The Hooligans cut loose once the march hit the Bay Bridge, figuring there was little chance of getting arrested. Red paint splashed to drip like blood from the girders. Slogans and symbols were spray painted everywhere; Revolution Now!; Circle A; BdN; HardCore Against War; Omega A; Destroy What Destroys You!; Destroy Power, Not People!; Circle E, Squatters and Feminist symbols. Autonomists and anarchists glued a large banner reading: End The War! Abolish Capitalism! Smash The State! REVOLUTION NOW! to the northern side of the bridge’s steel girders. When they reached Yerba Buena Island Greg could look back and see how vast their numbers actually were. Had the Israelites looked like this coming out of Egypt? Were the slave armies of Spartacus as exuberant? Had the Crusades inspired such awe? Had the Chinese PLA on the Long March looked as formidable?
“Ya know?” Larry mused, “if we all lined up, four abreast, and marched in step, we could shake this bridge apart.”
“Now there’s the power of the people,” David said, triumphant.
“No,” Smoke laughed, “There’s the power of organization.”
“Yah,” Greg said, “I heard that if you could get all the cats in the world together, four abreast, to walk in step, they could do the same thing.”
They could see the San Francisco crowd as they approached, and if anything, it was bigger, filling the Embarcadero and stretching all the way up Market. In their midst stood a large black column as well. Gulls wheeled quizzically as the two marches merged in round after round of cheers and chants.
“The People, United, Will Never Be Defeated!”
“Justice Yes, War No! US Out Of Mexico!”
“Un Pueblo, Sin Fronteras!”
The integrated Hooligans now pushed their own chants.
“What Do We Want? Revolution! When Do We Want It? Now!”
“Squat, Don’t Rent! Overthrow The Government!”
“Smash The Patriarchy, Smash The State! The Future Is Ours, And It’s Gonna Be Great!”
“Class War! Not Imperialist War!”
There had to be over a million people, easy, on the streets. The Hooligans numbered at least 50,000. Media helicopters vied for airspace with police choppers. Soft galleon clouds played background to the jockeying swarm. The assembled forces of law-and-order looked puny compared to the assembled multitude.
“Yo,” Smoke waved to the combined ASP/MDRG affinity, “Come on. Troubles brewing already.”
He lead them through the crowd and, along with a surge of other black clad Hooligans and fellow travelers, they poured up some side street to Union Square. There, a confrontation was in the making. About four or five thousand American Front skins and fascist Nulls had assembled in a pro-war counter-demonstration in and around Union Square’s hedge manicured walkways. Nulls shaved their heads and bodies entirely, wore uni-style gray coveralls, and went in for plating; metal plates on the skull, arms or ribs drilled and secured right into the bone. They had taken industrial/noise music to the depths of metal crossover and Nazism, using the Emo-Sound technologies as a bludgeon to hammer every Null concert into a miniature Nurnberg rally. Some twenty thousand Hooligans quickly took Powell and Geary to push against a thin police line, screaming against the provocations of Nazi skin and Null sieg heils.
Inevitably, a bottle was tossed, and for long minutes a barrage of glass and bricks flew both ways across the police, who were helpless in the middle. Then the police line broke and the Hooligans rushed the fascists. Batons appeared from sleeves and heads, plated or hairless, got cracked. Steel-toed docs and brass knuckled fists did their job, and the fascists scattered for their lives. Greg and Larry were not on the front lines, but they were close enough to feel the rush of confrontational adrenaline peak through exhilaration when the skins and Nulls broke to flee. Not to be cut off, the black clad Hooligans halted their pursuit and instead, returned to the march’s main body now on the move, chanting their victory:
“No War! No KKK! No Fascist USA!”
The march security did not look at all pleased. But, they could do nothing.
“We’re gradually going to filter back to the back of the march,” Smoke passed the word to the affinity members as Market moved past around curb-to-curb people,” Well split off before the park.”
The two marches finally consolidated, the behemoth anti-war protest edged up to Van Ness. So massive was the crowd that the police made spot decisions to let them have not just Van Ness but Franklin as well, and not just Fell when that proved a bottleneck, but also Oak, Page and Grove to get the marchers to the Panhandle as quickly as possible. In the middle of the dawdling, black-as-night/thick-as-fog throngs, Greg watched a line of several thousand Killer Klowns conga through the march and laughed.
Contingents abounded; Labor Unionists Opposed To U.S. Intervention, Gays and Lesbians Against the War, Parents For Peace, Interfaith Communities for Negotiation, Professionals for Social Responsibility, Youth Against Imperialism, and others sported their own signs and banners among vast crowds of the unaffiliated. The chants throughout the march reflected the liberal/socialist/autonomist divisions of the participants, often cutting across such contingents. “What Do We Want? Peace! When Do We Want It? Now!” and “Peace Now!” rang out from liberal quarters, edging into “Jobs and Justice, Yes! War, No! US Out Of Southern Mexico!” from socialist ranks, who also preferred “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” in English and Spanish. And the Hooligans were suitably offensive. “Disobey Orders! Tear Down All Borders!” and “Fuck The War, Smash The State! Capitalism Is What We Really Hate!” Sometimes the entire crowd began a chant, only to split it up in the middle.
“1,2,3,4...We Don’t Want Your Bloody/Imperialist/ Fucking War!”
“5, 6, 7, 8...We Don’t Want Your Warfare State/ Imperialist State/Organize And Smash The State!”
The streets’ buildings walled up and reverberated the chants to the maximum possible distortion. People stood at windows and on rooftops, many waving hands, peace signs and fists. Ahead of Greg a couple of fellow-traveling young poseur Raspies walked with the Hooligan gangs, their boutique capes draped in cold cuts instead of raw chunks of bloody meat. He caught the glint of a Spook’s brainstim socket, and the droll little computer perched on her shoulder with feeds into the socket. A Feral swarm carried a wildly colored banner that proclaimed:
“Midnight Winds Are Landing At The End Of Time.”
The storm black Hooligans took Van Ness, but never made the jog off to the park. Instead, they massed, some one hundred thousand strong, up to the hastily formed police blockade on Van Ness and Grove, then east back around on Market. They stopped in fact. March peace monitors, realizing what was happening, evaporated from around the autonomous columns to beat hasty retreats up Grove, Fell, Oak and Page with the march’s stragglers. People pulled on masks, bandanas, ski masks and balaklavas. Sunglasses hid eyes. Adrenaline once more raced through Greg, somewhere in the middle of that black mass, as he pulled up his own ‘kerchief. He watched a gauntly beautiful girl, a rare, anti-war Null, pull her large black scarf over her gold electroplated cheek plates before putting on his shades in synch with hers. Several mobile PA’s deep in the crowd broadcast a similar message.
“We won’t end the war in Mexico with peaceful marches escorted by the cops. We won’t end the war with peaceful law-abiding rallies in the park, no matter how many of us there are. We won’t end the war until we stop the war machine no matter what it takes. By whatever means necessary. Our first step is to stop this city and every city across the country, by seizing the streets. Liberating the streets with our bodies. The streets belong to the people. We are the people...”
The autonomous columns partly ringed the downtown civic center so that the few police reinforcements not engaged with the march had to be spread thin. Greg could only see clearly the action at Grove and Van Ness from where he stood in the midnight crowds. During the announcement, several squads of riot cops hustled into place through cop cars and riot vans to further brace the metal police barricades
blocking off Van Ness north and Grove east. They were followed by a neurolaser bank on wheels. The front line of masked Hooligans pulled out their batons in response and held them, hand over hand, to form a counter line, with perhaps two yards between the two formations.
“This crowd is declared an illegal assembly,” the police officer announced, his voice echoing across the police line as a battery of neurolasers on Van Ness whined up on poles between two of the riot vans, “You are ordered to disperse. If you do not clear the streets in fifteen minutes, you will be arrested.
“Kill Cops, Fight In The Streets, Smash Anything That Looks Elite!” the crowd roared in response. A bottle was thrown. For the next ten minutes, a rain of bottles, bricks, metal junk, and garbage pelted the cops, who kept their shields up in defense formation. The bank of neurolasers then flared into action.
Bolts of wire thin, intense cobalt blue light machine gunned into the crowd. Most were absorbed into the blackness of clothing or harmlessly into flesh. Many more were deflected off mirrored sunglasses, but occasionally, a lucky bolt shaved sideways behind the protective shades or hit a person not wearing glasses at all. The victims collapsed into violent seizures, convulsions that were known to last twenty minutes and occasionally resulted in death. Designated affinity medics quickly carried the spasming individuals to the sidelines. And, the inky sea of Hooligans opened for theater.
“Smash The Patriarchy, Smash The State! Capitalism Is What We Really Hate!”
Five bizarre figures stepped into the hail of needled, scintillating neurobolts. Mirror dancers. Each dressed in long multicolored robes and turbans, tiny mirrors sewn into every inch of their clothing, and their mime white faces covered by large mirrored glasses. These apparitions boogied and dervished in the neurobolt rain. The crowd control device tried to adjust back to the mob, but each time it did, the mirror dancers moved to intercept the laser light. Neurobolts shuddered off in all directions, most back onto the line of cops, but many spitting up into the air and angling off everywhere.
The barrage of rocks and glass started again, aimed at the neuro-laser battery. With marbles and ball bearings from slingshots, the assault did damage before two errant bolts hit their marks; one a police sergeant behind the lines and the other a plainclothes cop on the roof of the modern, rounded, glass and concrete Performing Arts Center. The cop on the roof collapsed into convulsions and before his fellows could grab him, he jerked off the top of the building and fell into the crowd. A cheer rang up and out. The cops shut down the neurolasers.
“Class War! Not Imperialist War!”
This is an illegal assembly! Disperse immediately! If you do not disperse, you will...”
A piece of paving connected with the helmeted head of the cop giving the warning, and dropped him.
“What do we want? Dead Cops! When do we want them? Now!”
The riot police did not wait. The back line on Van Ness and Grove dropped to one knee and hefted riot guns under shield protection to launch volley after volley of tear gas canisters arching into the crowd. With remarkable agility, autonomous clusters moved to open up space or to snap up the sputtering canisters before they hit pavement and broke into hundreds of spraying pieces, to throw the intact canisters back at the cops. Jackets were also used as impromptu trampolines to return the police volley. Still other clusters turned onto the parked cars immersed in the mass; smashing them up, turning them over, heaving them into a counter barricade well behind the Hooligan front line, and setting them ablaze. Soon, thick white clouds of tear gas and sharp black, oily clouds of burning cars veiled the sun. Howling anarchists and autonomists careened and police back lines maneuvered through this thick air.
“Revolution Now!”
Three lines of closely packed cops on Grove began to advance against the still extant Hooligan line, shields up against the crowd’s fuselage, truncheons swinging. The autonomist line started to fall back, then pivoted, holding one corner while the other corner swung into retreat. The cop formation fell for it, followed, pivoted out in response without thinking... Instantly hundreds of people made the end run. They poured around the police lines to surround them, but not attack them. Other Hooligans held the police lines on Van Ness at bay. As numerous baton holding Hooligans menacingly ringed the Grove Street cops, thousands stormed into the civic center; around the neurolaser battery, over empty cop cars, around empty riot vans, and just behind other cops in flight.
Greg and Larry had kept close to the MDRG and Smoke as the riot began. They moved as Smoke directed to clear space from around the mirror dancers, and then the people intercepting tear gas canisters, surging with the crowd as if on the edge of the Pit at some retro hardcore show, with the rest of the ASP affinity in tow. When the MDRG bolted for the end run, Greg and Larry were sheared off from the rest of the affinity. Greg glanced back to see David, Beth and the others too far behind. THRUSH had already seized the front of the Health Department. The rest of the crowd, along with other Hooligans from different breech points, sprayed out across the plaza, congealed into streams heading across Polk Street, then over concrete walkways and grass islands of trees for the State and Federal Buildings. Smoke and the MDRG’s route was much shorter; up to the gilded, Roman style city hall complete with ornate, coppery green dome, to join the crowd gathering as civil servants hastily shut and locked three sets of elaborately ornamented double doors. Glass doors. Hooligans quickly shattered them, forcing those inside to retreat behind two guards, their guns drawn. Suddenly, something cold was slipped into Greg’s hand.
“What the...” Greg said, and looked down to see Smoke lighting the molotov in his grasp.
“Throw it!” Smoke yelled and Greg did. The flaming bottle arched beautifully, right through the broken front door, where it blossomed into burning autumn leaf brilliance. Several more gasoline bombs followed and the building’s fire alarm sounded, accompanied by its sprinklers feebly trying to douse the flames. Additional gas bombs kept the fire hot until it caught despite the sprinklers, and the building’s lobby wrinkled up in fire. In that shimmering spectacle, all that Greg could see was a vision of himself heaving a molotov cocktail through the city hall doors, into the faces of police guards who could have shot him dead. But didn’t.
“Come on,” Smoke gestured, “Let’s keep moving.”
Sooty smoke billowed and roiled across the wide plaza. Autonomous shadows sprinted about in the low, dirty clouds, brandishing batons and fiery torches. An autonomous skateboard wing screamed past them, weaving in and out of the rolling smoke, the dark figures riding them on a skate-and-destroy mission. Other clusters did a fine job smashing up the other buildings, so the MDRG plus Greg and Larry decided to find the streets. Greg thought he saw, vaguely, a throng laboriously pushing something large and wheeled through the charnel haze. It must have been his imagination that he saw them wearing robes and pushing forward a large wooden wagon supporting a many-handed idol streaming incense, just before the acrid smoke closed in around them. Apparently the black columns along the civic center’s southeast side, instead of storming that, had opted to rampage up, down and away from Market as those on Van Ness broke through. As a consequence, most of the cops had had to follow. They easily busted through the remaining few, quite scared police on the south east side, running past the mounted statue of Simon Bolivar and through the burning UN plaza, to join the riot in progress.
Virulent black smoke drifted in streamers from the surrounding streets, accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. Glass, burning trash, flaming trash cans and dumpsters, overturned and gutted cars, and fragments of bricks, stones, cans and bottles littered the street all about them as they ran. In a fury, Larry picked up a burning trash can, and with help from Eric, put it right through the front window of a so far untouched clothing boutique. Eric grinned and pulled open his long black coat to reveal three fully loaded molotovs strapped to the inside of his coat flaps, the soaked rag fuses wrapped in baggies held by rubber bands. Larry gleefully grabbed one and snapp
ed off the baggie. Eric lit it with a flick of his lighter, and Greg’s friend hurled it into the shop. Images of the molotov leaving his own hand weighted Greg’s mind, as did the guards’ guns still pointed at the ceiling. As did the wino’s murder the night before. The molotovs explosion slapped the air. Dark figures moved in and out of the wreathing curtains of choking smoke in every direction. Bright flames danced.
They trashed a Mercedes dealership, shattering the plate glass windows through the bars. Then Smoke, Jim and Darrel used their slingshots to take out as many windshields as possible. Up the street aways, a fancy tobacconist had closed his doors, but had remained to wait out the riot’s storm. Their rocks through his window were met with a shotgun blast that scattered them, but hurt no one. Smoke regrouped them half a block away. Not content with letting it go, he found a full plastic trash can in a back alley. He doused it with one of Eric’s molotovs, lit it and then dared a run by, tossing the flaring can through the broken window, all over the expensive, cancerous herbs the shopkeeper desperately tried to salvage.
As they approached an intersection of two wide, smoke throttled boulevards, a mass of perhaps two hundred Killer Klowns languidly drove by, crossing their path on circus bikes; unicycles, brightly colored bicycles, and wildly bannered and flagged tandem cycles. Some of the Klowns honked their wacky horns and waved while others stood up from their seats to rapid fire their slingshots through the surrounding car and storefront windows. The MDRG plus Greg and Larry were in the middle of doing damage to the posh facade of a wisely empty jewelry shop when a squad of six cops in full riot gear spun around a corner at the end of the block. Catching their hooliganism, the cops charged.
“Split up!” Smoke yelled as they all bolted in the same direction. But when it was clear that Greg and Larry would be left behind, Smoke made an instant decision.
“Go on,” Smoke turned to his fellow gang members, “You can handle things. I’ll stay with the tenderfoots.”
End Time Page 30
