SF Breakaway Marches : Indybay

Some immediate thoughts about today's breakaway march:

Unpermitted marches are now a permanent feature of Bay Area protests.
The recent breakaway marches that began late last year have accomplished their goal: changing the protest landscape just enough so people understand that an unpermitted march will happen at major demos. When random people began announcing the beginning of today's march, it was clear that no one group can take responsibility for these marches. Like in Europe or other places, San Francisco will now have acts of civil disobedience as a default complement to permitted shows of numbers. With the U.S. about to declare war on the world, it is up to us to stop our government. And, more broadly, to shutdown a system of global apartheid and capitalist destruction.
We need tight affinity groups who can work together as a spontaneous network.
Today's march was unique because the aggressive actions of the police forced us into at least 3 different segments which went in separate directions. Each of these segments was roughly divided along affinity group lines with many more unaffiliated people. With the understanding that unpermitted protests will almost always happen (given prior announcements on mailing lists, indymedia, etc), we can create a protest culture which does not rely on centralization or any kind of "spokescouncil" or attempts to violate our security through formal organizing. Given this, we should all be tightening up with our closest comrades.
SFPD is running a red squad which is spying on us and openly attacking us beyond their law.
Aside from the fact that SFPD has been violating its own policy when assigning drug war thugs to be undercovers at our protests, recent articles on Indymedia and the SF Bay Guardian prove that political police are fully operational within SFPD, led by Richard Bruce. The more we begin to operate like a network of groups, the more confidence and numbers we will have. The police are lumbering and slow. And when they aren't lumbering and slow, they fuck up and brutalize random tourists who are shopping. It isn't that they are stupid -- it is that our organizational structure allows us to win everytime we do it right.
Another war is possible in San Francisco.
Today's demo was a sometime-awkward transition for the breakaway marches heading into the start of war. At least in the short term, we are heading into days of widespread civil disobedience and emergency protests. There won't be traditional "breakaways" happening but we have proven that something will happen. Someone will call a black bloc. Someone will bring a sound system. Someone will bring anti-capitalist banners and be ready with the rest of us to go outside of the protest cages. And many more of us will be organizing in tight groups with tight internal security, and we'll all understand what needs to be done. A destabilized domestic situation is a direct and immediate threat to Bush's plans of global conquest. Let's make history.