WikiLeaks Sidewalk Showings, July 30 and August 6, 2010

Local report, SF Bay chapter

Street Screenings: Wikileaks "Collateral Murder" Video in downtown Berkeley

Our team set up just after dark on Shattuck Avenue, outside a closed store, and started letting passerbys know they could watch this video with us. As our crew set up the projector, movie screen, and loudspeaker we also started giving out flyers: "More War Crimes Exposed -- Now What Do We Do?" and on the back, the Open Letter of Reconciliation and Responsibility to the Iraqi People written by Ethan McCord and Josh Stieber. (Ethan and Josh were both members of Bravo Company 2-16, the unit shown in the video as it murders 12 Iraqi civilians. Ethan is seen in the footage, the soldier running for help with a wounded Iraqi child in his arms).

You can see a few minutes of our street screening last night (last week too) here [[YouTube link]]. Last night's street screening was an intense 90 minutes for our crew. Showing the war on the city walls, we were reaching out to people not knowing how they'd respond. Wikileaks's fantastic job of subtitling and brief narrative notes really helps the truth come clear to any viewer.)

First, there was no predicting which "types of people" would stop and stay to watch the Wikileaks video. Their faces were sometimes emotion-filled and sometimes emotionless as they watched the Apache helicopter rain down death on the streets below, and listened to the soundtrack of the soldiers' voices as they shoot, and shoot, and shoot, and the men's bodies fall, and the children in the van are wounded. A lot of people stayed to watch and talk: high school youth, journalists (mainstream and Pacifica), couples on movie dates, a homeless military veteran, Norwegian tourists, UC graduate students, Spanish-speaking immigrants. After people had watched most or all the video we mingled, offering flyers and asking for donations and sign-ups, having a lot of face-to-face conversations. People talked about the horror of this war (this Wikileaks video being but a snapshot of the war's daily progress). About the ways Americans largely do NOT know up close what the war actually looks like, and the human cost of it seems so far away. About how it could make a difference if more people see this video (a teenager kept asking: why don't they show this on TV, why don't they show it to us in school?) and about World Can't Wait's call for much-needed anti-war resistance, and how to bring forth a far more powerful mass movement to stop this war.

We had to run to make more fliers, as every time we re-started the DVD new people would cruise up and stop. Also we had made a few copies on DVD and sold them quickly, $5 each, because right after seeing it themselves for the first time, people wanted to show it to their own friends.

Some passerbys walked by slowly, stopping just long enough to see what we were doing -- but then as they kept going they'd start talking about it. A guy commented to his friend "Oh that's Wikileaks, the helicopter video." Couples would start exchanging views about the war in Iraq. A group headed into a restaurant would be chatting about wine and vacations -- then suddenly they were talking about Wikileaks and what each other thought about the whistleblowers leaking war documents.

We didn't pay much attention to people who didn't bother to even look or stop. We focused on those who noticed, and stopped to see, and we wanted to personally talk to as many of them as possible. Again, we seemed to meet two kinds of people. One group knows the name Wikileaks but mostly only from a news tidbit or a headline, and almost none of them had actually tracked down the video to watch it for themselves. The second group didn't recognize the name Wikileaks at all (although once they heard what it is, and what has happened and why we were showing the DVD on the street tonight, many of them cared the most). So for both kinds of people we think this is a really important step we can help them take: to see the video, to claim some of the truth that's been kept from them -- and be encouraged (and challenged!) to now become a carrier themselves and bring this truth to others.

We're going out again next weekend and we're inviting more people to come help do this with us. If we had ten crews and ten projector kits we would want to be in ten places all over the Bay Area. People not only need to see this video. People need to know that they have a real role to play in walking the video's truth out into the world and spreading a movement to STOP THIS WAR.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• WikiLeaks
• Sidewalk
• Showings
• Berkeley

[RAlgarJr]

This shit already on You Tube 3 years ago. They should hunt down Wiki Leaks and turn the guns on them for espionage.

[UnclePutin]

Where they murder 11 people in cold-blood? You useless lying hippies. Go choke on a soy-burger why don't you.

[TheBigOne0305]

some ingenious artist already kind of did that:

watch?v=3adw9oLBkBI

the scene starts at 3:00 although the whole video is well worth watching!

[GioDimatteo]

Bradley Manning is the Hero. Julian Assange is an advocate of Heroes.

[Zungerable]

Great idea! Puts the war into a daily context (their city) for people who might not follow every leak that is coming out. This needs to be done with every video that comes out.

[Jibes]

Awesome work, people.

[aerobique]

good