WikiLeaks Sidewalk Showings, July 30 and August 6, 2010


Local report, SF Bay chapter Street Screenings: Wikileaks “Collateral Murder” Video in downtown Berkeley Our team set up just after dark on Shattuck Avenue, outside a closed store, and started letting passerbys know they could watch this video with us. As our crew set up the projector, movie screen, and loudspeaker we also started giving out flyers: “More War Crimes Exposed — Now What Do We Do?” and on the back, the Open Letter of Reconciliation and Responsibility to the Iraqi People written by Ethan McCord and Josh Stieber. (Ethan and Josh were both members of Bravo Company 2-16, the unit shown in the video as it murders 12 Iraqi civilians. Ethan is seen in the footage, the soldier running for help with a wounded Iraqi child in his arms). You can see a few minutes of our street screening last night (last week too) here [[YouTube link]]. Last night’s street screening was an intense 90 minutes for our crew. Showing the war on the city walls, we were reaching out to people not knowing how they’d respond. Wikileaks’s fantastic job of subtitling and brief narrative notes really helps the truth come clear to any viewer.) First, there was no predicting which “types of people” would stop and stay to watch the Wikileaks video. Their faces were sometimes emotion-filled and sometimes emotionless as they watched the Apache helicopter rain down death on the streets below, and listened to the soundtrack of the soldiers’ voices as they shoot, and shoot, and shoot, and the men’s bodies