The Olympic Torch relay route only makes one stop in North America: San Francisco. The torch will arrive on April 9th – this coming Wednesday. Though the torch is only stopping in one American city and though San Francisco is historically among the most liberal when it comes to politics and protest, Mayor Gavin Newsom has consistently been an obstacle to alternative views about what the Beijing Olympics mean and what feelings the presence of the torch on American soil may elicit. Newsom has discouraged protesting and the exact torch route was only released last week – making it near impossible for the coalition of groups organizing against the torch in SF to lock down plans and apply for necessary permits. San Francisco is a city that is used to protests and I’d guess that at a certain point, Newsom has to just get out of the way and let events move forward. There is a large Tibetan-American community in the Bay Area and many, many people support Tibetan independence and human rights in SF. I’d simply hope that unlike in London and India, the US does not welcome Chinese security guards to surround the torch on its brief stop on American soil.

London: The guys in blue are Chinese security agents.

A coalition of Tibetan support groups in the Bay Area have a central website for activities and protests connected to the San Francisco torch relay. It is SFTeamTibet.org. You can get a schedule of all planned protests taking place on April 8th and 9th here.

CREDO Action has also printed free protest signs for the torch relay. You can reserve a protest sign here.

You can also sign up to get text message updates about the events at the protests in San Francisco by texting “sftorch” (leave out the quotation marks) to 41411.