As the cops — with their sticks out — tried to rush inside the venue, where was playing, a bunch of us formed a sort-of human wall to try to keep them at bay. As I stood chest to chest with the ranking cop, arguing in each other’s faces heatedly, I thought, “This is like a SCENE FROM THE BOOK!”

The release party for On The Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of The City at Counterpulse turned out to be a real blow out — as inspiring and chaotic as many of the illegal punk rock shows and activist events I describe in the book itself. Because so much of the material in the book describes the work of a large community fighting together against gentrification and the war over these past ten years, I felt very strongly that I didn’t want the first book party to be a typical author event that would be all about me. It didn’t seem fitting to stand up and read for an hour out of the book when there were so many other people involved. So, for the release party, I tried to get many of the folks who are in the book to come do presentations in some way about what they’re doing now. What I didn’t count on was that there would be a line of 75-100 folks around the block who couldn’t get in to the overcapacity space, or that it would be that one insanely hot day that SF has every 5 years. With the heat and the crowd, it was pretty crazy.

In the style of the 949 Market Squat shows detailed in the book, the release party was all about “What we’re for, not what we’re against” in its presentation. There was a mountain of excellent free vegan food, provided by Kaliflower and cooked by underground chef, Leif Hebendal. There was a wall of flyers from the past ten years above the food table. Next to that on the wall was an enormous silkscreened tapestry, designed and sewn by Zara Thustra and Ivy Jeanne. Then Heather Renee Russ of provided a wall of her excellent photos from the same era — photos that featured lots of protests and dancing. Prints of parts of the tapestry were available for free, as was a pile of old copies of the Turd-Filled Donut, and Sy Loady and Frog’s new street paper, The Orifice.

Next up were the speakers. Due to the heat and lack of oxygen, I declined to read. Instead I showed a slide show of some of the events from the book and talked about our Mayor’s new whiz kid idea to fix homelessness in SF (this time he aims to put old parking meters around town that people can put change into instead of giving cash to panhandlers!) Then Mary Howe and Ro Giuliano from SF Needle Exchange talked about how the exchange was formed ten years ago and what they’re doing today to keep providing their invaluable public health service despite the anti-homeless climate in the city today. (The SFNE is in the book. An old interview with Matty Luv and Ro details how they went and did the exchange illegally and were arrested several times doing it until the cops finally negotiated with them and they became a legally sanctioned exchange!) Next, Paul Boden founder and former director of the Coalition On Homelessness came up to talk about how the COH formed with a small group of pissed off homeless folks 20 years ago, how they’ve never taken government funding, and about the group of homeless folks known as United Poor People who were camped out at that very moment in front of City Hall in Portland, OR. he got everyone really pumped up. Next up was Antonio Roman-Alcala from Alemany Farm, who talked about how some folks just sort-of took over and started farming the abandoned Alemany Farm next to the Alemany Projects in 2005. Today, they, too are sanctioned officially by the City.

Bands came next — Shotwell, talking about Prop 98; then Black Rainbow. The cops came during the Judy Experience, in the show’s last 15 minutes. Luckily everyone was so pumped up from all the anti-police speeches that the crowd jumped into action to try to keep the cops from illegally entering the space. There were, of course, several activist attorneys familiar with working street demos on hand, too. But for a minute it seemed real tense. When the music stopped, though, the cops seemed satisfied and left. Several people, of course, joked that I had called them myself to make the show look cooler!

Big thanks to everyone who waited in line for a chance to come in, to all who bought books, and to all the speakers, artists, food providers, etc. It was a very special night for me and so, so fitting!

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