View Full Version : Code Pink at it again
This morning in the SF newspaper. :mad:
Group protests Marine recruiters in Berkeley
Emboldened by this week's show of support by the Berkeley City Council, anti-war protesters on Thursday cranked up their noisy effort to throw the U.S. Marine Corps recruiters out of town, but in the pounding rain it was hard to tell who won the figurative battle of wills.
On one hand, the protesters mustered one of their biggest crowds yet - 40 people - to yell "Drive out the Bush regime" and other slogans outside the Marines' recruiting station on Shattuck Avenue. Hundreds of motorists honked in support as they passed.
On the other hand, there was nobody working at the recruiting station to hear these entreaties. The recruiting staff took the afternoon off.
And not only did the protesters get soaked to the bone in one of the heaviest downpours all week, several local business owners and their customers seethed under the aural onslaught of bullhorns and chanting from 3 to 5 p.m.
"They need a place to be heard, but it doesn't seem like this is the best one," complained Mike Mathis, who sometimes had to shout to be heard as his hair was being cut at the ZNS Beauty Station, next door to the Marines' office. "This is too small a place for a protest this loud."
Not in the minds of those doing the protest, it wasn't.
The spot was perfect and the noise justified, said Zanne Joy, who has been helping organize peace demonstrations at the recruiting station for four months with the women's anti-war group Code Pink. Anything legal is justified if it succeeds in persuading the Marine Corps to move its recruiting station out of Berkeley, she said, noting proudly that the Berkeley City Council agrees.
The council voted late Tuesday to give Code Pink a designated parking space directly in front of the recruiting station, as well as a sound permit for once-a-week protests. It also approved a separate resolution calling the military recruiters "uninvited and unwelcome intruders" and declaring that the office - which opened quietly in December 2006 - is not welcome in the city.
"We were shocked when we learned last fall that this recruiting station showed up here," Joy said. "It's an affront to the city and the people of Berkeley, who have always supported peace."
Since October, the weekly protests by Code Pink have mostly consisted of about a dozen people, so Thursday's crowd was a significant escalation. Joy and representatives from several other protest groups said they intend to mount demonstrations as many times a week as they can, even if the sound permit is good only once a week.
They also began circulating a petition on Wednesday to gather 5,000 signatures to put a measure on the November ballot that would require public hearings before military recruiting offices could open up near schools or homes.
Marine Corps officials did not return calls for comment.
However, ex-Marine Staff Sgt. Bill Hamilton showed up on his own to say he wholeheartedly supports the rights of the protesters to speak , but doesn't like their effort to silence the Marine Corps' voice in Berkeley.
"They don't seem to realize that this recruiting office is only for recruiting potential officers with college degrees, not kids right out of high school," said Hamilton, who drove in from Pleasanton to become the only on-scene counterpoint to the demonstration. "Marines are willing to die so these people can have their say, but I wish they understood the situation better."
Even the City Council is not of one voice on the matter.
The vote to award the Code Pink parking spot was 8-1, and the condemnation resolution was 6-3. On Thursday, the polarized emotions that went into those votes had not abated.
"I'm ashamed of my vote," said Councilwoman Betty Olds, who helped approve the parking spot but not the condemnation. "The protesters should have free speech - this is where Free Speech was born, after all - but to tell the Marines they are not welcome is shameful. If I had to do it again, I wouldn't even go for the parking spot."
Councilwoman Dona Spring, however, said she would love to step up the pressure even more against the Marine recruiting office.
"We're not condemning the men and women who serve, we are condemning the U.S. policy that is teaching the Marines and other military people to torture, oust other countries' political leaders and do other evil things."
E-mail Kevin Fagan at kfagan@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/02/01/BA8PUQ8VK.DTL&type=printable
News flash: the USMC didn't make the policy. They just have to live by it. It's like yelling at a motorist because you don't like the speed limit.
It has nothing to do about the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy. It has to do with being anti military. It’s like some one who likes a clean house but doesn’t like the people that keep it clean. These people make me sick. They abuse the right of free speech, using it to harass and intimidate. They give special rights to political groups (code pink). They impose zoning laws that treat our military like porn shops and strip clubs. Then they deny that the military is the reason they have the rights they do.
I just finished watching the noon news here and forgot to mention they gave Code Pink a free parking space in a parking meter zone and a sound permit. Forget the fact they wouldn't give free parking for their emergency 1st responders who work in that city. This also goes against their anal policy of no cars in Berkeley, but it's OK for Code Pink to have a car.:confused:
I love kalifornia. :D
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/02/02/BALTUQKOE.DTL&type=printable
This morning's read from the local SF newspaper. See you in Las Vegas. ;)
As the right-wing blogosphere railed and a U.S. senator vowed financial retaliation against the Berkeley City Council for its effort to boot the Marine Corps out of town, three war protesters ratcheted up pressure from the left by chaining themselves Friday to the front door of the downtown Marine recruiting office.
The demonstrators snapped their locks shut at 7 a.m. and spent the next 7 1/2 hours blocking the door, waving and chanting as hundreds of cars driving by honked in support. Finally, at 2:30 p.m., police snipped the chains and arrested them.
Two of the three were cited for blocking a business and released, and the third was booked into jail on an unrelated traffic warrant, police said.
The demonstrators promptly said they will keep protesting outside the recruiting station at 64 Shattuck Square until the Marines leave Berkeley - which is what the City Council advised the service to do in a vote Tuesday night that called the Marines "unwelcome intruders."
The council also voted to allow members of Code Pink, the protest group that helped organize Friday's blockade, to park at a designated space in front of the recruiting office every Wednesday afternoon and operate a loudspeaker.
The council's action apparently made Berkeley the first city in the nation to call for the ouster of a military recruiting station from its borders.
"We made really great statements by blocking the door," said one of the three blockaders, 64-year-old Mary Ann Thomas of Oakland. "It's time we became more articulate about what we're doing."
Conservative bloggers and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., also believe more articulation is necessary - from the opposite side of the political spectrum.
DeMint began drafting legislation Friday to cut $2.1 million in federal funding to Berkeley in a current congressional budget bill and transfer the money to the Marine Corps. The funding would include $750,000 for prospective ferry service, $87,000 for the Berkeley Unified School District nutrition education fund and $243,000 for the Chez Panisse Foundation, which promotes nutritional awareness in school lunch programs.
"The First Amendment gives the city of Berkeley the right to be idiotic, but from now on they should do it with their own money," DeMint said in a statement.
He called the council's vote "a slap in the face to all brave servicemen and women and their families."
Conservative blogs blasted the council and Berkeley in general all day with comments such as one on "Gathering of Eagles": "These cretins disgust me."
Members of the council who voted to condemn the Marine Corps station were unbowed.
"I guess they've never heard of free speech," Councilwoman Dona Spring said. "I've had a lot of nasty phone messages today, threatening me with things like saying, 'I'll take you out.' But they can go ahead. I don't feel scared."
Code Pink said it has begun to circulate a petition calling for a Berkeley ballot measure that would make it more difficult to open and operate recruiting stations. The measure would be modeled after anti-pornography laws, organizers said, mandating that - like porn shops - new recruiting offices be subject to public hearings before they would be allowed to locate near homes or schools.
The Marines, meanwhile, were not ready to back down.
"It's just another protest," said Marine Corps Capt. Richard Lund, head of the recruiting office.
As he spoke in the early afternoon, with the protesters still chained to his door, a small band of demonstrators on the sidewalk shouted at passing cars and students at Shattuck Square: "Marines out of Berkeley! Marines out of Iraq!"
Heated words were exchanged whenever people tried to enter or leave the office, but the protest was peaceful.
"You guys are just cannon fodder!" the chained protesters shouted at three teenage boys who walked past the office and said they wanted to go inside. "They want to train you to kill babies!"
The teenagers turned around and left.
At one point, UC Berkeley student Kyrolos El Giheny walked up to the front door and tried to go inside to talk to Lund about a possible Marine career. He was unable to get past the chained protesters.
"They told me, 'No business as usual today,' " El Giheny said. "It's kind of nutty. It's really an infringement on my rights."
Make yourself heard
To contact members of the Berkeley City Council:
www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil
(510) 981-6900
To contact Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who wants to pull federal funding from Berkeley:
demint.senate.gov/public
(202) 224-6121
To contact Code Pink:
www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?list=type&type=3
(415) 575-5555
To contact the Marine Corps headquarters in Virginia:
www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/homepage?readform
(703) 614-1492
E-mail the writers at srubenstein@sfchronicle.com and kfagan@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/02/BALTUQKOE.DTL
It is interesting to me that the City Council throws free speech out as a be all end all defense for their behavior. I guess the Marines are not entitled to their free speech rights or their rights to carry out legally conducted business. The city council does not see that they are the ones against the open expression of different ideas or different point of view. I guess if you disagree with the Berkley city council then you have to go... No varying ideas allowed!
Tyranny is tyranny any way you look at it. Free people have the right to go into any legally established business they want to without harassment. What a bunch of closed minded backwards thinking, establishment, book burning, tyrants!
Bill O'reily asked Dennis Miller if he had any dogs. Dennis replied 3, two bitches named "code" and "pink", and a mutt named "kucinich". I was rolling!
GO MARINES!
NUKE BERKELY!
Berkley is a cesspool of American values.
I guess if you disagree with the Berkley city council then you have to go... No varying ideas allowed!
In my experience, most progressivist ideas can only exist in a vacuum and must annihilate any competing values system.
Don't worry, anyone with half a brain will dismiss all the shit the shrill harpies scream
about. If you have less then half a brain you are probably from California.
m1.shooter
02-03-08, 19:53
If the Code Pink members were intellectually honest, at the end of every protest, they would shake the hands of the Marine Recuiters and tell them thank you for safeguarding their right to protest.
The pathetic thing is, like most college activists, they will grow out of this. This is all pissy adolescent rage. Not excusing their behavior - if anything it makes it worse.
Also, I think any male lefty activist is just secretly trying to get laid. There can't be any other reason for a male to be involved. They might have programed themselves into believing the hype, but it all started w/ a desire for skirt chasing.
It took the police 71/2 hours to figure out that they were breaking the law and remove them?
Go Jim DeMint my fellow South Carolinian! I wonder who guarantees the 1st amendment rights the Code Pinko's enjoy or the peace they relish living in???
Oh, yeah the US military. I vote we kick 'em out of the union and let em fend for themselves, financially and militarily.
-RD62
I vote we kick 'em out of the union and let em fend for themselves, financially and militarily.
-RD62
That works then I can take over and have my own country. WooHoo no need for class 3 paperwork in my country!!!!!
KEEP FIRING, WE NEED TO SUPPORT THE USMC THERE.
Today from San Francisco newspaper,
Berkeley to rethink its declaration against the Marines
Carolyn Jones, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, February 4, 2008
(02-04) 18:52 PST Berkeley -- A week after blasting the Marines as "unwelcome intruders" in Berkeley, two city council members want the city to back off the declaration that ignited the wrath of the nation's right wing and inspired a Republican senator to try to sever Berkeley's federal funding.
Council members Betty Olds and Laurie Capitelli proposed today that Berkeley rescind its letter to the U.S. Marine Corps that stated that the downtown Berkeley recruiting center "is not welcome in our city," and publicly declare that Berkeley is against the war but supports the troops.
The city council will vote on Olds' and Capitelli's two proposals at its Feb. 12 meeting.
"I think we shouldn't be seen across the country as hating the Marines," said Olds, who voted against last week's proposals. "If you make a mistake, like we did, you should admit it and correct it and move on."
The brouhaha started last week when the council passed two items condemning the Marine recruiting center on Shattuck Square, which opened about a year ago. The first called on the city clerk to send a letter to the Marines telling them they're unwelcome, and the second item grants Code Pink a parking space in front of the recruiting office every Wednesday afternoon and allows the group to operate a loudspeaker. After the items passed, the council was besieged with criticism from right-wing groups and military supporters. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) proposed that the federal government cut off funds for Berkeley, including lunch programs, ferry service and UC Berkeley.
Olds said she heard from hundreds of people angered by the city's action, including many in her Berkeley hills district.
"People are so mad about this. They have relatives in the service and now they think they're not welcome in Berkeley," she said. "My twin brother was a Marine in World War II. He'd be turning in his grave if he saw this."
The council appears split on the idea of backing down. Some council members said the original proposals inadvertently insulted veterans and those currently serving in the military. Others said Berkeley should stand by its convictions.
"People are used to Berkeley taking a stand for peace, but you have to do it intelligently," said Councilman Kriss Worthington, who voted against sending the letter calling the Marine Corps unwelcome. "You don't want to slap one group in the face and then, the next minute, slap the other group. I think we have an obligation to be thoughtful and sensitive and not be counterproductive to the cause of peace."
Councilwoman Dona Spring said the council should not be cowed by the volume of hate mail and threats.
"I still oppose the Marines recruiting in Berkeley because it's one way of protesting this wasteful war," she said. "Our military policy is a shambles. But we're not in opposition to the Marines, we oppose the policy that directs the Marines."
Meanwhile, the Code Pink protesters said they were disappointed that Berkeley might rescind its letter to the Marines.
"I hope they're not acting out of intimidation," said Code Pink spokeswoman Medea Benjamin. "Berkeley is a city of peace, and a recruiting station does not fit Berkeley's values."
Mayor Tom Bates, a former Army captain, said it probably wouldn't hurt if the council clarified its position.
"It's a symbol, but there are consequences to symbols," he said. "A lot of people think we're anti-Marine, but there's a difference between the warriors and the war. This an attempt to clarify that."
E-mail Carolyn Jones at carolynjones@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/04/BAHVUS06B.DTL
SF Chronicle editorial response:
Well written:)
"I guess they've never heard of free speech," Berkeley City Councilwoman Dona Spring told The Chronicle as she defended the council's 8-1 vote to tell Marine recruiters that they are not welcome in Berkeley - and that if the Marines stay, they will "do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders." The council also voted 6-3 to give the anti-war Code Pink organization a designated parking space directly in front of the U.S. Marine Corps' 64 Shattuck Ave. recruiting office and encouraged Code Pink to "impede" Marine recruitment.
It's pretty clear that Spring has heard of free speech, but she has no idea what it is.
It's one thing for Berkeley to pronounce U.S. troops, who put their lives on the line every day to defend America, as unwelcome. That's protected speech - that signals Berkeley residents' disdain for U.S. troops. It's also the sort of rude we're-better-than-the-rest-of-America action that invites outsiders to wonder if a city that tries to divorce itself from military recruitment deserves the benefits that the federal government bestows.
Apart from that, the Berkeley vote was the antithesis of free speech.
When government officials pass a law to impede the political expression of nonbelievers, as the Berkeley pols did on Jan. 29, they are wielding the club of government to suppress dissent. They are abusing their authority.
Code Pink does not limit its activities to protesting the war. Code Pink also blocks access to the recruiting office, members have chained themselves to the door - which constitutes an attempt to infringe on the rights of those who, despite a barrage of anti-war propaganda, nonetheless want to become Marines.
Code Pink is the anti-war equivalent of anti-abortion protesters barring women from access to abortion clinics - a crime compounded by the City Council's support of this suppression.
Oh, but it's different, supporters argue, because Berkeley is anti-war. All those high-school lectures about free speech existing to protect unpopular viewpoints evaporate when you're on the popular side. What's the point of having power, after all, if you can't use it as a club to silence those with whom you disagree?
I know many Berkeley residents oppose the war and still are embarrassed that Berzerkely once again has gone over the top. Too bad their reasonable voices are lost in the loud, obnoxious censorious lefty cacophony.
"We're not condemning the men and women who serve, we are condemning the U.S. policy that is teaching the Marines and other military people to torture, oust other countries' political leaders and do other evil things," Spring also told The Chronicle. It's typical Berkeley doublespeak: Spring isn't against the troops, she's just accusing them of evil.
When I asked Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain what he would do, if elected, about the Berkeley vote, McCain said he would use the bully pulpit to criticize Berkeley, but: "I think Berkeley is Berkeley, a unique place in America."
Sen. Jim De Mint, R-S.C., had a tougher take. "If the city can't show respect for the Marines that have fought, bled and died for their freedom, Berkeley should not be receiving special taxpayer funded handouts," De Mint wrote on his blog. De Mint has found some choice earmarks - $975,000 for the Cal Matsui Center for Politics and Public Service, $243,000 for the Chez Panisse Foundation - that, while not city projects, made De Mint's list.
Lest you think the De Mint approach is far-fetched, consider Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's answer to a question posed by NBC's Tim Russert at a debate last month. "There's a federal statute on the books which says that, if a college or university does not provide space for military recruiters or provide a ROTC program for its students, it can lose its federal funding. Will you enforce that statute?" Russert asked.
Both Clinton and Obama answered that they would enforce the Solomon Amendment, which first passed in 1994 when Bill Clinton was president.
The idea was: With federal funding comes responsibility. Except the Berkeley City Council feels it owes the American military nothing but disrespect.
You see what free speech has become in Berkeley. It's not the free expression of competing ideas. It's free for lefties only - and for them, speech without consequences.
E-mail: dsaunders@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page B - 7 of the San Francisco Chronicle
I sent an email to Senator DeMint to thank him for seeing the Berkley initiative for what it is, and commend him for trying to take action to enact consequences for their actions.
-RD62
I would have much more respect for the City Council if they marched down to the recruiters office and attempted to physically evicted the Marines.
I wonder how that would have turned out?:D
I let both code pink and the Berkeley city council know my opinion of their misguided idiocy. It was a pleasure. :mad:
Just take a moment to understand that an "organization" of menopause fueled, attention seeking maniacs have been enabled to dictate an American city's policy. :mad: :mad:
There should be no sanctuary anywhere in this country for that type of movement, especially at a time of war.
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