Ag Ministerial: Grafitti on Local Businesses

I didn't expect the thread to go in this direction, but, as someone who has worked in downtown Sacramento since 1988, let me be clear: I found the overwhelming presence of the police, their crude efforts to suppress protest through the use of absurdly overwhelming numbers, unlawful arrests, vehicle impoundments for petty traffic offenses, the brandishing of weapons aimed towards protest marchers and the assault upon non-violent protesters on 12 and K on Tuesday an embarassment to the city.

For three days, we had to work in a paramilitary zone set up by law enforcement, and, appparently, under the complete control of law enforcement, as my complaints to the City Manager's Office, the Mayor's Office and the Superior Court engendered no immediate concern about what was happening in areas within their own jurisdiction. No one said, "Whoa, we better look into that!" or "Thanks for calling us, we'll find out what happening, and see if there is anything to be done."

There was no sense of urgency, and, in the case of the Mayor Heather Fargo's Office, I was told that I should call the City Manager, because he was the person responsible for the police. As Pat Buchanan used to say in this context, they were "hiding in the tall grass". Makes you wonder why Sacramento even bothers to have a mayoral election.

In other words, there was no apparent civilian authority in downtown Sacramento during the Ag Ministerial.

From my experience at a number of events, the police were more provocative than the protesters, although towards the end, even they seemed to recognize the absurdity of the situation.


--Richard Estes

You might wonder why there weren't more locals representing -well, speaking for myself... Between the brute force of the police (and we gotta live with them ... and depend on them - when everyone else gets to go home), and the F**K Every One and Every Thing attitude of the young anarchists like Juan up there - personally, I was afraid to leave my home, and for my children's safety as well. I gave bottled water and fruit from my garden to some protesters as they passed, and cheered them on,.... and I feel bad that I didn't do more, but I wasn't going to subject myself or my family to the "crossfire". Call me old fashioned - .... I guess I'll just continue to write letters and volunteer at my co-op - like I have always done, and know that at least I'm doing Something.

why were so many posts deleted?

You can talk about this, discuss it, even argue about it, but this thread had degenerated into a flame war with very little value. It began with a post that was inflamantory and contained external image links. We are wary of external image links because they can be used to track readers. So this post was hidden. Without that post, the reponses to it seemed quite inflammatory and so they received inflammatory responses. In the end, there was nothing left to do but pull several of the posts and try to start with some fresh discussion. This site is not here for people to sling insults at one another, it wastes our resources and our readers time. There are plenty of other sites in which people can yell at each other all they want. We don't usually hide so many comments but the unusual set of circumstances seemed to justify it in this case.