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Pedestrians walk along Crissy Field in San Francisco in this file image.

People around the United States have decried the white nationalist movement after three people lost their lives when violence erupted in Virginia over the weekend, and San Franciscans have also made it known that racism and hatred are unwelcome in their hometown.

And the City by the Bay isn't stopping there. Residents have begun organizing counter-protests with unusual themes.

Up first is "Leave your dog poop on Crissy Field" from 12 p.m. Aug. 25 through 10 a.m. Aug. 26.

Organizers wrote on Facebook that the idea behind the event is to "leave a gift for our Alt-Right friends."

They continued: "Take your dog to Crissy Field and let them do their business and be sure not to clean it up! Watch out for landmines, friends! We can get together Sunday and clean up the mess and hug each other!"

So far, 525 people have demonstrated interest in this gathering, which has piqued the interest of nearly 3,000 more.

Crissy Field has made headlines this week after right-wing group, Patriot Prayer, applied for a permit to host "Freedom Rally San Francisco" on Aug. 26.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Superintendent London Breed who have expressed outrage at the request and are urging the National Park Service, which has jurisdiction over the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, to deny the permit.

National Park Service officials, however, said in a statement Thursday: "We are guided by the Constitution, the law, longstanding court precedent, and National Park Service policy, which tells us we must be deliberative and not preemptive in our decisions related to First Amendment gatherings."

They are said to be reviewing the permit application and are expected to make a decision in the coming week.

In response, counter-protesters, in true San Francisco style, are encouraged to dance as "an alternative to hate, confrontation and aggression."

The "SF LovedUp Mobile Dance Counter-Rally" will last from 1 to 5 p.m. Aug. 26 at Marina Green Park. Attendees will not interrupt the white supremacist rally, but will dress in their "amazing colorful fabulous best" and "groove tocheesy, party pop dance athems," organizers wrote on Facebook.

More than 1,000 people have said they will be at the event and nearly 6,000 more are interested.

Meanwhile, community organizations, including Stop the Violence, Castro Community on Patrol, and Unafraid, have teamed up with the Rev. Dr. Megan Rohrer for what is described on Facebook as "San Francisco Peacefully Unites Against White Nationalists."

Organizers have issued a special invite to "all drag performers and sparkly freaks" to counter "violent behaviors" from 2 to 5 p.m. Aug. 26.

They wrote: "Believing hate groups are coming to San Francisco to bait folk into helping them recruit others to their cause and to instigate violent behaviors so lawsuits can fund their hate work, we are uniting with diverse advocates and leaders around San Francisco who are urging safety, peace, and events that will help preserve the fragile diversity of Crissy Field."

However, this peaceful gathering will not occur at Crissy Field. It remains unclear where it will be hosted, but that hasn't stopped roughly 1,400 people from signing up and another 3,100 from expressing interest.

This story will be updated as other events are announced.

Published 5 hours ago | Updated 3 hours ago

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San Francisco to Counter 'Alt-Right' Rallies by Dancing, Leaving 'Dog Poop' at Crissy Field - NBC Bay Area

Common Dreams

The Alt-Right and the 1% Common Dreams Mercer, the Co-CEO of the $50 billion Renaissance Technologies hedge fund, is also one of three owners of Breitbart News, the outlet Trump strategist (and former Breitbart editor) Steve Bannon has described as a platform for the alt-right. With ...

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The Alt-Right and the 1% - Common Dreams

President Donald Trumps chief strategist, Steve Bannon, has called white nationalists and alt-right groups losers in a phone call with the editor of a progressive magazine.

In an interview with The American Prospect,published late Wednesday, Bannon also detailed how hes working to influence change in Secretary of State Rex Tillersons State Department, as well as U.S. policy on China. His comments emerged alongside another report that says Trump is afraid of firing him.

These guys are a collection of clowns, Bannon said of hard-right groups that marched in Charlottesville, Virginia,last weekend to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, which leftdozens injured and a 32-year-old woman who was protesting the march dead.

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White House chief strategist Steve Bannon called white nationalists "losers" in an interview with a progressive magazine Wednesday. Carlos Barria/Reuters

Ethno-nationalismits losers. Its a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush ityou know, help crush it more, Bannon said. His comments are at odds with his role leading Breitbart, a hard-right online news outlet, which he called the platform for the alt-right during the 2016 campaign.

In a press conference at Manhattans Trump Tower Tuesday, the president defended the alt-right, a loose-knit group of white supremacists, white nationalists, conspiracy theoristsand populists, which has become increasingly visible since his election victory.

But the president also said well see what happens with Mr. Bannon when asked about the White House aides status within the administration following bipartisan calls for him to be fired for his past support for the alt-right.

The president obviously is very nervous and afraid of firing him, a source close to the White House told Reuters Wednesday. The source said the concern is that Bannon could turn into a harsh critic of the administration if hes forced out.

Related: Trump is scared of Steve Bannon and that's why he hasn't been fired: Report

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster has recently blamed Bannon for a sustained campaign of stories on Breitbart attacking his character after he worked to fire Bannons allies on the National Security Council.

In the interview, Bannon also contradicted Trumps threats of military action against North Korea over its continuing intercontinental ballistic missile tests and development of nuclear weapons.

Theres no military solution [to North Koreas nuclear threats]. Forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul dont die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I dont know what youre talking about. Theres no military solution here. They got us.

In the interview, Bannon had his sights set on a larger issue. Were at economic war with China, he said. Weve come to the conclusion that theyre in an economic war and theyre crushing us.

Bannon said that to him the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, were five years away, I think, 10 years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which well never be able to recover.

He said he plans to challenge China and its trade imbalance by lodging complaints against its steel and aluminum export practices and use the 1974 Trade Act to block Chinas practice of extracting technology from American companies.

These strategies, he said, are riling his opponents in the State, Defense andTreasury departments and the National Economic Council. But he has plans to marginalize Trump administration members.

Im changing out people at East Asian Defense; Im getting hawks in. Im getting Susan Thornton [acting head of the East Asian and Pacific Affairs Bureau] out at State, Bannon said.

His comment about Thornton shows Bannon believes he has strong influence over Tillerson, who has tried to make Thornton permanent in the role but has been blocked by the White House.

Theyre wetting themselves, Bannon saidof his government rivals and opponents on tougher trade policies against China. The presidents default position is to do it, but the apparatus is going crazy.

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Steve Bannon Calls Alt-Right 'Losers' And Says His Government Rivals Are 'Wetting Themselves' - Newsweek

With plans to protest outside Google's offices this weekend, conservatives are taking America's culture wars directly to Silicon Valley, a place that was long insulated from political rancor but is now one of the most important ideological battlegrounds.

The rallies were inspired by James Damore, the former Google engineer who was fired last week for posting a 10-page internal memo arguing that the lack of women in tech could be attributed to biological differences. His dismissal sparked an outcry from conservatives who say their opinions are being muzzled by liberal technology companies and led Damore to criticize his former company for promoting a "particularly intense echo chamber."

"The March on Google stands for free speech and the open discussion of ideas," wrote event organizer Jack Posobiec, a conservative media figure who pushed the "Pizzagate" and Seth Rich conspiracy theories and was recently retweeted by the president.

Posobiec, who did not respond to questions sent to his Facebook page, said the marches planned for Saturday are not "alt-right" events and that he wanted to avoid the violence and mayhem experienced in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend.

The Details

Protests are planned Saturday at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., and other company offices such as Venice, Atlanta, Pittsburgh and Seattle. It's unclear how many people are expected.

Google did not respond to a request for comment, and the Los Angeles Police Department said Tuesday that it had no information yet about a demonstration.

But the Mountain View Police Department confirmed a planned demonstration for two hours at Charleston Park across from Google headquarters. The department said organizers were not connected to Charlottesville participants.

"We want you to know that we are working with both Google and with the event planners to ensure the protest is a peaceful one," the department said in a statement.

Damore told CNBC that he is not involved with the marches, adding that "I don't support efforts to try to hurt Google directly."

Still, his memo pointed to the clash of ideas within the technology industry at a time when its products play an increasingly bigger role in the daily lives of Americans.

Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Snapchat and other social media occupy 5 1/2 hours of the average U.S. adult's week, according to Nielsen, a span that has grown sharply in recent years. And the online platforms' power to spread and enforce cultural values has become a matter of contention across the political spectrum.

Conservatives point to years of evidence of a liberal agenda in the tech industry. They've drawn comparisons between Damore's case and Mozilla Chief Executive Brendan Eich, who stepped down a decade ago following outrage over his support of a ban on same-sex marriage.

More recently, right-wing activists say YouTube is filtering conservative videos so that they won't appear unless users toggle their settings to accept graphic or potentially offensive content.

Shifting Politics

The conditions are a far cry from just a few years ago, when technologists were thought of as political neophytes -- the descendants of a counterculture that turned hippies into billionaires like Steve Jobs. If there was a political streak in the valley, it tended to be libertarian.

But the 2016 presidential election demonstrated just how influential the region's platforms are to American public opinion.

Where would Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign have gone without the rabid support of smartphone-wielding millennials spreading #FeelTheBern?

And how long would Donald Trump's campaign have lasted without his supporters' memes and the candidate's personal Twitter account?

Jeremy Carl, a former tech worker who serves as a fellow at conservative think tank Hoover Institution, said the anger among his ideological peers stems from "egregious" actions taken by Google and other big tech companies.

Efforts to take down or stunt the growth of potentially offensive online publications have reached a "ridiculous" level, he said.

Despite Trump's victory last year with the aid of a fearsome social media strategy, conservatives accuse Facebook, Twitter and Google of censoring their points of view by suspending accounts and firing employees like Damore who speak out against diversity training.

"The recklessness of the industry and its partisan politics have brought us to this point. They have no credibility among the right to do self-regulation," said Carl, who has advocated for treating Google as a utility company that must provide a neutral service.

At stake is the future of news and information in a country where facts are so often viewed through a political lens. Control of these digital platforms, once thought to be apolitical, could swing the national conversation around culture and politics.

No Alternatives

What also irks critics is that there are few alternatives to Google and Facebook. So conservatives who don't like those companies' politics feel they have no choice but to keep using their services.

"Internet people brag about freedom of expression in the U.S. relative to what's available in China, but that's just not the case when you look at the Internet monopolies in the U.S.," said Ron Unz, a Palo Alto software entrepreneur who launched unsuccessful campaigns for California governor and English-only education.

"You're talking about something closer to modern totalitarianism," Unz added.

(By comparison, China tightly monitors discourse on its closed-off Internet, employing thousands of censors and trolls to promote the government's positions and stifle open dissent).

Unz said he thinks tech companies should be held to the same standards as the government when it comes to freedom of expression because of their market dominance.

"If the government is legally prohibited from censoring certain forms of speech, it seems wrong to allow Google to do what the government can't do," Unz said.

Uncertainty About the Agenda

It doesn't help either that tech companies operate in near secrecy -- driving suspicion that the Googles and Facebooks of the world are stifling conservative views with lines of hidden code.

"The "tech industry's point of view is embedded deep in the product, not announced on the packaging," wrote Ezra Klein, editor-in-chief of Vox. "Its biases are quietly built into algorithms, reflected in platform rules, expressed in code few of us can understand and fewer of us will ever read."

It's been difficult for Silicon Valley to adapt to the new political order. Many companies are at odds with conservative positions on immigration, climate change and sexual identity -- taking stances that seemed safely mainstream until recently.

Nonetheless, they've tried to appear more welcoming to President Trump and his supporters.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt, head of Google's parent company Alphabet, are among the big names that agreed to advise the president on his technology council.

Google has also tried to hire more conservatives for its lobbying and policy initiatives, and Facebook donated money to the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. The social network also replaced its news editors with an algorithm after conservatives said employees were suppressing right-wing content.

To be sure, Silicon Valley counts some conservatives and Trump supporters among its list of top entrepreneurs. None is more famous than Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and a billionaire venture capitalist, who spoke strongly in support of then-candidate Trump at the Republican National Convention last year. Thiel, despite running large investment funds, has become an outcast in some circles of the industry for his work with Trump.

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Google Protests Bring Culture Wars to Silicon Valley - Top Tech News

The controversy over tech giant Googles firing of James Damore after he internally circulated a memo criticising the companys diversity-driven hiring practices has put Americas suffocating corporate culture in the limelight. Yet it also speaks to a broader question: Do modern conservatives blindly defend corporate rights to the detriment of all other values?

If so, Google is the perfect example of why they shouldnt.

To be fair, many on the Right used the incident as another example of Americas deteriorating culture of free expression. Yet many within Googles c-suite and its shareholders were likely comforted by the reality that those criticising Damores firing were never going to do a damn thing about it.

Google, with its headquarters in liberal California, isnt interested in protecting free expression if that means risking bad publicity. Nor does the company seem remotely interested in leading a counter-charge against those who prize diversity as the ultimate good if it means appearing un-politically correct. So no, there were no market incentives for Google to do anything but fire Damore. But that doesnt make it right.

Only 13 per cent of todays labour force are business owners. Within this small percentage, the vast majority arent owners or executives of what we would call big business. Thus, particularly in an age where the corporate paternalism of the 1950s has died and when CEO pay has skyrocketed in comparison to the average employee, its rather peculiar how conservatives of all stripes jump in lock-step to the defence of the corporate establishment, including large, faceless conglomerates that have spent the last 30 years putting mom-and-pop stores out of business for good.

To be clear, the Lefts habit of paranoid demonisation of any big business is pathology in itself. That doesnt mean, however, that conservatives should position themselves diametrically opposed to the Left by playing apologist and protector. And yet, thats precisely where so much of the mainstream is today whether its in the rhetoric of Republican politicians, the various memes found on social media spread by free-market accounts on Facebook and Twitter accounts, or the numerous GOP Political Action Committees (PACs) and advocacy groups gleaning big bucks from corporate donors. When the private sector behaves unjustly, or wants something from the government (tax breaks, bail outs), theres usually a race on the Right to act as its pro-bono spokesman.

Dont you realise, conservative think tankers often ask when a Democratic politician or activist rails against some supposed act of greed or malevolence by a hedge fund or pharmaceutical company, that the alternative is authoritarian socialism? Defending these companies means defending liberty itself! While the threat of a radical Left has certainly become more real than ever, such apocalyptic language in the service of a few large, extremely wealthy companies and banks seems silly. The Road to Serfdom doesnt begin by shaming millionaires who are often not self-aware enough to even attempt to hide their love of profits at the expense of employee wages or social cohesion.

Nor do such attitudes seem consistent with conservatism. Any large centralised system or authority has the habit of crushing individualism. Whether its a public school or white-collar workplace, conformity is king, while true creativity and thinking differently are under-valued, even grounds for suspicion. Very few seem to make it while failing up seems to be the norm for those who know how to game the system. Nothing new here, yet it feels as if such complaints are met with eye rolls from elites on the Right many of whom have grown extremely alienated from the working conditions of the average Americans.

Theres certainly something to be said about principles here that despite growing incidents of illiberal censorship and ideological management and control, conservatives should still seek to defend all corporations as the pillars of free society. But if our politicians have only a finite time to speak about various issues, perhaps less attention should be given to quarterly returns and marginal tax rates for wealthy CEOs until companies realise they are important actors in the contemporary culture wars, too.

None of this is to say that conservatives should join forces with Sen Elizabeth Warren and spend their days yelling into the abyss about every potential unfairness in the free market. But it would do Americas corporate powerhouses and the country some good if they knew that more than just half of the country was willing to hold them accountable when they act irresponsibly.

This article was first published on The American Conservative, and has been republished here with permission.

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Conservatives' Blind Love For Corporates Must End - Swarajya