Talk:Fare strike/Archive 1

I'm starting a talk page because I just made substantial edits to the Fare Strike page. 1. I made Kevin's url links into more attractive external links. 2. I added an external links section with Fare Strike!, the two links Kevin had, and I added a Tom Wetzel article. 3. I changed the wording in which Kevin implies that Muni Social Strike originated that fare strike and that others jumped in later. I don't mean to stir up controversy or bad feelings, but I think there is sufficient evidence that no one "owned" the fare strike, and many different participants were at the early meetings. The wiki page is probably not the place to dredge up the conflict between Kevin Keating and others. I hope my new wording is inclusive in that I put Social Strike first, followed by Fare Strike, and Day Laborers. Other community groups might be added.

4. I took out the part about Italian self-reduction as I think refusal to pay is qualitatively different from self-reduction. If others have a different view it should be discussed.

I don't undertake any of the edits with a sense of authority or ownership. I hope we can avoid a flame war here. I made an effort to leave things in that I don't find valuable to be fair to those I disagree with, for whatever that's worth. When you post here end with four tildas (remember the shift key)or this symbol~ and it will sign with your wikipedia stamp which includes your handle and time and date.

Motopu (talk) 21:56, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

The Front for People's Judea vs. The Judean People's Front
Dave Carr, a.k.a, "Motopu," alleges here:

"I changed the wording in which Kevin (Keating)implies that Muni Social Strike originated that fare strike and that others jumped in later."

The effort to get together a direct action of transit system operators on San Francisco's main public transit system, and of the riders of the transit system, as a common action of both employees and riders, was initiated by a group called Muni Social Strike at a public meeting in San Francisco's Mission District on May 1st, 2005. Some of the people who later formed a group called Muni Fare Strike were at this meeting. (Note the ridiculously similar-sounding names.)

By claiming otherwise Dave Carr is not giving an honest and accurate account of what took place with this.

The group called Muni Fare Strike didn't even exist at that time and only came into being some weeks later.

I've changed the wording in reference to the participation of the SF Day Laborers; it's ridiculous for Carr to refer to "most successful organizers" of an effort which failed as completely as this one did. Any examination of readily available online media coverage, as well as face to face canvassing of Muni transit system employees, clearly shows that the attempt at a transit system fare strike in San Francisco in 2005 did not go anywhere.

Origins of the failed effort
The idea for this effort did not leapt into life ex nihilo. At its inception at the public meeting in May 2005 the effort was clearly modeled on similar "self-reduction" movements in Italy in the 1970's. All of the initial outreach efforts were focused on the transit system employees, which was my understanding of what took place in Italy in the 70's. For Dave Carr to maintain otherwise is inaccurate and comically dishonest. The inter-group dynamics that unfolded as the effort went south are detailed --exhaustively, I must admit -- in the articles linked to at the bottom of this piece.

Kevin Keating

Miasnikov (talk) 19:26, 17 March 2009 (UTC)miasnikovMiasnikov (talk) 19:26, 17 March 2009 (UTC) Miasnikov (talk) 19:14, 17 March 2009 (UTC)miasnikovMiasnikov (talk) 19:14, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Your new wording seems ok
I obviously don't agree with your comments above, but that's to be expected. I have the following points for you: 1. I think you should choose one of your articles to keep on the page and take out one of them. You have at least five or six critiques of the fare strike. Could you choose your strongest or newest one to keep? I don't see why you should have disproportionate representation. Maybe you could just link to a page where you have all of your critiques posted? 2. I wonder how many people do you estimate participated in the fare strike (or maybe you don't see that as important). Not to reduce it to numbers as a measurement of effectiveness, but I'm curious as to why you never comment on this aspect. 3. I think it's fine to say that the fare strike was modeled on Italian self-reduction from your perspective, but do you see any difference in the SF effort in which fares were entirely withheld rather than delivered to authorities at reduced rates? 4. I think you should refrain from ad hominem here such as "comically dishonest" etc. I'm not here to argue with you, and when you do that you're violating wiki terms. Not a big deal to me, but I do think we might communicate better if we just stuck to the wiki fare strike article itself.

If you don't want to respond to the other points I'm at least interested in hearing back on the issue of you choosing your best single link, and if you find that to be a reasonable request. Eventually there should be a separate page for the SF fare strike. Motopu (talk) 06:38, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Response:
I appreciate your feedback. However, I strongly feel that the four articles that are linked to here should be left as they are; the two articles I wrote examine different facets of the attempted fare strike; the inter-group dynamics, in the case of the longer article, and specific claims about the event that I think are, to put it diplomatically, extremely inaccurate in one of the other accounts linked to here.

And I definitely don't think the failed effort to get together a transit system fare strike in San Francisco in 2005 needs its own wikipedia page. It wasn't a significant event by any stretch of the imagination; among recent episodes of this kind it was a Jessica Simpson or Kim Kardashian type of phenomenon.

The 2005 San Francisco effort is only of relevance in a context of similar events elsewhere. It wasn't a sufficiently major occurence to stand on its own as a wikipedia entry. With the four articles linked to here readers have as exhaustive an examination of this as anyone could possibly need.

And now Dave Carr/Motopu can have the last word... —Preceding unsignedcomment added by Miasnikov (talk • contribs) 16:14, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Miasnikov (talk) 19:10, 19 March 2009 (UTC)miasnikovMiasnikov (talk) 19:10, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Whatevas
I don't see the need to remove either of your pieces. Anyone who has any interest in your writing won't have to look far before they see that it is you who are considered to be the utterly unreliable source. They'll see pretty quickly with a google search that it is you who have become nearly universally shunned by those interested in class struggle. I do agree with you that covering the "inter-group dynamics" as you call them is important. I will follow your lead, but instead of posting an ad hominem attack that creates straw man positions for participants, I'll simply post Tom Wetzel's dead on critique of your participation in the fare strike. He, along with all of the other organizers in Fare Strike and Social Strike actually witnessed your behavior first hand. Just as no one has come forward to agree with the content of your critique, no one has challenged Tom's description of your behavior. In fact, it totally jibes with the description of your behavior at the many websites where you have been banned (libcom) or ghettoized away from the main site (anti-politics regarding your fare strike posts).

Motopu (talk) 03:55, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

For the sake of clarity
Kevin. Since you put in your severely distorted attack on everyone but you in the fare strike, and included your libelous charge that we are "leftist recuperators" right there on the article page, I feel it's important we make clear that the Wetzel post is a rebuttal to your erroneous version of events right there on the article page. With your stuff, the main danger is people believe the lies simply because they don't have access to enough info, and they mistake your left communist rhetoric for actual historical information, or your actual political activity (which is more authoritarian and far to the right of anything IDP has ever been involved with---Tom makes that clear in his post-mortem document). Anyone who's seen your pattern of unprincipled attacks on people, the name calling, abuse, and lack theoretical chops knows this, but for the wiki page, we should at least be clear that the last link is critical of you, and not just about the fare strike. Thanxxx Motopu (talk) 01:04, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Kevin, don't remove other peoples' comments on a discussion page
The purpose of these pages is partly to explain changes that have been made. For what it's worth, I believe it's against wikipedia policy to go in and just remove other peoples' comments like you did, simply because you don't like what they say.

Motopu (talk) 06:34, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

"rebuttal"
The brief comments by Tom Wetzel cited by Dave Carr/motopu as a supposed rebuttal of my analysis are not a rebuttal; they are a slightly different interpretation of my personal role in the fare strike fiasco and do not contradict any of my salient points. I don't disagree with what Tom writes here, I disagree somewhat with his depiction of my motives regarding acting in concert with the usual work-within-the-system crowd.

Readers who have any interest in this, and my guess is that that's very few, can read all the documents cited and judge for themselves. Nobody needs Dave Carr or myself or anyone else to tell them what to think. And i'm not interested in pursuing any "Brothers Karamazov" length debate on this with Carr. I trust that I have made my case.

Kevin Keating proletaire2003@yahoo.com

Miasnikov (talk) 23:32, 21 March 2009 (UTC)miasnikovMiasnikov (talk) 23:32, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

In fact, it is a rebuttal
It's from a primary source witness who was at the meetings, and who participated in and was one of the planners of the events. He witnessed your behavior and came to the same conclusion that most everyone else who had to deal with you in the fare strike did: You're impossible to work with. He counters your implications and explains that it was your presence that was counter productive, not the IDP or Fare Strike group. This qualifies as a rebuttal. For those looking for a point by point rebuttal of your weird charges against other organizers, they've been available online for years. I do agree with you that anyone who is interested won't have a hard time sussing out what happened in the fare strike. For that reason, I'm glad that the IDP and others took the time to rebut your distorted self-serving version of events. Anarchy Magazine just reviewed the Fare Strike! pamphlet, and I hope an electronic version becomes available so we can add it to the links section. Kevin, please drop me a line if you ever find that elusive one person who will back up your version of events about the fare strike. To be clear, I don't mean someone who will take your side. Rather I mean a participant, organizer, or witness who will confirm your version, or agree with your "critique" of other organizers of the strike. It's been three years, and so far no one has come forward to back your version, but you never know!

Motopu (talk) 00:55, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

When you remove posts on the discussion page because you don't like them, that's considered to be vandalism
Kevin, I'm warning you for a second time not to remove posts from the discussion page. This is vandalism. You're not supposed to edit other peoples' posts on a discussion page. After four vandalisms on your part, there could be consequences. Seeing as how you've been banned from libcom, and partially banned on anti-politics, is it now your goal to get banned on wikipedia too? Is this your version of winning a debate, getting banned to prove you're a victim? It seems like the tactic shows how weak your arguments are, hence the silly behavior. I left your voting link up, but added the information about it being the march that the Day Laborers called, which as you know quite well is the truth. The way you phrased it was intentionally fallacious. In other words, it was like everything you've written on the fare strike. Motopu (talk) 08:56, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Added "Thousands ride free" article to indicate the level of participation that KK seeks to downplay
Unfortunately, the same problematic individual, Kevin Keating, who was a limiting factor in the fare strike itself, has been vandalizing the talk page here by removing others' posts, and is attempting to disproportionately post his uniquely negative view of the fare strike. This is entirely in keeping with his behavior during the fare strike, which was consistently self-aggrandizing and abusive of others. I posted this Wetzel article to indicate that thousands did participate. It has been noted online elsewhere that Kevin has consistently shied away from acknowledging just how many people participated in the fare strike because it does not fit his wish that the strike be known reductively as a "failure". An honest historical or dialectical view has to look at what went right AND wrong in the fare strike. If this page is hijacked by Keating's crusade to dismiss the fare strike, we will be left with a severely distorted version, based more on his personal vendettas than on actual events. Motopu (talk) 09:20, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Separated out links by author
I think this is better. Rather than lumping everything together, it makes it clearer that each source is attached to a specific viewpoint. With the IDP pamphlet of course, the ten authors will have some differing perspectives. Motopu (talk) 09:30, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Chronic deceitful antics of Dave Carr/Motopu on display here
I have restored the documents cited at the bottom of the article in their original order.

Dave Carr' chronic deceitfulness regarding events around this can be seen in the fact that his and Gifford Hartman's airbrushed version of what happened in the failed fare strike was displayed before my article, "Muni Social Strike: The failed fare strike in San Francisco in 2005," which appeared many, many months before the leftist recuperators version of events.

The articles should be displayed in the order in which they appeared.

To repeat: Readers who have any interest in this, and my guess is that that's very few, can read all the documents cited and judge for themselves. Nobody needs Dave Carr or myself or anyone else to tell them what to think. And I'm not interested in pursuing any "Brothers Karamazov" length debate on this with Dave Carr. I have already made my case.

Kevin Keating

Miasnikov (talk) 16:07, 22 March 2009 (UTC)miasnikovMiasnikov (talk) 16:07, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

You are not editing in good faith
First you vandalized this discussion page by removing my posts. Ok, perhaps you were not aware that it violated wikipedia policy, but it certainly showed your penchant to censor and control in an effort to shape everything around you and reduce it to only your version of the world. This is exactly in keeping with your behavior in the fare strike, for instance, when you sent out emails to block fare strikers from meeting with the Muni drivers.

Next, you seem to have this burning desire to remove any trace of information that indicates the high level of participation in the fare strike. You simply removed the wording in the article that acknowledged the historical fact that thousands participated in the fare strike. You also removed Tom Wetzel's article which indicates that thousands participated in the fare strike. This pattern of denial over the participation is a clear indicator of your real motivation in your bad faith edits. You don't want to give any positive light to an event in which all the participants marginalized you when they saw how ineffective and, let's be frank, counter-revolutionary, your control freak behavior was. Again, your own actions here show what an individualist ego-driven control freak you are.

Now you claim to have "restored" the article. Yet you've highlighted only the Muni Fare Strike website, because you want to mislead people into seeing the words fare strike and voting together to imply that the people you are criticizing planned a get out the vote march to show that they are "leftists." This is lying. You know, having been corrected hundreds of times, that the Day Laborers called this rally, 71 days after the first day of the strike. Yet you continue to disingenuously push this one aspect, out of context, as if it sums up the politics of your opponents.

And you also falsely claim that because the articles were not in chronilogical order that I was being "decietful"? What a laugh. You removed Tom Wetzel's article which was posted the first day of the fare strike. Hmmm, so much for your phony concern about "restoring" based on the chronology. I will put that article back. Please don't remove it again just because it points out in its title that thousands participated. We see a clear pattern that all of the other writing on the fare strike contradicts your own.

Why post the voting piece from the fare strike website and not just a link to the fare strike website if you are really so invested in "people making up their own minds"? Does that mean I can post to a link on the Social Strike website where a Stalinist from the PLP has an article, or where there is a call for "Church groups" to come out, and say that this proves that "Kevin Keating's Social Strike group supported Stalinism and Christianity in the fare strike"? I've asked you this question probably twenty times over the last three years, because it exposes your double standard. You've not once addressed it.

I want to thank you for stopping your vandalism of this talk page, but I also would like for you to engage in good faith editing, not stupid "gotcha" editing that is intentionally misleading. Please stop removing the historical references to the number of people who participated in the strike just because the truth goes against your reductionist claim that the strike was simply a failure and nothing more. Much of your bad faith editing on the article itself amounts to vandalism.

I will now go to restore some of the aspects of the article you removed. 66.91.59.192 (talk) 21:11, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Added Social Strike Website, restored first day account posted sept. 4 at libcom...
I have added the Social Strike website so people can now compare the Social Strike website and the Fare Strike website for themselves. I hope you agree this is a good thing.[I was looking at the social strike site, and some of the pages are missing, but with others, you can still get to them by following the second link that appears.] Having done that, I took the liberty of editing out your "vote Tuesday March Thursday" title to the link. First, that statement is right there at the top of the homepage for any who follow the link, so they'll see it, as you wanted them to. Second, because it is an obvious attempt on your part Kevin, to sum up the entire effort with that one statement. Anyone who participated knows that the fare strike group had many autonomous participants, and one statement can't sum up the politics of all involved, which is why the Insane Dialectical Posse put out a text describing their own participation in the event.

I also restored the post on libcom from the first day in accordance with your desire to keep chronological order in the links list. I restored Tom's critique of your intervention to provide balance to your hit piece on the IDP which includes the comically weak libel of us being "leftist recuperators" (as if it was not common knowledge by now that you represent the hard right of one man management strategy in the fare strike among those who regarded it as a form of class struggle!)I believe I have retained the chronological order without removing any of your links, so please don't remove any of mine.

You as an individual are already horribly over-represented on the wikipedia page. This is the case everywhere on the internet, so I suppose the skew is in of itself a historical artifact. Motopu (talk) 21:56, 22 March 2009 (UTC) Motopu (talk) 22:45, 22 March 2009 (UTC) Motopu (talk) 22:49, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Kevin, stop trying to hide that thousands participated
You continue to try to keep this fact from people. You are still editing in bad faith. Giving your opinion of the fare strike as a replacement for a historical fact (that thousands participated, as Tom Wetzel's headline even clearly explains) is disingenuous and biased. Stop editing based on your own resentment of the IDP. Motopu (talk) 07:02, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Response from Keating
I have changed the wording to more accurately reflect a consensus of opinion that the attempted fare strike in San Francisco in 2005 was a dud.

It may be the case that several thousand people fare evaded, or at least attempted to do this on the first day of the fare increase. This doesn't establish whether or not the people doing this were doing this because they perceived themselves to be taking part in a fare strike, or whether this was an inevitable and largely spontaneous response to the fare hike; there is no way of accurately determining this one way or another.

The fare strike was a near total failure in terms of both its immediate objectives and in terms of anything larger than the immediate goals. In the time-honored manner of the San Francisco Bay Area's devious and manipulative sectarian leftists, work-within-the-system leftists like Dave Carr and his buddy Gifford Hartman ("Insane Dialectical Posse") did what they could to turn the effort against austerity measures on San Francisco's Muni system into an easily forgetable flop. They succeeded in this, and in nothing other than this, they have been attempting to re-write the history of this experience ever since, and that's what's up here with Dave Carr's ongoing fantasy projections regarding the fare strike fiasco.

Kevin Keating

Miasnikov (talk) 05:06, 15 April 2009 (UTC)miasnikovMiasnikov (talk) 05:06, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Even this discussion page shows you are unable to work honestly, and merely write from your own bitterness
From the start I helped clean up the links to your articles so people could see your side of the story. While you as a source on the fare strike, have been discredited among the fare strike participants, at libcom, and on anti-politics, I agreed to have not one, but two of your articles in our joint editing process, and I think that shows an interest in being open minded on my part. I also dug up the remains of the Social Strike site and linked to it via the wayback machine. Again, I made the effort to present your side and a balance, without posting opinion on whether the fare strike was a success or failure, which should be left to the intelligence of the reader.

For your part, you removed several of my posts on the discussion page in an effort to censor points you did not like. You have removed historically factual material, that thousands participated in the fare strike, as written by Tom Wetzel and many other participants. In the place of this uncontroversial material, you have thought it scholarly and honest to place your own personal op-ed material reflecting your judgment that the strike was a "falure." You post no evidence or sourcing for your claims that nearly everyone involved in the fare strike thought it was a failure. Any "consensus" on this exists only in your mind. You do not present an objective proof that the event can be summed up as a failure despite your claims. If one was to take any single action in the history of class struggle or proletarian action, isolate it, and deem it a "success" or a "failure" It would offer us absolutely nothing in the way of moving struggles forward, and is obviously nothing more than anti-intellectualism along the lines of standardized testing to see if children are "smart" or not. It's utterly bourgeois logic, and at the lowest level, like all of your writing is pursuit of fame and infamy.

You continue to operate here as you did in the fare strike. This is the reason no one will ever find a single person or source that agrees with any of the "analysis" you allege in your never ending serialized articles that purport to be about the fare strike, but which are merely bitter hit pieces sniping at individuals in the IDP. The individuals you attack carried off a fare strike that was thousands of times as participatory as the one you attempted in the 90s, which had a total of three participants and a handful of prank posters that no one ever saw, but which you will write about as a major revolutionary event until the day you die. Motopu (talk) 08:17, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Dave Carr/Motopu's leftist tall tales and logorrhoea, once again...
I've changed the entry back to the more honest and accurate way it was a few days ago. After this gets the airbrush treatment again from Dave Carr aka Motopu, readers can recall that an honest and accurate account of this should still read:

"In San Francisco in 2005, a fare strike was attempted, but the general consensus among transit system employees, the news media and people who attempted to organize the strike is that it was a failure. Two of the main groups involved in organizing for this were Muni Social Strike and Muni Fare Strike. Other community groups also participated, including the SF Day Laborers, who were among the strike's most energetic organizers.

Thousands of people "particpated in a fare strike" in Carr's fervid leftist imagination and in the imagination of his fellow leftist fabulist Gifford Hartman. Anyone can check on this by telephoning and/or e-mailing local journalists who covered the build-up to this big fat non-event, such as Marisa Lagos and Joe Garofoli at the San Francisco Chronicle, or, even better, by riding Muni busses and streetcars in San Francisco and asking transit system operators themselves about it. See what kind of answer they give you!

I've already explained the impossibility of Carr's accurately and honestly claiming otherwise in detail here; see "Response from Keating," above.

Keating

Miasnikov (talk) 04:25, 18 April 2009 (UTC)miasnikovMiasnikov (talk) 04:25, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Primary source from first days of the fare strike documents that thousands rode free, agrees with other first hand accounts
"Despite heavy police presence at major bus transfer points, at least a couple thousand passengers rode the buses for free in San Francisco on Thursday, September 1st — the opening day of a fare strike in North America’s most bus-intensive city."

source: Tom Wetzel, anarchist author, Znet author, teacher, and well known Bay Area radical historian.

Tom Wetzel, in the same article, also wrote this about the SF corporate media coverage:

"The corporate media parroted the Muni management party line in downplaying the fare strike. The S.F. Chronicle claimed they did a “random check” on a number of lines and found “only a handful” of fare strike participants. On a transit system that handles over 700,000 rides every weekday, a handful in a small sample translates into a significant number of people."

Laura lo Forti, a reporter for the San Francisco State University Golden Gate Xpress was present the entire first day of the strike, doing video documentation and interviews with participants around town. She noted that despite all the police presence, the support was strong in the Mission.

Of course anyone interested should look at first hand accounts from participants, talk to drivers and riders who were there, and google as many reports as possible. Did anyone ever say otherwise? The sad part of it is, that Kevin Keating is such an over represented presence on the internet, and he has serialized his hit pieces on people in the Insane Dialectical Posse, whom he used to be on better terms with. Readers should quickly pick up on the vitriol and self-aggrandizing hyperbole in Keating's accounts.

And Kevin, you have a lot of nerve claiming I am "airbrushing" after I fixed the links to two of your own articles, and added the Social Strike website link. Isn't it you who are airbrushing a historical fact, that thousands rode free, out of this article? Why is it so important to you to erase this fact from the record? Motopu (talk) 20:15, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

New and improved, non-lying version
"A fare strike is a direct action in which people in a city with a public transit system carry out mass fare evasion. Jumping turnstiles, boarding buses through the back or very quickly through the front, and leaving doors open in subway stations are all tactics by which people can participate. Often, fare strikes are used against fare hikes and service cuts, but they also seek to organize working class solidarity between riders and drivers, often in the hopes that struggles around transportation will spread to broader anti-capitalist action.

Notable "self reduction" actions, where employees of transit systems and riders of transit systems have tried to act together, have occurred in France, Italy, and parts of Latin America. More recently Midwest Unrest tried to get an action like this together in Chicago.

In San Francisco in 2005, a fare strike was attempted, but the general consensus among transit system employees, the news media and people who attempted to organize the strike is that it was a failure. Two of the main groups involved in organizing for this were Muni Social Strike and Muni Fare Strike. Other community groups also participated, including the SF Day Laborers, who were among the strike's most energetic organizers.

In the UK, there was a fare strike on First Great Western in Jan 07, and there was also to be one on 28th Jan 08."

Posted by Keating, Sat. April 18, 2009

Miasnikov (talk) 04:39, 19 April 2009 (UTC) miasnikov Miasnikov(talk) 04:39, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Notice to stop vandalism. Action Pending
Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to vandalizeWikipedia, you will be blocked from editing. Motopu (talk) 05:00, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Response to lies by Dave Carr/ Motopu
Dave Carr's version of events is a lie, and this can be attested to by anyone who participated in the San Francisco fare strike flop of 2005 -- anyone who is even willing to talk about it at all at this point.

My contributions to the entry here are not "vandalism;" they are a more fully fleshed out, thoughtful, honest and succinct version.

Keating

Miasnikov (talk) 21:59, 19 April 2009 (UTC) miasnikov Miasnikov(talk) 21:59, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Response by SF resident
I was riding the bus on September 1, 2005. In passing through the Mission District there were dozens and dozen of cops everywhere, but mostly near the BART stations. Lots of activists were giving out fake transfers and most people took them and bus drivers were letting everyone on for free. There were even city officials in suits and ties who were directing the police in trying to stop people from getting on for free, which wasn't very successful. This went on all day. I was downtown later and the same thing was happening. Someone who knows him even said they saw Keating gettting on a bus for free.

I saw groups continuing to do this in the Mission District for at least a week after September 1. Don't know which group they were from, but they were Latino and several of them were getting on the buses for free and the drivers were letting them.

So if people were riding the buses for free, even if only for a week, it was definitely a fare strike.

E.D.

Eddillon (talk) 02:03, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Mr. Keating and history
Mr. Keating has personal grudges against some who organized and promoted the SF Fare Strike and so wants to portray the thing as a "failure." His rhetoric is convincing but the facts are against him. I also participated in the strike and personally saw dozens of people decide not to pay their fare in protest, as well as sympathetic drivers who waved people on to the bus for free. If he calls it a "failure" because the fare hike stayed in effect that isn't saying much. The point of documenting the 2005 SF fare strike seems to be to demonstrate that such popular, grassroots efforts arise and gain momentum because they tap into a common frustration and desire for opposition on the part of working people. Such efforts may be described as "failures" by people who only resent the fact that their role in them was not as grand as they'd hoped. —Precedingunsigned comment added by 69.228.204.178 (talk) 07:19, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

The effect of the fare strike
I also lived and worked in San Francisco in 2005. I had a friend who knew Marisa Lagos who wrote for the SF Examiner at the time. Marisa and others were able to get information from Maggie Lynch, City of SF Press Officer, about Muni revenue for the week ending Friday, September 2, 2005. Which were: despite a 20% increase in adult fares and a 40% increase in youth, senior and disabled fares, the amount collected from the fare box by Muni dropped $18,482 from August 31 to September 1. Then on the next day, Friday, September 2, it dropped $25,706 from what was collected on Wednesday, the day before the fare strike began.

So the proof's in the pudding. Raised fares resulted in substantially decreased revenue. If the intent of the fare strike was to hurt Muni financially, it clearly did. If someone says this is a "failure," they're arguing against the evidence and dishonestly trying to conflate their opinion with the facts. In the name of historical accuracy, perhaps this forum isn't the proper outlet for Keating to express his assumptions and personal bias.

75.16.27.71 (talk) 19:54, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

The political is the personal?
Kevin Keating seems to have carried his vendetta against his personal enemies onto wikipedia, masquerading them as political differences. Neither has a place here, so I suggest that he be politely asked to leave before he commits any more vandalism.

[name withheld due to Keating's longstanding practice of smear, misinformation, and internet stalking]

149.137.102.234 (talk) 22:55, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Corrections
Only allowing the most narrow, self-interested version of events to serve as the "authoritative" account of what happened should be challenged. Wikipedia embraces a pluralistic process of making knowledge more democratic. Also, the legacy of innovative historical inquiry (think E.P. Thompson's fine work here) leaves us with many models of history-from-below that we can emulate. It is in that spirit that I corrected some inaccuracies in this article.

Ed.

Eddillon (talk) 05:47, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Five anonymous comments in response -- Hmmmmmm...I smell a lack of credibility here...
Until the people claiming this come out from behind their fake names they don't merit any response

keating —Preceding unsigned comment added by Miasnikov(talk • contribs) 19:20, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

You can count, but can you read?
My name is on all my posts

Ed.

Eddillon (talk) 20:15, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Response to Mister Ed
Read this, then; this is what I've written:

"In San Francisco in 2005, a fare strike was attempted, but the general consensus among transit system employees, the news media and people who attempted to organize the strike is that it was a failure."

As I write this, today in San Francisco, in April 2009, similar plans for line cuts and fare hikes have been announced -- but there is no public resistance to this, of that kind that could be expected in the aftermath of an event like the one in 2005, if that "fare strike" had been the significant moment that various deceitful leftist hustlers, like Dave Carr and his friend Gifford Hartman, are trying to make the 2005 flop out to be.

I haven't said that there was no effort to get together a fare strike in San Francisco in 2005. I said there was, and that it was an abject failure, for reasons closely examined in the two articles I wrote that are linked to at the bottom of the "Fare Strike" wikipedia entry.

Kevin Keating

Miasnikov (talk) 20:40, 21 April 2009 (UTC) miasnikov Miasnikov(talk) 20:40, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Another correction
There are movements afield to challenge a range of attacks on working class people in the San Francisco Bay Area, including opposing increased transit fares (on BART with employees in coordination with riders). Keating, it's simply that given your track record of divisiveness and destructiveness, you're the last person anyone would ask to be involved.

So go ahead and unleash your juvenile name calling. We've heard your hackneyed canned smears a million times before.

Ed.

Eddillon (talk) 20:52, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Talk to Mister Ed!
So, what a surprise; Mister Ed proves to be one of the indolent and 'ressentiment' fueled beerhall bums in the "FARE STRIKE! San Francisco 2005..." airbrushed version of what happened in the 2005 fare strike flop in San Francisco.

This is an event in which it is alleged that "thousand participated," but:

1. None of these thousands subsequently had anything to say about it,

2. Few in San Francisco noticed it at the time,

3. No one elsewhere took notice of this event,

4. And only a planck-scale coterie of leftist fantasy peddlers remembers this large-scale event today.

These characters are selling raffle tickets to would-be buyers of the Brooklyn Bridge. They are not in any way a credible, honest accurate source of information.

Mister Ed:

"There are movements afield to challenge a range of attacks on working class people in the San Francisco Bay Area, including opposing increased transit fares (on BART with employees in coordination with riders). Keating, it's simply that given your track record of divisiveness and destructiveness, you're the last person anyone would ask to be involved."

Yeah, right. They'll get around to having one meeting, about ten months from now, after they figure out who's going to bring the donuts.

These guys are hopeless.

Keating

Miasnikov (talk) 00:54, 22 April 2009 (UTC) Miasnikov Miasnikov(talk) 00:54, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Three-revert rule
You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24-hour period. Additionally, users who perform several reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. When in dispute with another editor you should first try to discuss controversial changes to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. Should that prove unsuccessful, you are encouraged to seek dispute resolution, and in some cases it may be appropriate to request page protection. If the edit warring continues, you may be blocked from editing without further notice.

Keating, you have been politely asked to stop vandalizing the site. You have ignored such requests and have answered with incoherent posts containing inside jokes that are incomprehensible to those of us not privy to them. It's unclear who you are directing your comments to.

Regardless, I'm asking you to please stop changing the article without credible, verifiable support for your positions. Asserting your opinion is not sufficient. I'm also asking you to stop violating the three-revert rule. When you don't abide by the guidelines it makes it appear that you're not making edits here in good faith.

Thanks,

Ed.

Eddillon (talk) 07:02, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Additions
O.K., today I added 5 citations (2 from the same source) and added mention of the attempted 1944 Cleveland fare strike, as well as the 2005 Vancouver, BC fare strike. I added a reference to Wetzel's article in Znet supporting an approximation of the number of participants in the SF fare strike. I posted about how the 1970 U.S. postal strike was a "social strike," just like all these transit strikes were. I cleaned up a little more of the language to make it more historically accurate.

Hopefully this page can be expanded to include the breadth of accounts of these type of actions. And someone should write a short, but critical, account of the Los Angeles Bus Riders' Union and their successes in getting Southern California's MTA to make buses more available and affordable to working class people in the central areas of LA.

Ed.

Eddillon (talk) 20:02, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Big improvement here
Thanks Ed. I'm glad we got a third person to step into what had devolved into a revert war. Instead of simply going back and forth between Keating's need to discredit the SF fare strike, and the need to include the historically sourced facts, you opened up the article, footnoted it, and provided the needed background and historical context that make it more informative. Thanks again. I'm guessing Keating will simply stick to vandalizing the small portion of the article he feels he has "ownership" over.

Given that he has been warned continuously not to, and that he engaged in vandalism when he removed my posts from the talk page, and when he broke the 3 reverts in 24 hours rule, can we simply block access to him? We know he won't stop vandalizing, and that he has continued to censor sourced historical facts and replace them with his own opionions. He should be stopped, according to the rules as I see them. It seems that anti-politics has pretty much been putting his lamer posts directly into the trashcan, and we know that libcom has banned him and many of his sockpuppets for abusive behavior. Motopu (talk) 03:26, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I just checked the history and maybe this was not Ed Dillon who did the new edits. If not thanks to whoever did. Motopu (talk) 03:35, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

First step in photo gallery
I uploaded one photo from the SF fare strike and set it up to make a gallery of additional photos. We should search to see if we can find photos from other fare strikes that are in the public domain.

Eddillon (talk) 08:16, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Yet another fraudulent and deceitful claim
To quote:

"...who were responsible for successfully organizing the active participation of the Spanish-speaking working class in San Francisco's Mission District."

This implies that either all, or most, of the working class Spanish-speaking population of San Francisco's Mission District participated in the 2005 fare strike flop.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The event was ineptly organized, and the message calling for it was communicated with an exemplary poverty of effect and imagination, with the predictable result being that the fare strike was mostly ignored in SF's Mission District and elsewhere.

Kevin Keating

Miasnikov (talk) 04:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC) miasnikov Miasnikov(talk) 04:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Neutral, just-the-facts, change to a non-deceitful description of the SF Day Laborers role in San Francisco fare strike flop of 2005
"...Another group that participated was the SF Day Laborers, who tried to help get Spanish-speaking working people in San Francisco's Mission District to take part in the fare strike."

Keating

Miasnikov (talk) 05:12, 1 May 2009 (UTC) miasnikov Miasnikov (talk) 05:12, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Correction
You've made no effort to cite any third-party references to substantiate your claims of "consensus." Your op-ed conjectures are not facts. Stating something as fact just because you say is a tautology. This is a free-content encyclopedia, not a discussion forum. If you want an outlet for your assertions, create a blog to voice your subjective impressions freely.

You've been asked before to stop censoring the edits of others. Since you don't even attempt to back up your arguments with any references or reliable sources, you are not making edits in good faith. Please stop vandalizing this page.

Ed.

Eddillon (talk) 09:00, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Marxist-Leninist Creative Writing 301
I've changed this back to the more honest and accurate way it was before:

"...Another group that participated was the SF Day Laborers, who tried to help get Spanish-speaking working people in San Francisco's Mission District to take part in the fare strike."

This entry doesn't need to get turned into a puff-piece for every tiny group on the left fringe of the San Francisco Democratic Party who the airbrushed photo crew here are out to ass-lick their way into the good graces of. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Miasnikov (talk • contribs) 20:16, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Whenever Leninist/Trotskyist/Stalinist sects participate in some sort of public action they always wildly exaggerate the significance of the action in question and of their own role in it. We can see this on display here.

Keating

Miasnikov (talk) 20:11, 1 May 2009 (UTC)miasnikovMiasnikov (talk) 20:11, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Stop vandalizing
Per wikipedia guidelines, a cited reference was placed on the page. You tried to remove it. Stop vandalizing the page.

If you want to discuss the behavior of political sects, please take that up on the proper wikipedia pages. There are pages for each of the traditions you are very knowledgeable about. This page is entitled "Fare strikes" and has nothing to do with discussing the merits of the various groupings across the left political spectrum. Please make your edits on the appropriate pages, but not here.

Here are the proper places for your edits about those groups:

Leninism

Trotskyism

Stalinism

Democratic Party (United States)

And just to remind everyone, this announcement is at the top of the Fare strike page:

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources (ideally, using inline citations). Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2009)

This has changed because I have added citations in an effort to improve the article. Please don't remove them.

Thanks,

Ed.

Eddillon (talk) 22:15, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

response to Mister Ed:
Exhaustive log-rolling on behalf of every obscure left-liberal group that offered passive support and a paper endorsement to the bungled fare strike effort of 2005 should be moved to a new wikipedia entry.

A suggested tile could be, "Archeology of small city government-oriented left-liberal groups in San Francisco."

Miasnikov (talk) 03:30, 2 May 2009 (UTC) miasnikov Miasnikov (talk) 03:30, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Warning: if you vandalize this page one more time, you will be blocked
This discussion is for challenging the edits of others towards the goal of historical accuracy.

Your above post is completely incoherent. Don't post in the "Editing Talk" section if you're not able to even make a comprehensible sentence. Same with spelling and lexicon (what's a "tile"?). Frankly, your argument is full of jargon.

And why do we have to constantly explain the op-ed nature of your subjective allegations? Writing this:

"...was unfortunately not of much consequence"

is your opinion. It's not fact, nor do you support for whom is was "not of much consequence." Surely you took civics or history classes in high school. Although ideologically biased, their objective writing style is the clear, supported by references, style wikipedia expects. Conversely, you use "weasel words." Here's a definition (from WP:WEASEL):

Weasel words don't really give a neutral point of view; they just spread hearsay, or couch personal opinion in vague, indirect syntax. It is better to put a name and a face on an opinion than to assign an opinion to an anonymous source.

You've been warned twice: once about vandalizing the site based on disruptive editing; the other time for violating the 3-revert rule. You repeatedly violate the agreement you made to post in good faith (Assume good faith) and if you continue, you will be blocked from editing (see Blocking policy).

Your misbehavior has become chronic and will no longer be tolerated.

Respectfully,

Ed.

Eddillon (talk) 05:39, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Kevin Keating engages in disruptive editing, bucks consensus, refuses to get the point, engages in POV pushing, and edits in bad faith
Kevin is chalking up an impressive collection of wiki violations here. What we need is a way to convince a moderator to examine what is going on here and make a decision. The wiki moderators may be unaware that Kevin was banned libcom.org for similar behavior, has had many posts removed from indymedias, and has had a special troll section created for him at anti-politics.net. His pattern of behavior is clear as a bell. All that needs to be done is to let someone here know this. Motopu (talk) 06:13, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Had to undo more vandalism
I undid the vandalism, in which Keating makes op-ed changes -- completely without support or references.

Ed.

Eddillon (talk) 00:00, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Anonymous vandalism removed
Someone with the IP address of 76.14.66.94 anonymously vandalized this article. We should prevent this and immediately delete any anonymous acts of vandalism. If we can watch carefully, perhaps we can determine who the vandal is.

Ed.

Eddillon (talk) 00:27, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

UPDATE
O.K., I did a search of that IP address and it appears to be coming from somewhere in San Francisco's Mission District, in the proximity of the Jose Coronado Playground near Folsom and 21st Street. Any idea of who it might be?

But we should all be vigilantly aware to prevent trolls from doing anonymous vandalism.

Ed.

Eddillon (talk) 00:52, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Four Reverts: Clear Violation
You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24-hour period. Additionally, users who perform several reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. When in dispute with another editor you should first try to discuss controversial changes to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. Should that prove unsuccessful, you are encouraged to seek dispute resolution, and in some cases it may be appropriate to request page protection. If the edit warring continues, you may be blocked from editing without further notice.

Keating, if we can determine that 76.14.66.94 is your IP address, we will begin proceeding to have you blocked from using wikipedia. Since the anonymous vandal did the same undo that you'd done several times as part of your repeated vandalism, we strongly suspect that it is you.

Please stop vandalizing this article.

Ed.

Eddillon (talk) 01:45, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Filled out an edit war complaint and warned Miasnikov of his violation of 3 revert rule on his talk page
Miasnikov has repeatedly been asked to edit in good faith,and to cease in the vandalistic removal of cited historical facts. He's been warned of multiple violations, including breaking the 3 revert rule, and of his vandalism on the talk page when he removed other users posts (!). He's also been warned about the 3 revert rule on his talk page, and a formal complaint has been lodged regarding his ongoing behavior. Motopu (talk) 03:26, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

The same old, same old: on fantasies peddaled here by Dave Carr and Gifford Hartman
For the Chinese Progressive Association to have the prominence that it has in this entry, the leftist fantasy salesmen Dave Carr and Gifford Hartman would have to come up with some meaningful explanation of what concrete role the Chinese Progressive Association played -- if any -- in the failed fare strike of 2005.

The Chinese Progressive Association and the SF Day Laborers are refered to in this wikipedia entry in order to puff up the significance of the 2005 San Francisco fare strike flop. And, in a manner wholly typical of the egregious misrepresentaions and outright lies peddaled by Gifford Hartman and Dave Carr, even the syntax of the fantasy version of events being displayed is scrambled and incoherent; this is ironically appropriate to the clownish deceitful misrepresentation of an incompetently organized event taking place here.

I am filing a complaint about the three revert rule about the dishonest and inaccurate version of events repeatedly posted by Carr and Hartman. This rule applies to these fabulists as well as it does to my postings.

With the internet individuals can wallow in the illusion that 'the whole world is watching' -- and nothing could be further from the truth. My guess is that maybe 30 or 40 people will read this entry during the entire course of its life on wikipedia, and most of them will probably forget what they've read within a half hour of reading it.

The 2005 attempt at a transit system fare strike in San Francisco was a template of failure and incompetence. As I write this in early May 2009, it has been announced that San Francisco's Muni transit system will be increasing fares once again by July 2009; with this third fare hike in six years the fares for a single boarding on Muni will have gone up 100% in six years. There is at this point no public direct action-oriented opposition to this of the sort that could be expected if a similar fare hike a mere four years ago had elicited the kind of mass opposition that Dave Carr and Gifford Hartman are claiming took place in 2005. Their version of events is a fraud, and this sort of systematic misrepresentation of events serves as an impediment to a critical examination of a potentially useful tactic that may be utilized by working people in market society in the future. It is more important for these two individuals to exaggerate the impact of their actions that it is to present an unalloyed and honest examination of a strikingly unsuccesful event.

Kevin Keating

Miasnikov (talk) 04:54, 3 May 2009 (UTC) miasnikov Miasnikov (talk) 04:54, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Subjective Op-ed
If you want to make your case, please support it. Otherwise your contributions to this talk page are mere assertions, based on your opinion or your "guess." Or your speculations about future events. The internet offers a myriad of opportunities for your type of boilerplate ideology, but wikipedia isn't one of them. Please cease with your vandalism.

Thanks,

Ed.

Also, added another photograph of SF fare strike day one.

Eddillon (talk) 05:27, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Result of report to wiki administrators on Miasnikov edit warring
The result reads "warned" so the charge was taken seriously. Also, the moderator explained that the report and result should be referenced should Miasnikov continue. Bad faith edits, POV pushing, removal of sourced material, vandalism (as in the case of removing my posts from this page), the confrontational ad hominem on this page, the mounting record of warnings from multiple users and bots at his talk page, and much more, clearly show Miasnikov's problematic behavior. Motopu (talk) 18:36, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

To repeat, regarding comic misrepresentations of the 2005 SF fare strike flop by Dave Carr and Gifford Hartman...
For the Chinese Progressive Association to have the prominence that it has in this entry, the leftist fantasy salesmen Dave Carr and Gifford Hartman would have to come up with some meaningful explanation of what concrete role the Chinese Progressive Association played -- if any -- in the failed fare strike of 2005. They have none, because there wasn't any.

The Chinese Progressive Association and the SF Day Laborers are refered to in this wikipedia entry in order to puff up the significance of the 2005 San Francisco fare strike flop.

Dave Carr and Gifford Hartman are two guys who go on at stupefying length proving that they have nothing to say and, in the case of this part of this entry, no coherent langugage to say it with.

More photos, please! Maybe next it will be beach photos or something of similar relevance.

Miasnikov (talk) 20:41, 3 May 2009 (UTC) miasnikov Miasnikov (talk) 20:41, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

This is inappropriate here
Keating, if you don't like Chinese or Latino people please just come out and say it. Your slightly veiled racism is disgusting and inappropriate here. If you were wise, you'd keep you bigoted ideas to yourself. [This is a warning: your homophobic remarks won't be tolerated either!]

We've carefully documented the vital contributions of both groups in our collective piece entitled "Fare Strike! San Francisco 2005: First-Hand Accounts" (available from the external links to this article) which includes the account of a native Chinese speaker who joined us in the days before, and throughout, the fare strike. We've also documented our collaboration with Spanish- and Chinese-speaking groups in several of our first-hand accounts based on our experiences with them. The onus is on you to refute what we've written, based on facts and not on your opinion or hearsay.

If you don't like photographs of the fare strike, why don't you say why. We're trying to document an historical event, so if you have a critique of the photos make it by supporting your argument.

Your approach all along has been disrespectful regarding this article and wikipedia in general. Since you've continued doing so after repeated warnings, it's clear that your involvement here is in bad faith.

Please become more familiar with the wikipedia protocol and behave accordingly.

Thanks,

Ed.

Eddillon (talk) 00:36, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Since this is a discussion page
I'd really be interested in a good faith explanation by Kevin Keating as to why it has been, for the last four years, so important to negate key aspects of the fare strike. I outline six "questions" or topics of discussion below. I hope you are capable of addressing some or all them in a good faith manner for the purposes of discussing your actions to date on this wiki page.

Question 1: Why did you repeatedly remove the reference to the fact that thousands of people rode Muni for free during the fare strike? Are you claiming this did not happen? Since it did happen, why would it not be relevant to some type of assessment of the strike?

Question 2: Do you think it is honest to boil down this or any other event in history as either a "success" or a "failure"? If the strike saw thousands of times more participation than the fare strike you attempted in the 90s, how does this corrolate to the one word description of the event as a failure? (Simply stating it is a non-event does not qualify as an answer here.)

Question 3: Is there any chance that the people who rode free might have gained any insight into the commodification of daily life, and their place in it, perhaps gaining some sense that they could reject such social relations? If not, then why did they risk reprisal from the law to ride free? You have stated that the fact that there is currently no call for a fare strike shows that the last fare strike had zero impact or relevance to class struggle. Could you apply that same logic in a blanket way to the history of all strikes or class struggles big or small, that the existance of a lack of action now negates any significance of past actions? If so, what is the theoretical underpinning of such a view?

Question 4: What did you witness on the first day of the fare strike? Did you see any riders or drivers either riding for free or refusing to collect fares? Did you talk with people who participated as it was happening? Did you see any people who were excited by the fare strike? Did you meet any people who had some pretty good explanations as to why they participated? I did, and I wonder why, if you were there too, you did not take into consideration the actions of those people, and their own views and explanations of those actions, into your calculus that "nothing happened." Ignoring the input of participants strikes me as vanguardist.

Question 5: Given that thousands participated in the fare strike, what is it specifically about the participation of those thousands that you find to be without significance? Or do you think that their participation might have some meaning or value?

Question 6: Have any other participants in the fare strike, whether from Anarchist Action, Social Strike group, Fare Strike group, individual writers/historians who participated, drivers, participants in the BASTARD Conference panel on the fare strike, the many fare strike participants who have written about it online, or others, ever stepped forward to agree with the version of events as you have described them in the 7 or 8 articles you wrote about the strike? If no one has ever come forward to back you up, can you offer any insight as to why that might be. Does it have any relevance in weighing the veracity of the claims you have made about the strike?

Motopu (talk) 01:21, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Antics of Gifford Hartman on display here
Gifford Hartman: "Keating, if you don't like Chinese or Latino people please just come out and say it. Your slightly veiled racism is disgusting and inappropriate here. If you were wise, you'd keep you bigoted ideas to yourself. [This is a warning: your homophobic remarks won't be tolerated either!]"

These are the cowardly lies and standard-issue aspersions of a zero integrity San Francisco Bay Area leftist hustler and incompetent named Gifford Hartman. Hartman's stock in trade is to engage in sketchy anonymous internet antics, and now he's found a new warm and cosy home here on wikipedia. Hartman likes to present himself to gullible anarchists and ultra-leftists as some sort of ultra-left Marxist, but the substance of his involvement in the attempted fare strike of 2005, and the lies he's told about the fare strike since then, are consistent with the manipulative and sordid antics of Marxism-Leninists of the San Francisco Bay Area's so-called "New Communist (sic) Movement" of the 1970's.

Here it takes the form of claiming that the leftists' more radical opponents -- me, in this case -- are "racist;" this is the usual canard of demagogic, bottom-feeding Stalinoids. Gifford Hartman has no credibility, except with his underling Dave Carr and with people who haven't dealt with him yet, and when they do deal with him they see what he's about, and subsequently give him the swerve, as I have, starting in July 2004.

Also in Gifford's caes there ought to be a 21-day waiting period between the time Gifford has a drink and the next time he can post stuff on the internet.

The Chinese Progressive Association had next to nothing to do with the fare strike fiasco of 2005. Hartman and his underling Carr have been repeatedly offered an opportunity to contradict what I've stated regarding this, and the clownish Gifford Hartman's response is to run and hide behind the "racist" canard. This guy has no integrity, his word is worthless, and he can't wage an argument. He hasn't got anything to stand on.

For an example of relevant action among predominantly Chinese-language Muni riders in the context of the fare strike fiasco, see the leaflet that I wrote here:

http://www.infoshop.org/myep/munistrike/flyer_ch_lg.jpg

Various people distributed 1000+ of them among Chinese-speaking Muni riders along Stockton Street in San Francisco's Chinatown as the fare strike fiasco was about to start.

Keating

" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Miasnikov(talk • contribs) 05:01, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

This is NOT an argument, it's personal smear
We've asked you to substantiate your argument. Instead you respond with abuse. That doesn't support your position, regardless of what you think about the people involved. We met with the Chinese Progressive Association and they did several translations, as well as being on the streets in the build up to, and during, the fare strike. If you say that's a lie, the burden is on you to produce evidence to the contrary. If you can't, it's the word of just one person -- you -- against the word of the 10 people from the Fare Strike! pamphlet and the couple dozen young anarchists you worked with in Social Strike, several of whom we still work with now. All of us saw these Chinese allies with our own eyes. That you can't refute. But if you're saying they were standing around doing nothing and were clueless, prove it. Otherwise your the one peddling historical fallacies. Anyway, the way you try to rob historical agency from people of color, in this case comrades from the Chinese and Latino working class, for the sin of being "leftists" really turns my stomach. If it's not racist, what is it? Your anti-immigrant feelings? Xenophobia? Or simply a hatred of working class people with a different skin color from your own?

Same with your homophobic slurs of "puto." I went to a predominately Spanish-speaking high school and everyone knows it means effeminate man, literally "fag." You spew these vile words at us, then attack our character for pointing out the hateful, bigoted way you talk.

And you can't deny that you loose any sense of being objective whenever you try to discuss the "March on City Hall," which was 71 days after the fare strike began. I wasn't there, so I know as much about it as you do -- which is zero. What's so wrong with these Latino comrades wanting to do something to bring a sense of closure to their actions? As Tom Wetzel, among several others, has pointed out they were the backbone of the fare strike. They kept it going on the 14 and 49 Mission Street buses for at least 3 weeks into September. I participated with them and saw it myself. Am I lying? If you really think so, prove it.

Did those Day Labor guys really deserve to get called "Down Syndrome sufferers"? If you'd ever met them, you'd realize that they live in such a desperate state of precarious poverty that they don't have the luxury to be "leftists." There at the absolute bottom of the working class and deserve all the solidarity we can give them. Why do you heap so much scorn and abuse on them? Go meet them, you'd be amazed at some of the militant struggles they've participated in their own countries. Evading death squads and scrapes with death that make your life seem like that of an aristocrat in comparison.

And by your spelling mistakes and typos, you're not in any position to accuse anyone of abusing substances before posting. I bet you had more to drink this weekend than I've had in 2009. I'd be willing to wager money on that bet.

And if you have a critique of the New Communist Movement, please take it up here:

New Communist Movement

And Motopu is right, those 1990s "attempted" fare strikes in San Francisco involved nothing more than 3 to 4 guys putting up posters, fliering, and one clever prank. Nothing more. No working class solidarity with the drivers, ever. Why is it exemplary to do absolutely nothing, but when the Spanish-speaking drivers on the Mission buses actually do a social strike, it's not good enough for you because "leftists" were involved? Was it because they had "Down Syndrome"? And sin of all sins, one was even in a Stalinist group in the 1970s. Worse still, he was a hippy in the 60s and smoked pot and schlepped the Berkeley Barb. Should he be burned at the stake? You wrote: "True Confessions: I was a teen-age Marxist-Leninist!" here(still are, if you ask people who've worked with you and seen what an authoritarian, control-freak, vanguardist you are), so according to your own logic you should get burned at the stake too. I disagree, but maybe I'm too soft on leftists because I wouldn't put them before the firing squad.

But enough of the stroll down memory lane. We're still waiting for a jargon-free, principled, and historically reference account proving that neither the Latina/o Day Laborers or people from the Chinese Progressive Association were involved in the fare strike.

How about more facts and less insults.

Ed.

PS Thanks for cleaning up your typos, I guess you're sobering up.

Eddillon (talk) 06:11, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Civility reminder
I'm advising everyone--everyone--on this talk page to take it down a few notches and remain civil. Talk pages are not the place to air personal grievances against other editors. They are strictly for discussion of improving articles.

I highly recommend someone archive some of the older, less useful material. Please also note that not every new post needs its own subheading. This page is too long and it's a mess of subheadings containing posts nobody has responded to.

If you are deadlocked regarding article content, you may submit the article for peer review, attempt mediation, or begin a Request For Comment. Exploding Boy (talk) 06:22, 4 May 2009 (UTC)