A few days before I left California, my friend and I were on foot through downtown San Francisco. We walked like insignificant creatures among the huge dominating buildings of the financial district up towards North Beach and the Embarcadero, where we visited the City Lights Bookstore, and Telegraph Hill's Coit Tower. On the way we witnessed a line of about fifty people carrying protest signs with messages about United States involvement in Palestine and other current war protest topics. At the rear of the line were several people dressed in large heads which gave their wearers a lot of trouble catching the curb from street to street as the procession moved back down into the heart of the financial district, opposite of the direction that we were traveling. There was a person at the curb helping the costumed protesters safely back onto the sidewalks. Today while looking through archived news photographs on various websites, I came upon a picture taken June 6, 2003 at a protest outside Bechtel Corporation's world headquarters on Beale Street in San Francisco. The photo contained five people dressed in black and wearing the same giant heads.

The protest in the picture symbolized Iraqi women mourning the dead. Some look upward, others look straight forward, but all are holding drooping cloth bodies while standing amid small white coffins and bodies clustered in front of their feet. The event was held outside Bechtel in protest of a recent 680 million dollar contract the corporation obtained from the U.S. Agency for International Development back in April. A contract which deals with reconstruction and refitting of Iraq in the aftermath of the U.S. lead attacks. The protest was centered on the idea that Bechtel's profiteering is not in the best interest of those truly in need. The protesters requested the extremely profitable contract be rescinded and that the money and control of the reconstruction process be given to the people of Iraq and international institutions such as the United Nations. They also insisted that Bechtel be held accountable the devastation of many other world nations in the past. Hundreds of people lined up outside the corporate headquarters and around fifty people were arrested in the process for blocking the entrance to the building at different times during the day. This is just a sample of the protests that go on almost daily in the city. Pages such as this one can give you just a sample of what is happening in the bay area. Pages like Protest.net also house information about protest events all around the world as well as information on how to get involved, and stay involved.

After all this headline news reading about the protest from various news sources on the internet, I wondered just what exactly was the basis for the protest, and the great ill regard for Bechtel Corporation. Eventually, I did a bit more reading about the groups involved. Public Citizen, Global Exchange, and CorpWatch all insist that Bechtel has a history of not only financial mismanagement, but also immense environmental destruction, and a blatant disregard for human rights. CorpWatch itself published a lengthy article that details the exact involvement of Bechtel as an influential backer for not only the current attacks on Iraq, but also Middle East involvement going back several decades. The last line of the article's introduction struck me as particularly well spoken and it read, "The military invasion of Iraq must not be followed by a corporate invasion." The three interest groups focus of attention on this matter seems to be on revealing these truths to a broader basis of people and to stop not only Bechtel from its unjustified profiteering adventures, but to also help bring an end to all of the massive government backed corporations that impose disastrous consequences on the people and nations of the third world through to greed and exploitation.

More information on the topics discussed above can be found at the links scattered throughout the body of this text. Please check them out.