www.zombietime.com/berkeley_marines_2-12-2008 -> www.zombietime.com/berkeley_marines_2-12-2008/
Berkeley Marines Protest February 12, 2008 These photos were taken in Berkeley on February 12, 2008 at Civic Center Park and in front of the City Hall building, at the protest and counter-protest over the decision by the Berkeley City Council to support Code Pink's attempt to expel the Marine Corps recruiting office from Berkeley.
Here we see Jodie Evans (founder of Code Pink) holding up a peace sign on the left side of the photo, and Medea Benjamin (current de facto leader of Code Pink) holding up a peace sign on the right, along with various other Code Pink honchos. They decided to symbolically march around the park at one point, but no one fell in line behind them, and no one opposed them, so it ended up looking like a rather hollow gesture. Code Pink started the brouhaha in 2007 when they announced their intention to "drive the Marines out of Berkeley" -- or, more prosaically, to force the closure of a newly opened "US Marine Corps Officer Selection Office" by staging protests in front of it until the Marines gave up trying to recruit anyone in Berkeley.
The protest didn't generate much national interest until the Berkeley City Council voted in January to support Code Pink's protest, to award the group a free permanent sound permit and parking space in front of the Marines office for the weekly protests, and to send an official municipal letter to the Marines telling them they were "uninvited, unwelcome intruders." This aggressively anti-military vote caught the attention of conservative bloggers and radio hosts, and a rally was scheduled to coincide with the next City Council meeting -- February 12. So, on that day, pro-military, pro-America, conservative and patriotic protesters (such as this young woman) convened in Berkeley to demand that the Berkeley City Council rescind its earlier vote.
The scheduled conservative demonstration (an extreme rarity in Berkeley) sparked outrage and a counter-protest on the part of Code Pink supporters -- including left-wing radical groups like World Can't Wait and ANSWER, as well as hundreds of independent protesters, such as this proudly traitorous fellow. Extreme anti-American sentiment is commonplace in Berkeley (hence the widespread local support for Code Pink's anti-Marines protest), but often shocks outsiders when they see it for the first time.
And of course, as with every Bay Area political event, anyone and everyone with a personal axe to grind or an outlandish philosophy showed up to have their say, even if it had nothing to do with the protest at hand. Notice how the ABC reporter (on the left) walks right by the most interesting sign at the protest.
The pro-America protesters, many of who came to Berkeley from other cities in the area, were generally more, well, conservative, not just in their political ideas, but in their dress and demeanor too. Yet there were exceptions -- such as this Marine Corps Mom with American flag eyes.
She occasionally took the mike to make announcements to the hundreds of supporters who showed up. But overall, the protest was totally unstructured -- people on both sides did whatever they wanted.
Opposing Melanie, across the street, was Code Pink, which signed up hundreds of students from the adjacent Berkeley High School, visible in the background. Each girl got a sticker from Code Pink encouraging them to "Make Out -- Not War."
World Can't Wait at the next booth over was even more aggressive, supplying free bandannas and t-shirts to seemingly half the school. This is WCW's modus operandi -- they usually recruit high school and middle school students for their protests, often with the consent and encouragement of their liberal teachers or school administrators. The students just enjoy playing hookey all day with offical approval, and are most likely unaware that World Wan't Wait is a communist cult. The end result was that several hundred (perhaps as many as a thousand) teenaged students cut school all day to participate in the protest, and they pretty much ran wild, the only adults monitoring them being the WCW and ANSWER demagogues, who only egged the kids on to more and more aggressive behavior.
Of all the sights and sounds at the protest, none were more shocking (even to me) than the insulting and menacing attitudes the students displayed to any adult whom they suspected of not being sufficiently left-wing. Girls as young as 14 would surround pro-America adults and would launch into spontaneous verbal assaults, exhibiting the most disrespectful behavior imaginable. Here, a little girl in a kaffiyeh lashed out at a bewildered senior lady, calling her a "bitch" and "murderer" for supporting the Marines.
Often the children would not let the adults talk back, but when they did, the adults' words were greeted with sneers and derision. Here, the girls listen with barely-disguised comtempt to another pro-America protester who had intervened.
But soon she was cut off by one of the other girls, who responded to her attempts at a rational discussion by calling her a "racist" and an "old hag" who needed to "get off our territory" immediately, while the other kids contributed epithets and mocking laughter. Conversations of this sort went on continuously all day.
It strongly reminded me of what happened during the Cultural Revolution in 1960s China, when high school students harassed and humiliated their teachers and other local authority figures -- all with the approval of the Commmunist Party officials, who were consciously trying to overthrow the old social order. And considering that these kids at the Berkeley rally were coached and trained by World Can't Wait, which is a Maoist revolutionary group, I suppose their behavior shouldn't have surprised me. Most of the kids there, contrary to what you might imagine, were middle class, the children of professors and intellectuals, and after the protest undoubtedly went home to their comfortable houses with Mom and Dad, who most likely nodded with pride at tales of the day's radical exploits.
Sensing a mob she could seize control of, Medea Benjamin positioned herself in front of a large group of children and rallied them to join her in a completely purposeless sit-down strike, which lasted all of ten minutes, and had no stated goals.
This kind of random, pointless confrontational posturing went on all afternoon. The radicals and the students would swarm to some area of the Civic Center and "make a stand," facing off against the cops, who would line up to keep them at bay. This would draw the attention of the pro-America demonstrators, who would start walking over to see the action -- and the cops would then form another line to keep them back, separating the two opposing sides. After a short time, the artificial face-off would become boring, and the groups would dissipate, and often mingle together immediately afterward without any conflict.
In between these ridiculous pseudo-showdowns, when the two groups would mix freely, the cops would resort to forming a riot-line at some random spot in the middle of the park, separating nobody from no one -- just as a show of force, I presume, to make sure everyone knew that any violent acts would be dealt with pronto. And this strategy worked, for the most part -- aside from a few minor scuffles, there was no real violence at the protest, despite a lot of tension in the air.
while the other side was just as fervidly anti-American. And while not everyone was perhaps as frank with his opinions as this guy, the vast majority of the counter-demonstrators were overtly anti-military, or anti-capitalism, or anti-patriotism, or some combination of the three.
While the left imagines that it has a monopoly on humor and sarcasm, at this rally it seemed the shoe was on the other foot. Many of the pro-America signs were sarcastic or satirical...
Amidst the cacophony, one was occasionally reminded of the specific reason for the protest: the Berkeley City Council was scheduled that evening to vote to amend their earlier anti-Marines decisions.
Once again, the right-wing side had the edge in the humor sweepstakes. And there was an interesting age division between the two camps: while the pro-A...
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