Round up of all of the recent controversy swirling around Berkeley California and the Marine Corp Recruitment Office found here at Move America Forward.

Berkeley Report – Protest of the City Council
PATRIOTS IN BERKELEY: AFTER-ACTION REPORT
We had someone holding up our silenced marine sign all day
MONDAY – February 11th
For Move America Forward staff, our pro-troop demonstration against the Berkeley City Council actually started the day before when we sent off MAF Director of Operations Ryan Gill in a 10-foot moving truck. His mission was to secure supplies, and pick up MAF spokesperson and Gold-star mom Debbie Lee who flew in from Arizona to the Oakland airport.
The remaining staff spent the day in Sacramento faxing and emailing out last minute press releases and media advisories. Most of us went home around 11 pm, with plans to leave Sacramento by two in the morning to get there before five. I slept for about an hour and a half, woke up at 1 in the morning and was in the office by about 2:15. Some of our staff bypassed sleep altogether, as there was much prep work to be done in the final hours before we stood our ground in support of our troops. We weren’t packed up and on the road until about 3:00 AM and we stopped for a quick breakfast at Denny’s before hitting the road again and arriving in Berkeley at almost 5:00 AM.
Other supporters were traveling via car and caravan from Oregon, Nevada, Colorado and Southern California. People went to great efforts to make it to this important event.
TUESDAY – February 12th
By 4:30 AM Ryan Gill arrived at the rally location along with Debbie Lee. Blue Star Mom,Deborah Johns – whose son is a Recon Marine who served in Iraq for three tours of duty, arrived moments later.
By 5:00 AM I arrived in Berkeley along with MAF Deputy Executive Director, Mary Pearson, and MAF Grassroots Coordinator, Joe Wierzbicki. We were joined by about two-dozen pro-troop supporters, including Gold Star Father Scott Conover and his wife, Julie. The enemy was also present with about two-dozen or so anti-military protestors and already it looked like the scene was turning ugly.
As we approached Martin Luther King, Jr. Way I got a call from Ryan on the phone, saying, “It’s hot already, already some people have been knocked down and everyone’s getting in each others faces.”
The mood may have been hot, but the morning air was freezing cold.
When we turned the corner of MLK Way, I saw why Ryan had said that the situation was boiling over at critical mass. There was an angry mob on the street, about to tear itself apart as anti-war and pro-troop supporters were clashing in close quarters! Cameras were already everywhere, lighting up the area of the park, despite the fact that it was still dark as midnight and only the pale, dull yellow light of some streetlamps bathed the streets of Berkeley.
As soon as we parked I jogged down to the corner where the mob was self-imploding upon itself. I squeezed between some cameras just in time to jump between Scott Conover and some anti war protester who was jabbing his finger in Scott’s face and yelling angrily while holding a sign depicting images from Abu Ghraib prison.
“This is the reality of War” he said, “The US Military is a bunch of war criminals!”
“My son was not a war criminal!” responded Scott, who seemed ready to tear the man apart, and from the looks of it, sizing up the difference in size between Scott and the anti-war guy, it looked as if he could. “#$% you! You are a traitor you piece of #@$%!”
EMOTIONS RUN HIGH
A nice scene of our patriots facing the City Council building
The sign on the top of that pole the guy in tan pants is holding said ‘Independents’ were unhappy with the city’s decision…not just far-right republicans here, as some members of the city council claimed!
But Scott pulled himself back, cooled off and thanked me for stepping in, I know that Scott is familiar with MAF, but we had never met before so it was a good way to get introduced.
I looked across the street and saw several police vehicles parked. Across the park there was another one parked at the opposite end of the street. Yet I could see no police officers, and the throngs of angry protesters were boiling with rage.
When I looked across the street again I saw that there were now some police congregating around the crosswalk. I walked over and picked one to introduce myself to, I told him I was the communications director for MAF and he didn’t seem very interested. Okay, fine, well I asked what we were going to do about getting a handle on the situation over there across the street. I was told I would have to make a phone call and talk to his Lieutenant.
POLICE FINALLY STEP IN
Around 5:30 or 6:00, as the crowd got bigger, more pandemonium ensued. At one high point of craziness, one of our supporters, a really big guy in a red sweater, was literally pushing back a whole line of anti-war people, wading into several at a time and slowly forcing them back. The effort only served to enrage others to push back and soon the whole crowd was tussling. I still had no clue what the police were doing, so several people jumped in, myself and this anti-war guy holding a sign that said ‘dialogue corner’ were jumping in between people and holding our hands out to try and keep the crowd away from each other. It was only sort-of working, but finally the police formed a single column and marched through the middle, putting a line in between. I was caught on the anti-war side of the line, and while for a moment the crowd was separated, we were still all yelling at each other.
I got a phone call from the police dispatch telling me to come across the street and speak with Lieutenant Hart of the Berkeley PD. Hart told me that Code Pink had voluntarily decided to bring their people across to the other side of the street at 7:00 am. I was pretty sure that our permit said they weren’t supposed to be on our side anyways, but Hart told me her understanding was that despite the permits, neither side was prohibited or guaranteed to be in either location, the park or the city council.
One of the Code Pink ladies, Rae, kept trying to talk to me, saying things like, “oh, you look like someone who’s trying to keep order and control your people. You have a cool head.” She kept trying to tell me to control my people and saying we were being aggressive. it was obvious to me that the Code Pinkos were the ones provoking and egging people on, and had deliberately marched across the street from their permitted area into our area to show the families of dead soldiers pictures of bloody mutilated bodies of innocent Iraqis blown up by insurgents or pictures of dead soldiers. She was pissing me off, trying to get me to admit that our people were being overly aggressive by being nice to me or whatever. Finally she went away.
I couldn’t wait till 7 am, which did eventually come around, and much of their crowd did establish itself on the other side. We had our space, for the most part – though there remained a couple of leftist agitators straggling on our side—when MAF Chairman Melanie Morgan arrived on the scene shortly after 6:00AM.
Scott Conover, a Gold-Star dad, talks with this one guy who stayed on our side of the street most of the day…
I talked to the guy for a while too, he was willing to listen, but made ridiculous assertions…what a kook
Melanie had heard about the melee and even though she was in the middle of her radio program, she left it and rushed down to Berkeley so she could rally her troops! We all got into a circle and around the megaphone held a little impromptu press conference, with our Blue and Gold-Star parents taking turns speaking to the crowd about their stories of the service and sacrifices of their children and their disgust, contempt and frustration with the Berkeley City Council.
This scene from early in the morning, Melanie Morgan took off -DURING HER RADIO SHOW- to support us when open war seemed imminent
Mark Crowley, Gold-Star dad, talks about his son Kyle’s story
Debbie Lee, Gold-Star mother of Marc Allen Lee, who was the the first US Navy S.E.A.L killed in Iraq
Deborah Johns, Blue-star mother of Will Johns who has served three tours in Iraq
THE INTRUSION
World Can’t Wait and Code Pink crowds mix and mingle in front of the city council chambers
It was not long after most of the Code Pink people had gone across the street that they were already back on our side, encroaching on our territory. Several Code Pink people, and some members of World Can’t Wait came over and got into a confrontation with Scott Conover. This one young man, he looked like he could have been Arabic (but I don’t want to assume anything) was wearing a keffiyah around his neck and was screaming something about millions of Iraqis dead and millions more displaced.
At first I was just trying to keep him safe from ole’ Scott Conover, but when he started yelling about American barbarity and economic sanctions and millions of dead Iraqis, I had to yell at him. How dare these people say that we’re somehow responsible for Saddam Hussein’s rape and domination of his own countrymen because we didn’t want to do business with an aggressive nation!
Soon enough he slinked back behind Code Pink’s reps, Zanne Joi and Rea, who were back again. I asked them what their people were doing over on our side and they tried to tell me it was because the portable bathrooms were on our side of the street and we needed to let them use it. I looked around and noted that we were probably about 50 yards away from the porta-potty and there was actually a small crowd of anti-war people over here and they didn’t look like they were waiting to use the john.
Marine Corps Motorcycle Club!! woo!
Our side of the street: lined with patriots armed to the hilt with flags and patriotic slogans!
This only got worse and worse, more anti-war people kept coming over onto our side. It didn’t look like the permit we had worked so hard to get meant much of anything at all. It was close to, but not quite 8:00 AM now, and there were a bunch of kids trying to skateboard on the cement structures over on our side. They were skating around at high speeds very close to our supporters, many of which are seniors and who were startled and alarmed by the aggressive actions of these kids jumping around them. Code Pink leader, Medea Benjamin, stood in the middle of them, egging them on. It was disgusting to see her provoking hostile actions by young people to advance her leftist, hate-America agenda.
Her antics worked and these kids had no respect for our wishes, in fact we were amazed, every other word out of these kids mouths was “F$%K” or “F$%KING.”
World Can’t Wait passed out huge stacks of orange bandanas to young kids who skipped school and encouraged them to approach and provoke pro-military supporters
Many of our supporters were getting very irritated so we decided to try giving some ground to the anti-war crowd, hoping they would settle down. Unfortunately there were still a growing number of anti-war people, especially young kids, coming over and invading our permitted side of the street. I saw several older men across the street, dressed in all black, handing out orange scarves by the handful to eagerly awaiting mobs of youngsters, many of whom were also in black. In typical World Can’t Wait fashion, they tied the scarves to obscure their faces. Soon our side of the street was inundated with very rude, very confrontational World Cant Wait-ers and some Code Pinkos to boot.
Another anti-war protester (left) who argued a bit with veterans on our side
I left the situation to go post a couple pictures to the Move America Forward website and by the time I came back the police had cordoned off a section of about a third of the space up front and blocked it with a line of bicycles. You could still go around the small line, which many did do, but it helped a little to keep the crowds to themselves. I was a little peeved that we had just lost about a third of our real estate, but I was more satisfied that there was less confrontation and thus less a lesser chance someone was going to get hurt.
The police, when the situation was getting desperate, did step in and seperate the crowds, which we do appreciate, thank you Berkeley PD!
MEDEA BENJAMIN: FOUNDER & LEADER OF CODE PINK
Medea Benjamin was walking all along through our area. I marvel at this woman, she is SUCH an opportunist. One of her favorite tactics is to spot a TV camera that’s either filming a crowd or scene, or doing an interview, and she will go up and stand in the background of it, making sure that she is visible and attempt to either soak up some of another person’s screen-time or try to make a scene and attract an interview.
So I decided to try and beat her at her own game, just a little. I spotted Medea, she was standing behind one of our supporters who was interviewing with a reporter and cameraman. So I found a “Support our Troops and Their Mission” sign leaning up against a nearby tree, grabbed it, and stood right next to Medea, holding the sign right behind her head. She didn’t seem to notice that, or she ignored it, knowing that she didn’t want to get nasty in front of TV.
Someone asked her something or she might have been trying to tell the camera something about “the Iraqis don’t want us there, they hate the US military” and I tried to tell her “That’s not true.”
I have just returned from spending Christmas with our troops and was not about to let Medea Benjamin make false statements to the media about America’s brave warriors. We argued about what the troops were doing: she gave me the same old tired lines…we target civilians, we bomb whole cities indiscriminately, we torture and terrorize civilian populations.
I responded by saying that “No, the troops over there know and love the Iraqis and the Iraqis know the troops, they know each others names, each other stories, and care about each others safety.” Medea literally laughed at my assertion until I told her that I only knew this because I had been to Iraq and had seen it for myself. She went stone faced pretty much immediately.
Her response? “Well, how many times have you been to Iraq?”
”Only once,” I told her, “two weeks in Baghdad, with the US Army.”
“Well, I’ve been to Iraq five times.” She seemed like she almost stuck her tongue out and went ‘nyah’ and stormed off back to her own side.
THE FLAG
A while later I just happened to be standing over somewhat near the bikes, across from the World Can’t Wait crowd and I heard several people, in a somewhat alarmed tone of voice, saying “They’re burning flags! They are burning flags!”
I look over and here is this girl:
A young lady with the Wold Can’t Wait crowd burned TWO smaller flags, which she STOLE from our side…they obviously didn’t bring their own flags to burn so they burned ours!
I stood there and watched her, just staring at her as the flags burned up, I almost felt like crying, my heart was breaking for how stupid and hopeless these kids are, and she looked back and smirked at me, like she knew what she was making people feel by her actions
So somehow she got a hold of one of our flags we had available at our Move America Forward table, and burned it right in my face, with a clear intention of agitating us. Fortunately, for her and her friends, this did not cause the pro-military forces to storm their way through the police to teach those kids a lesson, although I think they were just about incensed enough to do so.
THE INVASION
The day wore on, in the morning the size of the pro-troop crowd was strong and the participants were vibrant and energetic, then as the first few hours passed both the size of the crowd and its enthusiasm seemed to wane – on both sides. seemed to But as the sun rose higher in the sky and warmed this area of the East Bay it seemed like people were again just appearing out of nowhere and the numbers of our supporters steadily grew towards the 12:00 noon hour. Code Pink was also finding more supporters, but as both crowds grew, ours was taking the lead.
As the day wore on our numbers swelled, peaking at over a thousand strong
Maybe they were just bored, maybe they just did not want the TV cameras to see our side with more than theirs again, but whatever the motivation, Code Pink and World Can’t Wait decided to push further into our side. This angered a number of our people as there is a road with four lanes (two lanes in each direction) separating our groups, which should have meant that both sides stayed in their permitted areas. But the City of Berkeley told the cops to not interfere with Code Pink’s efforts to form phalanxes of agitators who would come over in waves with the intention of pushing through our supporters, screaming in their faces, and denouncing our great nation.
The forces of Code Pink and World Cant Wait weren’t satisfied with their own side of the street, so they frequently came over to our side to try and provoke our people, interfere with our media interviews, and generally act stupid
Father and son who came down to Berkeley to support the Marines
With the crowds both growing and more and more people congregating on the pro-troop side of the street, the police line separating us had disintegrated. People from both sides were pouring into the grassy field and there was a huge mass of people gathered around our table and in the surrounding area.
The police were hard at work…gaurding each other (well, they did help us out a few times)
With the police still doing nothing to keep the crowds separated I noticed a huge crowd of police huddled over in one corner, far away from the mob of pro-troop and anti-war activists who were thus free to either rip each others heads off or engage in healthy discussion. Many chose the former, a few chose the latter. But as disturbed as I was by the number of confrontations that turned violent during this time, I was also encouraged to see some peaceful debate going on as well.
Young vet argues with a teen whose knowledge of terrorism is most likely limited to video games
We on the other hand, had to plug our noses while the anti-war crowd walked among us trying to cause as many problems as possible
It got really creepy when a huge number of the World Can’t Wait crowd started organizing themselves into columns and marching in step, making a wide encirclement of our patriots. They did not outnumber us, but having people CIRCLE around you feels unnerving.
Nancy, who is Medea Benjamin’s personal assistant, actually LIKES our Code Pink shirts with the communist hammer-and-sickle calling their group traitors. She said she was coming back to make a donation to MAF for one
ALTERCATIONS
One of our supporters was assaulted by a teen who actually used his skateboard to hit her.
Joe was tackled by a group of about 20 World Can’t Wait kids intent on burning a flag they had stolen from us. What happened was, Joe was standing around the table we put in the middle of the rally, it had our t-shirts and a box full of flags to hand out. Joe saw that three of the girls from WCW snatched one of our larger hanging flags mounted on a wooden dowel and were walking off with it. Joe followed them, at a distance, and observed them meeting up with some other kids, one of which brandished a lighter.
Joe says the kids were debating whether to take the flag back across the street to the other side or to just burn it right there. The boy with the lighter insisted they burn the flag immediately, and lit his lighter. Well Joe then swooped in and grabbed our flag from the girl holding it, but he couldn’t get it completely away. She and her two friends still had a hold on one corner of the flag and started screaming wildly, as several kids tugged at the flag and Joe on the other side had the rest of the flag in a death grip.
Then about 15 more kids started jumping on Joe, trying to get him to release the flag that was being held by 4 or 5 other kids who intended to light it up. Joe tried to march the flag back to safety, but the kids were all over him, punching, hitting, slapping…hell, they even PINCHED him all over…everywhere! But Joe was still holding a death grip on the flag, he did not want to see it get burned. The dowel it was mounted on was broken into six pieces, the flag stretched and possibly ripped by now. Anti-military protestors were shouting at Joe as if he was the aggressor saying, “Does it make you feel like a big man to pick on little kids?”
Then a small tender lady came up to Joe, rubbed his left hand and said, “I’m on your side, come with me, I don’t want to see anything bad happen to you. Come on, the deck is stacked against you and these kids will just try to get something bad to happen to you or get your arrested.” Her calming logic convinced him to let go and walk back to the MAF booth., We don’t know what happened to the flag that Joe relinquished, we pray it was not burned disgracefully by these punk kids.
Unfortunately, I would be willing to bet that poor flag no longer proudly flies the stars and stripes. We later asked if flag-burning is legal in Berkeley. Apparently is it illegal to burn an American flag in Berkeley, but you wouldn’t know it by watching how this protest was handled by law enforcement.
Also at this time there were mobs of other kids trying to mess with our sound system. We had a sound permit for only four hours, and we were just playing some music with it before our principle spokesperson (Melanie!) returned. But the WCW kids were actually trying to cut the wires leading to the speakers with a knife! The Lafayette Flag Brigade pushed the kids away and before the wires had been cut through. They appealed to the cops to step in and so something and were told that they were on their own.
Another confrontation occurred when some of the WCW teens assaulted a member of the College Republicans who were agitating the Code Pink side of the street. When the police arrested two WCW people in relation to this assault, and took them into the police station, the WCW crowd rallied and marched over to the police station under the leadership of Medea Benjamin and began chanting and laying down in front of the Berkeley Police Station screaming “Let them go! Let them go!”
I still have not received information about whether that kid was released or charged with something.
This woman tries to show a Marine how helicopters fly. On her platter is a scene of broken up bodies of toy soldiers with fake blood all around…disguisting
TAKING BACK THE FIELD
If nothing else, this commotion served one purpose: it gave our side the opportunity to reorganize on our side while all the WCW and Code Pink crowd were crowding the police station. This time, we did NOT let the WCE or Code Pink back on our side. And police or no police, we KEPT THOSE ANTI-TROOP PUNKS OUT of our area – including the kids – as Melanie decided it was time to rally our supporters together and focus everyone on the work that we needed to do as the Berkeley City Council meeting start time approached.
Our people made a strong showing, we had that sidewalk packed from corner to corner!
Army Rangers “Lead the Way” Hummer!
Taking the microphone into hand she quickly whipped the pro-troop crowd of patriots up into a joyous frenzy! I was in a meeting with MAF Executive Director Cat Moy and some people from the city, discussing the plan for the council meeting later, but I could hear Melanie working the crowd from up on the second floor of the building.
After the rally and the speeches, I was back in the park again, trying with Cat to spread the word among our members about our plans for getting into the City Council meeting.
This young lady’s boyfriend just deployed to Iraq, GOOD LUCK SOLDIERS (don’t they make a sweet couple?)
Also, the back of her sign was irresistably clever
Many people noticed this “Semper Fidelis” banner flying overhead for several hours during the day. The sight of it flying over Berkeley brought many cheers and lifted the spirits of many patriots!
THE CITY COUNCIL MEETING
We had to find members to go into the council chambers LONG before the council was scheduled to hear the item regarding the Marines – as in FOUR to FIVE HOURS ahead of time. Despite the complete lack of logic behind this demand, the city INSISTED that we send in our supporters at 4:30 PM where they would be forced to sit through another City Council meeting, THEN sit through all the preliminary items on the regular City Council meeting, until the city finally brought up the Marine Corps item. Only then would our people would be allowed to speak, after which they would be allowed to leave the meeting and be replaced by more pro-troop supporters until every single last person had the chance to speak, both from the pro-troop side and the anti-war side.
Medea Benjamin (the Osama of Code Pink herself) admires the shiny reflective polish of the handrail as she steps up the stairs into the City Council chambers
If we did not have 30 people agree to this demand then they would give the seats to the Code Pink, International ANSWER, and the anarchist World Can’t Wait crowd.
Fair? Vaguely
Smart? Yes, if you want to obstruct the ability of those with an opposing viewpoint to express themselves at your little city council meeting.
We found some supporters who were basically willing to ‘jump on the grenade’ and sit through 5 grueling hours of the bizarre left-wing City Council hearing, so that we could have some seats saved. We sent in our bravest and resigned ourselves to waiting and watching.
STREET PROTESTS
By now the police had aligned themselves in the middle of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Way, the WCW and Code Pink crowds had been expelled from our side, the American flag-waving, pro-troop supporters were standing hundreds upon hundreds of people strong and the police took the opportunity to create a line straight through the middle, closing down the street and taking up positions between.
I talked to the young lady pictured here in the reflective sunglasses and some of her friends who came by from Berkeley High School. It was awesome to see people their age with their heads screwed on straight. They told me that they catch a lot of flack from fellow students and their teachers for their beliefs. Hows that for tolerance!
Both sides were still active, and the streets were filled with camera crews rushing from one point to another, covering the chants of protestors at each other from across the street and yelling on their bullhorns in impromptu policy debates! I saw Leigh Wolf from the College Republicans debating WCW through megaphones and he was absolutely STUMPING all the anti-war people!
“Why did you people come here, give me one good reason why the Marines should have to go” he said.
They answered back… “We don’t want them here. They are preying on children.”
Leigh pounces on them, “Are you aware that is an OFFICER RECRUITING STATION? It’s also MY recruiting station, that’s where I SIGNED UP!” He retorted. “Do you know there is only one way to be recruited in an officer recruiting station, that’s if you have a four-year degree, do you think that people who have gone to college for four years can’t make a decision about the military?”
They were practically speechless. “Let someone else talk!” one of them shouted. Classic.
This young man, also from Berkeley High, was proudly waving this ‘don’t tread on me’ flag
ANOTHER FLAG BURNING
The scene turned very ugly when another flag was burned by the anti-war protesters. The night-sky was illuminated by a pillar of flames. One minute I was standing around, the next I heard a LOUD pop and a crowd of people running towards something. I looked and saw what appeared to be a street sign ON FIRE raining down flames onto a bicycle chained to the street sign.
At first I thought it was a Molotov cocktail someone had thrown because I could see chunks of flaming debris laying around the street and literally oozing from the top of the street sign and onto the bikes below.
What happened was, the anti-war people set another flag on fire, but it was a large flag and the flames got out of control so they threw it up on the street sign on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Way and a sign directing people to the “Peace Wall.” Pieces of the flag had fallen on the bikes below and caught them on fire. The loud pop I heard was from the bike’s tires and the “burning rubble” all around was pieces of flaming rubber from the tire.
There was a huge crowd around the bike, I was yelling at people to back up and let the police take care of the situation. I thought for sure that with a fire clearly burning that any second now police were going to rush in and surround the area, so we should back up. But nobody backed up, and no police came. I went up to one of the officers standing guard in the street.
For the third time that day, anti-war protesters burned an American flag. In this incident, they threw the flaming banner up onto a street sign, where pieces of it fell on a couple bicycles chained below.
The tires of the bike caught fire, popped loudly, and the burning rubber melted all over the bikes ruining them. I was standing nearby and a father and his very young son came over to see that thier bikes were ruined.
Some of the World Can’t Wait people started screaming, saying we did it, and saying “Get the (f-word) Out of Our Town!”
“Hey guys, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but there’s something on fire over there, I don’t know for sure but I thought, you know it might be dangerous or something, did you have any plans to check it out?” I asked some random officer. He muttered something I could not hear, so I left him alone. The fire went out and the owner of the bikes came over to inspect the damage.
Police did absolutely nothing…appalling
Little kid got his bike burned by the same angry mob his dad brought him to protest with…pretty sad.
ENDGAME
We waited and waited until the city council finally took up the resolution on the Marines. My voice was gone by then. When the floor became open for discussion the City Council began hearing our voices, five from Code Pink, five from Move America Forward, and back again and again over and over. We sent in our supporters five at a time, as five came out.
It was awesome for me to see that there were a lot of young people on our side, but I wonder if she knows that the City Council IS the commie occupation of Berkeley!
29 Languages, 29 ways to say I Am (a proud) American!
Old Glory was, as it always is, well represented at MAF events!
With the star spangled banner flying everywhere on our side, the anti-war crowd kept mocking us, asking why we would ‘love a stupid flag’ or ‘worship a piece of cloth’ they don’t realize that true Americans LOVE AND WORSHIP what our flag represents, real freedom and liberty, something they don’t understand!
Ryan delivered the fat stack of over 18,000 petitions, plus hundreds more we collected hand-signed at the rally, and more still that we had not printed out, totaling well in excess of over 20,000.
All of our spokespeople gave their stories, from Deborah Johns and Debbie Lee to Gold Star Fathers Kevin Graves and Mark Crowley.
We had residents of Berkeley who were ashamed at the actions of the city, people from Berkeley High School, Cal Berkeley, even a high school teacher.
One Berkeley resident who supported our efforts had been on the phone during the day with Dr. Alvita King, the niece of Martin Luther King, Jr. who gave her advice on how to communicate her views in a manner that was peaceful yet forceful.
We had veterans who had come from all across the country, some Vietnam vets who had actually BEEN to Berkeley after Vietnam and had been treated SO incredibly poorly, had been SPAT on by it’s residents back then.
We had comments from Iraq war vets a few wounded even who were proud of the work they had done and that their fellow soldiers were still doing over there.
And so it went for hour after hour. After it was all over, the council made comments and discussed their options amongst each other. Many in the council expressed, in comment, a seemingly sincere recognition that the Marines were being discriminated against and were owed an apology.
Some wanted to apologize to the city for bringing such shame and disgrace upon the city and its residents. One councilmember even thought an apology was in order for giving preferential speech rights to Code Pink over those on the pro-troop side.
It actually sounded like there was a majority on the council who wanted to take meaningful action to rectify their transgressions.
But when it came time to vote on the resolution that offered the biggest retreat from their previous anti-military actions the “swing votes” on the council – despite having issued statements of apology in their comments – deliberately abstained so that the move to undo the most egregious misdeeds fell one vote short. They wouldn’t vote “NO” but they would also not vote “YES” – obviously fearful of the fury that would have been directed upon them by their base: Code Pink, International ANSWER and the anarchists who comprise the radical Left in Berkeley. . Thus the motion to send a letter of apology was defeated. Code Pink retained their special permits, the city will still try to kick the Marines out by having the city attorney attempt to exploit the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy. And their statement endorsing Code Pink and encouraging Berkeley residents to “impede” the work of any military recruiters in Berkeley still stands..
I was seeing red. Code Pink rejoiced. All of our supporters were deeply disappointed. For the veterans most of all, it was another slap in the face to them, another cutting-off-at-the-knees.
Are you proud of yourself Berkeley? You’ve done it again (disgraced yourselves and your town).
But there was a realization that gradually spread over our contingent of staff at Move America Forward: the City Council had not only made a partial retreat, but a majority of council members had verbally acknowledged the wrongful nature of their actions. They didn’t have the guts to vote this way on the record – for the political reasons mentioned above – but we nonetheless heard them say the impossible: THEY KNEW THEIR ACTIONS WERE INDEFENSIBLE.
The portable restrooms provided for the people at the protest were vandalized by the anti-war people, inside, phrases like “NO WAR”, “(F-word) Bush” and Anarchy symbols were spraypainted on the walls
THIS IS WAR
We vow to continue the fight, to carry on the struggle again, in Berkeley if we have to, or in any other city across this nation, wherever the fight takes Move America Forward.
Tired and physically just beat and exhausted, we came home. My bed and my two kitties Tereza and Tomas were waiting for me when I got home at 4:00 am.
“Meow!” They were hungry.
If you attended the rally and have a story to post up about your experiences, pictures, or links to youtube videos, etc, etc, etc, SEND THEM TO me! Also if you have comments or further information that would contribute to the richness or accuracy of this blog post, please email me at mafbloggerdanny@gmail.com and I will include them in the Berkeley Report