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.

Last night we stood in the 49 degree air in 15 MPH winds...while amidst warmth and treasures, our sad damaged Mayor lost the chance to be a world statesman.

Behind heavy security, Gavin dined with China's ambassador in the Asian Art Museum gala. While Desmond Tutu joined us in the cold.

Desmond Tutu came and laughed with us in SF - where the UN was born. In UN plaza. He thanked us for doing the work that freed South Africa - and will free Tibet, and in the process the Chinese people.

I stood next to a Han Chinese couple, watching as they called "Free Tibet" with the crowd. First they looked around cautiously for the PRC watchers said to be thronging SF this week. Then they laughed to each other when they called out without even looking - and realized they had done so. And then they laughed and yelled louder.

One of the torch carriers addressed us - and praised the work of the Global Torch protests. An Olympic athlete did the same - and lit the Tibet Freedom Torch. And we heard how the young athletes converging on Beijing will decide for themselves how to speak of freedom to China's people.

No one I heard called to boycott the Games - but they are calling on us to unite with China's people in boycotting the megacorps that sought to rule us all....and to walk away from the darkness in which the undead corporations are bound - and seek to bind us.

This week the PRC's power started to dissolve - and you and I and the world saw it happening.

But the strangest thing - the amazing thing - it's happening with compassion.

I thought I couldn't schedule a talk - much less a post - for Wed 'cause I might be in jail for sitting in the street....again.

But we didn't need those tactics on Wednesday.

We - in London and Paris and in SF - we've won the Torch fight.

Our sad, damaged mayor still spend last evening pleasing power - and seeking the father approval he never knew. He still needs to please his rich donors - pursuing the illusory security of the wealth he saw around him as a poor kid among wealthy Marinites.

He's still trapped between Nancy Scylla and Diane Charybdis - unable to defy either for fear of losing mom - and in his willful indecision, losing both. Poor man - even Richard Blum (yep, that Blum) showed up at the start of the rally - to speak for Free Tibet. Amazingly, only a few SF activists even booed - though I saw dozens there I know to loathe him.

SF's sad PRC fanboys still showed up to line the streets, seeking to displace diverse opinions - and in their exercise of "freedom" as ordered by Beijing, they displayed a culture so stunted in freedom they cannot recognize when they mock it - confusing suppression with harmony.

And the fact so many PRC supporters scuttled to strategic locations today before we the public knew where the Torch would be scurrying through the street simply illustrated how our leaders fear us - and fear the very freedoms they pretend to honor in public, while privately working to desecrate.

[Sad people - to think so little of themselves. To set aside the opinions of those they require to vote for them - Gavin and DiFi surely believe they were never worthy of our trust. Why else despise the choices of the very people who elected them?]

The rest of us will be gathered along the Embarcadero at 10 this morning - not to snatch the oversized lighter, but to celebrate the transforming fire of liberty. And - along with the rest of the world - to wonder how thousands of young, free, vibrant athletes will carry that flame to China's people in August.

The IOC's leaders have been exposed as the calculating aparatchiks all authoritarians require - and they've also be revealed to be every bit as myopic as Beijing's leaders - and every bit as inept.

And all we had to do - with a compassion strange and new to me - but obviously central to so many Tibetans - is speak, and watch, and offer support to those willing to change.

What a lovely warm cold night. What a splendid day.