremacists and neo-Nazis gather in our midst, we’ll tune into the love frequency again and meet their hatred with flowers for their hair,” she wrote in a Facebook event description.

If security forces keep the protest and counter-protest separate, Bolt told the Guardian, “We will have to offer our Flowers Against Fascism to them symbolically.”

There will also be contingents of clowns, kayakers, cars, and kids – all hoping to use their particular strengths (humor, seaworthiness, the ability to monopolize parking spaces, and cuteness, respectively) to thumb their noses at hate.

“You have a significant number of people who would like to go and punch Nazis, and then you have people who think they should be entirely ignored,” said veteran labor and LGBTQ rights activist Cleve Jones. “In between you have all sorts of creative and crazy ideas. I kind of like that.”

Jones is working with local drag queen Juanita More to host a rally and march for equality beginning at Harvey Milk Plaza in the city’s Castro district. “There’s this desire to create fear,” he said of media coverage showing torch-wielding racists spewing hateful chants. “With these kinds of creative actions, we dispel fear. We say we’re going to fight you and we’re going to have a ball doing it and we’re going to laugh and love each other.”

Jones is also taking inspiration from the German town of Wunsiedel, where residents have responded to an annual neo-Nazi march by sponsoring an “involuntary walkathon” that raises funds for anti-extremist causes.

He is raising money for ten local organizations that reflect the diversity of San Francisco, including the Transgender Law Center, Disability Rights and Education Defense Fund, and Muslim Advocates. A similar Wunsiedel-inspired effort has been launched by Jewish Bar Association of San Francisco, which has raised more than $100,000 for the the Southern Poverty Law Center under the banner “Adopt-a-Nazi”.

“When the dust has settled and the smoke has cleared,” Jones said, “I hope that the appearance of rightwing extremists in San Francisco will raise a significant amount of money for the people they seek to harm.”
 

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
And we thought SF had a problem with shit everywhere before. Talking bout the right wing twats.
 

riotous

Banned
Dog shit on a beach?

Isn't that terrible for any wildlife that might be clinging to survival?

Also.. other people might want to use the beach after.. this seems misguided.
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
I feel there are more sanitary ways to protest racist assholes. Some poor fuck is gonna be tasked with cleaning it up afterwards
 

Oppo

Member
Dog shit on a beach?

Isn't that terrible for any wildlife that might be clinging to survival?

Also.. other people might want to use the beach after.. this seems misguided.

hah.

goose/seagull shit outweighs any amount of dog shit on any given day at the beach.
 
pile_of_shit.gif
 
Crissy field is a great place and that dog shit will be there long after the Nazi's have smeared it around the place....this is short sighted.
 
Dog shit on a beach?

Isn't that terrible for any wildlife that might be clinging to survival?

Also.. other people might want to use the beach after.. this seems misguided.

I doubt any of the rallys will be on the beach itself. It's really more like a big lawn and a walking path that people actually use for stuff like this. The article is a little misleading in that regard.
 

Pejo

Member
As much as I hate Trump supporters or whatever, doing this is just terrible for everyone.

Yea while funny in concept, I feel like this one shouldn't have made it past "you know what would be hilarious....?" RIP in feces, Crissy Field.
 
The right always yelling about bussed in protestors, but these jokers are coming in from oregon.

Can these clowns even survive in San Francisco? You always hear about them saying how they'd never step foot there. I honestly think they might start passing out from all the "homosekshals" and debauchery and tolerance and liberals as soon as they enter city limits.
 
The AP is reporting that the group cancelled the rally. Guess they didn't want to deal with this shit.

edit: article http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Organizers-cancel-Saturday-s-far-right-rally-in-11961550.php

The leader of a right-wing group that had planned a Saturday rally at Crissy Field in San Francisco said Friday that he had decided to cancel the event and hold a news conference instead.

On Facebook Live, Joey Gibson of Patriot Prayer said the news conference would be held at 2 p.m. at Alamo Square in the Western Addition. He said the same speakers who were going to appear at Crissy Field would be there.

Gibson and other supporters appearing with him on the Facebook feed said they'd changed their plans because of fears that violent protesters using ”black bloc" tactics would attend their Crissy Field rally. They also said the speakers and bands slated to perform at the rally had been ”harassed."
They're holding a "news conference" instead.
 
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