Category Archives: Adventures in Hacktivism

Anti-Iraq War/Anti-Feinstein March in San Francisco

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Time 8:30 am – On my way to “some kind of protest” going on at 555 Market Street.
I happen to have had the TV on the local news this morning, and it was treating some “protest” event as more of a traffic nuisance than anything. The news broadcast did, however, have time to show coverage of a dismal little anti-homosexual rally that took place at some church last night, which made me feel like taking a whack at covering whatever was going on in the financial district. (I was curious what wasn’t being reported on. Why would they show a taped rally from the night before instead of a live one as it was happening?)
Two more stops till Montgomery Street. I have absolutely no idea what to expect…
____ 30 minutes pass____
Wow! That hunch really paid off. It turns out that it was an anti-war/anti-Feinstein march and rally protesting what the protesters were claiming was that Diane Feinstein was directly profiting from Iraq-War defense contracts. (I haven’t had time to investigate and attempt to confirm these allegations one way or the other yet.) (Actually, what they were saying is that Diane accepted campaign contributions from the, in their view, questionable, McKesson Corp. I have since confirmed the connection between Feinstein and McKesson. The company contributed $6,750 to her last year, according to open secrets.org.)
A guy with a speakerphone explained that there were 20 people having a sit-in upstairs in the building at Feinstein headquarters.
The Cops were generally cool at the beginning — really cool in fact (as the pictures I post soon will demonstrate), but when the crowd started to congregate in front of the McKesson building, they soon threatened to arrest anyone touching the front doors. It looked like things were about to be uncool for a minute, definitely. One cop singled out one of the protesters, and said he wanted to talk to him privately. The guy quickly walked over to me and asked me if I would mind taping their conversation. I just nodded and kept filming.
I’m going over to use my buddies’ editing in about an hour to compress my footage and edit it into a few digestible chunks. Maybe the popular media will see fit to report on the event…
I’ll be uploading my footage soon!

Get Out There and Vote!

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As is often the case,
Ryan Junell has sent out an email articulating
my sentiments exactly.
This time, it’s about getting out there and VOTING TODAY!
Here’s where you can
find your polling place in the San Francisco Bay Area

http://sunset.ci.sf.ca.us/pollup3.nsf/searchdata?openform
Here’s where you can
read about state and local measures
in California
http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/election/guides/measures110502election.htm

——————————————————
AMBIVALENT SAN FRANCISCO DROPOUT -> VOTE NOVEMBER 5th!
——————————————————
if you are registered to vote, then dudes… you gotta
get out and vote. don’t slack. our activity is what
makes san francisco such a special place to live. here
are some voter stats in sf that I think are interesting.
we have one of the highest registered voter populations
in the country, though we are terrible at actually
showing up to vote. I recall about a fourth of us
actually showed up to vote in the last election. voting
is one very powerful and specific way of seeing our
values reflected in public policy. plus… it’s fun!
so… find your polling place

http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/election
(and click on “Polling Place Lookup”)
so… read about state/local measures

http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/election/guides/measures110502election.htm
——————————————————
San Francisco Registered Voter Stats – October 7, 2002
——————————————————
eligible 574,401
registered 441,654 (76.89%) !!!
democratic 244,309 (55.32%)
decl. to state 110,722 (25.07%)
republican 57,852 (13.10%)
green 13,095 (2.96%)
am. ind. 8,002 (1.81%)
libertarian 2,811 (0.64%)
natural law 1,044 (0.24%)
reform 1,046 (0.24%)
misc 2,773 (0.63%)
from
http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/ror_100702.htm

Handy Linked Rep Tables for the CA and NY Elections

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These tables are just an experiment I’ve been working on with my friend Jim Woolum over the last few months.
Each Senator/Congressperson’s listing (Senators are on the top, and then in alphabetical order) includes:
Name, Party, District, Date First Elected, Date Up For Reelection and direct links to competitor in tomorrow’s election, complete mailing addresses for both Legislative and District Offices, Voice Number, Fax Number, Email, and Major Funders.

California Reps.

New York Reps.
Please let me know if the information they contain is useful.
(lisarein@finetuning.com)
I also look forward to any general feedback regarding how they can be improved.
It is my goal to have tables like this for every state of the union. It’s part of a larger project I’m working on that I can’t talk about yet.
(Or I would have to kill me.)

A Thoughtful Letter From Ryan Junell

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Ryan Junell has given me permission to reprint a very thoughtful email he sent me earlier today.

I think it comes down to POWER and energy and fuel for our lifestyles.
I think if we want things to change we need to consider alternative, independent, sustainable fuel resources. we also need to tune into government and policy. and most importantly – we must REGISTER TO VOTE and ACTUALLY
SHOW UP TO VOTE. there’s a statewide election coming up on november
5th along with a few dozen local propositions. voting is EASY and
IMPORTANT. here’s the sf url for local stuff. there’s a link at the
bottom where you can register to vote online. do it.
http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/election

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Barlow Says: Stop What You’re Doing and Call Your Reps NOW!

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Look up your Rep’s fax and phone numbers here.
John Perry Barlow sent this out today…

If you have opened this e-mail today, Thursday, October 10, stop
reading it right now.
Drop your mouse and grab your phone.
Call the offices of your senators and representatives and tell them how you feel about their willingness to give “President” Bush blanket authorization to make war whenever and however he feels like it, renewable indefinitely. They may vote to do so as early as this evening.

He also cited this really cool quote from Mark Twain:

Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger, 1916, Ch.9

(Thanks, Cory)

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In a plane all day…

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Drat! I didn’t get much of the stuff from the Senate transcribed over the weekend due to my having to get ready to fly to Washington DC today for Wednesday’s Eldred argument.
Just know that on Friday in the House and Senate in particular there was a lot of talk about accountability to the people — about how questions about this War have not been answered to the members of the House and Senate’s satisfaction and therefore not to the people’s satisfaction — and that many of the committees put together to discuss and decide on some of the most critical issues surrounding the exact details of the situation still have not yet been provided with the information promised to them by the Defense and Intelligence Agencies that were assigned to the task.
There was also a strong urgency from the Senate to at least wait until we could invade with a proper international coalition. Also we would be going against the advice of a number of our own War experts if we invade now.
Damn I wish I had time to transcribe a bit more of the tape. I’m bringing it with me, maybe there’s a library or something somewhere I can use this week…
I’ll fish around for links online backing this stuff up, once I’m back online this evening.
Bush is going to come on television tonight and try to scare you into believing in this War. Don’t be fooled.

New Reasons For Not Going To Iraq

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Now it looks like the safety of our own troops during an invasion of Iraq is largely in question, and just plain hasn’t been thought out all that well yet.
There could be a ton of bogus equipment (including as many as 250,000 unaccounted for defective biohazard suits) that’s mixed in with the inventory shipped out to our active troops.
The Department of Defense Reps are also admitting that they are recalculating the risk because the old way of calculating the risk was inaccurate. Although they don’t want to commit to saying one way or the other yet until they are finished, they did admit that they no longer feel that the risk would clearly be “low” (their previous assessment) and in fact might be “high” but that they really don’t know yet because they’ve just come up with a new, better way of calculating the risk and they’re not done yet.
It’s worth watching and recording on CSPAN-HOUSE if you’ve got a VCR handy.