This comes on the same day that the Congressional Coalition’s roundtable on international adoption snubbed the inclusion of adoptees and birth parents from its discussion of adoption. (They were only including those that benefit from the industry.) It really seems as if women are really being boxed into a corner here. Have the baby and if you can’t deal, just give it up.

Thanks you for your hard work. Greatly looking forward to your coverage.

Looks like NOW can recycle their March 2010 press release titled “Obama Breaks Faith with Women” in which they stated: “President Obama campaigned as a pro-choice president, but his actions today suggest that his commitment to reproductive health care is shaky at best.”

I agree. Is there a way to make it clear to the police that their salaries are actually paid by the occupiers/taxpayers and not the banks? If the police continue to choose to defend the banks, then they can become mercenaries for BofA/Chase etc. and the taxpayer will no longer fund overtime, etc.

The irony that the Treasurer of the Blues Museum signed on to violently evict occupiers who are collectively voicing our current blues is too much.

We know that there has been a crackdown of protests ever since the Battle of Seattle, but I’m not sure if this qualifies as BART riders know that there are valid safety concerns when there are protestors on TOP of the BART cars in the tunnel (as happened in the original protest) and lawsuits would abound should any one become injured – protester or commuter. Plus, any one who lives in SF is well aware that disrupting the commute is bound to ignite tempers on all sides of the debate and create division in lieu of unification. After all, the commuters are not the ones who have the power to change BART policy and certainly did not order the cell phone service to be shutoff. You state that “Commuters upset over the closing of stations by protests should complain to BART.” Well, using that same logic, the protesters should have held their protest at BART offices as well and not with the public that simply uses the service. For e.g., a commenter at SFGate was a disabled person who stated that not only was their commute completely disrupted, but their life as well since the extra commute time takes away from the time they use in the evening to recover from the toll that working takes each day on their body.

You say “BART took an action that collectively punished all who would be in those four stations during those few hours,” yet the protestors seemed to have done the same thing to commuters by collectively punishing them for the actions of BART officials.

Your post also seems to minimize any statements made by commuters who did have the experience of being negatively affected by the protest by labeling them “crotchety older men” and “soccer mom” yet, I’m sure you would take offense to the use of such stereotypical labels if someone were reporting about you.

You also only speak of the Anonymous’ physical protest at the station and fail to mention that the virtual protest in which Anonymous published the private information of 2,000 ordinary citizens. This also caused great disruption to the lives of ordinary individuals. This happened to someone I know who is not a crotchety old man or a soccer mom. In fact, she is a very progressive artist and posts:
“Thanks a-holes at Anonymous, for choosing to share my name, phone #, password and address as your protest against BART. Gee – I guess I deserve the calls I have already started to get from creepy phishing schemers as just dessert, since it was MY fault -and all the other private citizens – whose information you also gave away today – that BART shut off cell phone service last Thursday. I was in agreement with your p…”
Again, the “protest” was supposedly about free speech, but managed to violate the privacy of individuals.
I am not posting this to be a troll, but because there were real repercussions to ordinary people who did not have the authority which the protesters opposed and because I passionately support our free speech rights and don’t want to see misguided protests. These people deserved a truer representation than they received in the post – they were not simply “irritated” or “duped.”
That said, it’s good to see a discussion of preemptive police tactics regarding protests.