The weeks leading up to the protest were a variety of bad faith online interactions with supporters of as well as the org that organized Reboot 2024, the so-called “Foundation for American Innovation”. This org operates out of a UPS store mailbox on Fillmore Street.
I don’t know much about protesting but the one thing I’ve had drilled into me about protests is that you have to have goals and messages to spread. I settled on actually doing it, and then I had three goals for this protest:
1) Associate these organizations with Project 2025 in everyone’s mind.
2) Get the message out in the Bay Area that the California Pirate Party is for techies who want to work towards a real democracy.
3) Deflate the message of the conference amongst the attendees by being more interesting and talked about than the speakers.
Only time will tell with the first goal, but to be honest, Y-Combinator did that themselves by knowingly keynoting a conference that brings in a special guest who says things like “The revolution will be bloodless if the left allows it to be”. Is anyone surprised by Garry Tan’s stochastic terrorism by now? The man who inspired death threats to San Francisco city supervisors has whitewashed his image in glowing New York Times profiles yet still circles back to his tech fascist roots. If only he were better at keeping an audience’s attention.
Well, that’s where I called up the heavy hitters because I did a bit of research and saw that they fancied themselves libertarians of a sort. I must admit that I was bored with something to do during the Burning Man lull that inevitably hits San Francisco every July and August. This conference was conveniently scheduled just after Burning Man, and it was suspiciously planned so all the hippies would be at the dirt rave. My own business is dependent upon a landlord who goes to the burn, so I guess I can’t trash talk it too much anymore but suffice it to say I decided I would spearhead a protest with my spare time waiting for my landlord to return. I tweeted those fateful words on Twitter.
Flash forward to September 4th, and Vermin Supreme is getting ready aboard the B-612, a sailboat named after the asteroid that the Little Prince lived on from the story by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The dock at Pier 39 is controlled by the harbormaster and the Port of San Francisco has strict embarkation and debarkation rules. As I walked up in my pirate outfit, a 90-foot charter yacht that I recognized as the Empress (manned by Captain Jerry) pulled up to the end of B Dock next to where Vermin was berthed. We started down the dock to leave for Fort Mason when people in fancy dress started walking through the gate and someone saw Vermin with a boot on his head and cried out in recognition.
As it turned out, Reboot 2024 had invaded the dock where I lived and broken a few Port of San Francisco rules to do it. Well, technically Empress Cruises did it, so if anything comes out of it then they will get fined. I realized at that moment that my third goal would be successful. These tech bros would be gorged on shrimp skewers and marinated in so many free cocktails that the conference message would get drowned out by the celebrity protestor in their midst. To start a theme, we made every conference attendee take a flyer from us. To make sure they kept it, Vermin usually signed them.
We got to the gates of Fort Mason and immediately saw the ship breaking the same rules at Gashouse Cove, the marina right next to Fort Mason Center. Another part of the reason I set up this protest is that this is my neighborhood. I shop at the Safeway across from the Fort Mason gates, and I shop for art supplies at the Flax in the Fort complex. I walk my dog on the cliffs above the piers. Gashouse Cove is my neighbor and everyone knows the lady who runs the fuel dock there. The rampant hypocrisy is astonishing with these folks – their absolute certainty that the solution to all of society’s ills is giving the cops more money and military weapons while flaunting every rule around. I am still pretty offended for my neighborhood that they hosted this thing and didn’t even know.
I got the permit squared away several days before, and I knew exactly what the terms were. The employees of Fort Mason did not know, however, and relied upon ME to tell them where the free speech area was and how loud the megaphone could be. They also assumed from past protests where some things would be. I skillfully wove a line between the two and then Vermin Supreme went and blasted that all to hell. I was lucky to have Vermin because I’m more of an organizer type and I needed a person to draw attention to the circus inside Fort Mason. He is an absolute master of it. We met with several journalists during our time waiting for the boat to bring everyone back, and I feel hopeful that I got across our message to the Berkeley crowd that the Pirate Party is in lockstep with other Pirate Parties around the world, and it’s a real populist reform movement, as opposed to the astroturfed network of nonprofits across the city that all seem to be some hopeful word, merged with the letters “SF” in a cookie-cutter flourish.
One interesting interaction was with Erica Sandberg. I never knew about her before she started leaving snide comments in threads of mine online. I would have been inclined to write her off as just another right-wing Twitter troll but evidently, she writes journalism about money stuff. She walked up and started talking to Rose and me with some kind of smugness that I could tell was a bit of “these people don’t know I hate them” that I remember from Southern Baptist church ladies in the south. As she walked away Rose commented on it and I explained to her who it was. We agreed that the church ladies saying “bless your heart” was her condescending vibe. She seemed alone.
Our attention got yanked back to the dock, where the Empress once again illegally debarked passengers at Gashouse Cove at 5 pm. They found Vermin Supreme barking instructions at them via megaphone. The docks are all a Marsec Level 1 area, so a certain number of rules are to be expected. “Please be prepared to take off your shoes,” said Vermin. “Please be prepared to take off your shoes again and again, forever, in the name of national security.”
The passengers swarmed Vermin, getting selfies. We gave them all the flyers. All in all, we got rid of about 200 of the 500 flyers I printed. I wasn’t expecting the attendees to eagerly snap them up but I am impressed now and hope to turn this into a tactic in future protests. The one thing the attendees will probably keep and cherish from this conference is a protest flyer signed by Vermin Supreme.
During Vermin’s rantings, we were approached by a local “provocateur”? Is that the right word? Meeting him in person was not exactly provoking. I am not sure if JJ Smith expected me to have some kind of reaction but I’d just spent about 12 hours in the presence of Vermin Supreme so another streamer/documentarian was not a big deal to me. I was dressed in a pirate outfit, and in particular my large stompy boots. I mostly talked to Rose, the California Pirate Party captain whilst Vermin ranted at the guests and demanded cocktails. As the journalists moved away, we scouted where the next morning’s breakfast session would take place – between piers 1 and 2 at the other end of the fort.
We left Vermin to yell at attendees and take selfies with them while we went back to Pier 39 and plotted the next morning’s action. A typical interaction he told us about later was with influencer Brooke Bowman, who said she had no real idea what the conference was but was given a ticket by someone. Another person said he was just there for the steak dinner. All of the attendees we talked to pled ignorance when asked about Project 2025. We suspected that some of them may not have presented themselves truthfully. This was a theme for the next 24 hours as everyone found out later.
The next morning we got up bright and early to prep the B-612 for action. We warmed up the engine and cast off the lines to leave about 7:30 am. The tides were just starting to turn so it was slack almost to Fort Mason. As we sailed up in B-612, Vermin got his phone cued up with Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries and played it at full blast as we steamed into the cove between the piers. Frankie swung the boat around for the next forty-five minutes as Vermin shouted about mimosas and how they shouldn’t fall asleep no matter how boring the speakers were and to be sure to take notes. Photographers took pictures of us and the security guards that Vermin made friends with the night before were onshore laughing. A highlight that I failed to capture on film was the aforementioned Erica Sandberg, holding her hands over her ears and rushing towards the Cowell Theater entrance about 100 yards down the pier.
Once their “Sessions” started we decided to head back to Pier 39 to plan the next moves. While this happened, a reporter from a local website called and asked to talk. I ended up talking to that reporter until 2 pm, and I also got a sunburn because we were sitting in the cockpit of the Saylor. Once that was over, I was on the fence about going back until the news came out that Kevin Roberts was the “secret guest” nobody wanted to publicize ahead of time because they knew there would be a protest bigger than just our few people.
We went back to the Fort Mason gates and harassed them for an hour until we decided we should eat some sushi. We left the attendees of Reboot 2024 with Vermin Supreme’s patented MegaPhone Feedback rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. As we wrapped it up, I reflected that I feel like our second and final goal was within reach – informing voters, and in particular voters with a technical bent that if you are looking for a political affiliation that wants to implement technology to help foster democracy, don’t go running towards folks like Garry Tan who are forging alliances with people who don’t respect fully 50% of our population (women) as human beings.
Come join us here at the California Pirate Party and let’s forge the tools for real democracy in conjunction with our national and international Pirate Party mates.
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