Tibet's Moment
BY Alison Satake

Length: 7:07

Lhadon Tethong, executive director of the Students for a Free Tibet, rallies protesters in San Francisco.

It's the night before the highly anticipated Olympic torch relay in San Francisco, and I am watching a training session for protestors led by Students for a Free Tibet, the group who scaled the Golden Gate Bridge to unfurl two banners the day before. A stream of young Tibetans files into the back of a Berkeley church until the room is filled. Lhadon Tethong, the executive director of the organization, arrives with a caravan of weary protesters who had attended a candlelight vigil in San Francisco. Nobel Peace laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu had spoken there. So did actor and activist Richard Gere. Draped in Tibetan flags, with their face paint reading "Free Tibet," the protestors look like sports fans after a long tournament.

But the outcome of this event is still to be decided.

The organizers of Students for a Free Tibet are sophisticated. In their black American Apparel tracksuit jackets with "Team Tibet '08" on the back, they immediately plug their white Apple laptops, iPods, and Blackberrys into the available jacks in the room and get wired. One organizer, a tall Tibetan in a black leather jacket said I could subscribe to their Twitter account to receive text message updates on my cell phone. He shows me how.

The leaders are recent college grads, who are savvy when it comes to the media and technology. They immediately begin drilling the group of mostly teenage immigrants about "message discipline" and "how to talk to the media." The trainer, Gopal Dayaneni, tells them "Free Tibet" has been a useful message, but he encourages them to trade it in for a stronger catch-phrase: "End the Occupation."

This is definitely the next generation of Tibetan activists.

April 9, 2008

Today's the day that many people, both protesters and supporters of the torch, have been preparing for. It's a beautiful spring day. Sunny, clear skies. There are thousands of people in the streets.

10:30am
I encounter San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, an outspoken opponent of the torch relay, as he heads to an impromptu press conference in support of Tibet. I ask him if he thinks the Chinese community, who have gathered here in force with an aggressive display of flag-waving and slogan shouting, might erupt in violence. "I wouldn't be surprised," he says, "but the real test of non-violence is how you react to violence."

San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, an outspoken opponent of the Olympic torch relay.

11:10am
At the press conference, one of the organizers I met last night tells me in confidence to go to a street corner several blocks away to look for a woman in a red jacket, who will be engaging in civil disobedience. There on the corner, I meet Kirsten Westby, a board member of Students for a Free Tibet. Although she is not Tibetan, she grew up in a Tibetan Buddhist community in Boulder, Colorado. Her first direct action for the Free Tibet Movement happened last August, when she went to the Mt. Everest base camp to disrupt the Chinese Olympic climbing team's training. The Chinese police detained her. She says that in jail the police showed her the news announcing that San Francisco would be on the torch's route. They laughed and pointed at her saying that her protest had been in vain, she recalls bitterly.

As we're talking, she spots three comrades who are striding down the street. They're the climbers who hung the "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet" banners from the Golden Gate Bridge two days ago. Released from jail last night, they had just been dismissed from their court hearings and were set free in time to join the torch protests.

Kirsten and I part ways -- she goes to get into position, the secret location where she and a dozen protesters hope to jump the barricade and block the torch's path, while I head towards the San Francisco Giants ballpark, where the relay is set to begin.

12:05pm
As I approach the ballpark, I notice the crowd becomes increasingly pro-China. Small groups of Tibetans engage in shouting matches with the Chinese. China supporters wave yards of red Chinese flags, even from atop the Willie Mays statue. The bridge has been barricaded, but with press credentials I am allowed to pass and enter McCovey Cove, which is filled with people chanting, drumming, and dancing to Chinese nationalist songs.

12:25pm
A live swing band fires up. But the city's attempt to make the mood more celebratory and less partisan fails, as the band has to compete with the drumbeats of thousands of Chinese clad in bright costumes marching in place. It sounds as if they are marching into battle. It's a strange scene. It feels like a Chinese nationalist rally. A troupe of middle-aged Chinese women in shiny red spandex dresses and red knee-high boots do a choreographed dance to the drumbeats. They face a metal barricade -- performing to no one.

1:00pm
A flock of thirty police wearing black riot helmets march in formation down the street lined with Beijing Olympic supporters. They push through the barricade and disappear past the crowd.

The relay is due to begin.

1:05pm
I get a text message that says:

TORCH LOCATION: Shed A near parking lot A across from McCovey Cove.

A group of San Francisco policemen march down a street lined with Beijing Olympic supporters.

As I look over towards Shed A, a building on the pier where men in black are standing on the roof, a second deployment of officers in riot gear carrying semi-automatic pump guns arrive. They form two lines with the unarmed SFPD facing the thick crowd of China supporters, while the armed CHP face me and the other journalists.

1:08pm
TEXT MESSAGE: 100 SFPD with gas masks gathering at Pier 48 near torch.

1:20pm
TEXT MESSAGE from Kirsten: 1000+ pro Tibet marchers going down Embarc. [Embarcadero, the road along the San Francisco Bay.] Just crossed Howard. People still waiting here for torch.

1:22pm
Instrumental music begins to blare through the speakers. Five Chinese people in blue tracksuits jog down the line of cops carrying video cameras and equipment. The police open the barricade and let them slip out. They look like "flame attendants," a special detachment of Chinese police sent by Beijing to guard the torch as it makes its way around the world.

TEXT MESSAGE: Torch is moving to opening ceremony--may be inside stadium.

Still, I have not seen the torch, nor has anyone else in this crowd of media and spectators.

1:36pm
The drums and cymbals intensify, drowning out the piped in music of Chinese children singing. Six helicopters circle overhead.

1:54pm
CNN reports that the torch is on a police boat. I call an organizer from Students for a Free Tibet, who says she hasn't seen the torch. Charlotte Buchen, my camerawoman, wonders if we missed it.

The red flags begin to sag as the crowd starts to lose hope.

1:59pm
TEXT MESSAGE: 20ft banner dropped at Embarc & Howard "No Torch in Tibet"

"Looks like no torch in San Francisco, either," I think to myself.

2:05pm
Baffled TV news crews begin breaking down their equipment.

2:06pm
Then, abruptly, the first mention of a torch sighting.

TEXT MESSAGE: Torch lit at Van Ness and Pine. Going up Van Ness to Bay Street.

A group of Chinese dancers awaits the arrival of the Olympic torch.

The City has pulled a fast one, changing the route at the very last minute. A bus has taken the torch across town to Van Ness, leaving an estimated 10,000 disappointed people here at what was supposed to be the starting point along the original route. Saddest of all are the patriotic Chinese. Some of them spent the night here to watch this torch spectacle. Many are elderly. All of their costumes, signs, boxed lunches, and eager anticipation are for naught. At the moment, the City gives no explanation. And the once-fiery crowd responds with resignation.

Later, San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong says, "If we had started down that [original] route, I guarantee you would have seen helmet-clad officers with batons pushing back protestors." Mayor Gavin Newsom wanted to avoid the confrontations that occurred in Paris, where the Beijing Olympic torch was extinguished.

2:49pm
TEXT MESSAGE: Torch bearer at Van Ness & Chestnut just pulled out Tibetan flag!! Had torch taken away. YAA!

Majora Carter, a civil rights and environmental activist, is the runner who pulls out a Tibetan flag while carrying the Olympic torch. Immediately, the Chinese security forces grab the flag and hustle her off the route. Later, she receives a hero's welcome from the Tibetan community, who gather to celebrate what they consider to be a victory -- a successful disruption of what was supposed to be China's "harmonious" running of the torch in the only U.S. city it's scheduled to visit.

3:20pm
In the back of a TV news van, I catch my first glimpse of the torch. On the video monitors, a woman steps off a bus carrying a silver torch surrounded by police. It's a disappointing and pathetic sight.

3:45pm
Kirsten calls me from the back of a police truck. She's been arrested for doing a sit-in at Justin Herman Plaza, where the closing ceremonies were planned to take place. The ceremony is cancelled.

I go to Ferry Park where the Tibetans want to celebrate "a splendid victory," says writer Topden Tsering. Before the seated crowd on the grassy open space, the Tibetan's torchbearer-turn-hero, Majora Carter, says, "I only wish I could have carried the torch a little further for you. But the spirit is getting stronger."

Across from the Ferry Building, where early this morning, groups of Chinese and Tibetans shouted and shook their flags at each other, two men -- one carrying the red, blue, and yellow ray flag of Tibet, the other clutching the red star-studded flag of China, calmly and respectfully discuss their political beliefs in the middle of the intersection. A mixed group of Tibetans and Chinese gather around the two listening quietly.

There were some angry confrontations in the streets of San Francisco today, and a definite show of force by the large Chinese community here. The torch itself pulled a humiliating disappearing act. But in the end, there was no violence, and Tibetan activists continued to win more attention for their cause than anyone ever could have imagined just a few short months ago.

Alison Satake is a student at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism and a production assistant at FRONTLINE/World.

Video producer Charlotte Buchen is a regular contributor to the FRONTLINE/World website and a 2007 graduate of the Berkeley journalism school.

Related Stories

Beijing's Blaze
In anticipation of the Olympic Torch's arrival in San Francisco, home to the second largest population of Chinese in the U.S., cries of protest from China's critics have rung throughout the city.

Burma: The Chinese Connection
In this recent video dispatch, Orlando de Guzman reports from the Burma-China border, where Chinese boomtowns are sprouting up, bankrolled in large part by the trade in narcotics, jade and timber from Burma. Despite international sanctions, trade with China along the historic Burma Road has become a lifeline for the Burmese military regime.