Kirk James Murphy M.D. has a great post at FireDogLake about the San Francisco torch relay and the protests surrounding it.

As the whole watching world knows, today China’s attempt to torchwash nearly sixty years of brutal imperialism in Tibet, the massacres of Tienanmen Square, and the genocide that is Darfur failed on the streets of San Francisco. The fearful overlords of China – and the US – whittled an already condensed “relay” down to a three mile “hide and seek” that started in midtown SF, and crammed multiple runners on each short leg. Even then, one brave torch holder from the South Bronx used her spirit to whip out a Tibetan flag. Today, our freedoms doused China’s Great Torch March Forward. And last night, the ancient values to Tibet doused our rage and anger at China’s crimes. Both Tibet and the US shared their freedoms – one spiritual, one political – with their sadly impoverished comrades on the other side of the world.

Today in SF I saw thousands come out to celebrate the freedoms our sad Boi Mayor tried to deny us – and extend those freedoms around the globe to peoples they’d never met. Save for a few adolescent exceptions, we were joyous and courteous – much like the PRC supporters wearing pre-printed, mass produced slogans praising China’s freedoms. My organizer friends and I counted only three arrests (two of them anticipated from “lock-downs”) among a real “people’s army” of thousands who reclaimed our Constitution from the mewling “leaders” – local, State, and Federal – who thought they could defy our best traditions and offshore our greatest treasure to the PRC.

And who were our allies when Mayor Hair Gel hid the march route from the people – but apparently let Beijing’s servants in on the “secret”? Public servants in uniform – disgusted by the ruse and the Boi Mayor’s supine choice to let Beijing’s secret police on our streets.

The MSM I’ve too often reviled — best surveillance force we’ve ever had. And hundreds of regular folk who phoned the torch’s location: on all three miles of the route through SF.

By 3:30, the whole farce was over – the Blood Olympics Torch and the secret police minders took the buses where they’d spent much of the day off to the airport. The gala “closing ceremony” in SF was canceled – replaced by some tawdry little sham at SFO.

And the night before – the fight was already over. We’d won before the whole desecration ever started. And we in SF had been given a great gift…a gift we used today.

That gift is the gift of freedom. Thousands of people came to the streets of San Francisco this week to protest for Tibetan freedom and human rights in China. Despite underhanded efforts by SF Mayor Gavin Newsom to suppress protest before and during the torch relay, protests took place that continued to demonstrate the global opposition to the Beijing Olympics and the torchwashing of China’s brutal occupation of Tibet. Murphy’s post goes on to discuss how the political dynamics of Newsom’s aspirations for greater affinity with the Chinese and IOC bigwigs corrupted his ability to exercise the freedoms that he too enjoys and, as Mayor, is responsible for protecting.

I’ve long said that one of the fundamental reasons that I work for Tibetan independence is because I have meaningful rights as an American that Tibetans do not. I can write what I want on this blog. I can assemble with others in public and call for freedom in Tibet while waiving a Tibetan flag and walking alongside a monk who carries a picture of the Dalai Lama. I can do these things and not fear detention, torture, imprisonment, or violence. These are all rights and protections that Tibetans lack. While we enjoy these rights and while Tibetans seek freedom without them, I see a moral responsibility to act in solidarity with them. Murphy’s post gets at this and recognizes that people in San Francisco, Paris, and London have made a stark contrast between their real freedoms and the repression that exists in China. In so doing, the free global community has helped stop China’s use of the Olympic Games as a political tool to whitewash their atrocities in Tibet.

Update:

Calitics has some great photos of yesterday’s protests in San Francisco, courtesy of Bob Brigham.