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Indybay Feature

Opposition to anti-oppression protests in Berkeley reveal tensions

by Scope Berkeley
Since December of last year, there have been a series of Black Lives Matters and anti-police-oppression protests in Berkeley, both on campus and in the streets. There was a Black Student Union rally and march on Cal Day (April 18th), and another protest prior to that on April 14th organized by various equality groups. As part of both these actions, protesters blocked Sather Gate. During the blockage of Sather Gate on April 14th, there were some white students who actively tried to break through the strike-line. Footage with counter-protesters was posted by the Daily Cal. There are agitators online, using the Berkeley forum on Reddit, trying build up a sentiment against and promoting the disruption of Black Lives Matters protests in Berkeley.
opposition_to_protests.png
"BlackThugsMatter" is a user-name on the Berkeley forum* on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Berkeley. (*Forums are called sub-Reddits on the website). The account was created over the weekend as a counter-response to recent protests in Berkeley. Some of the more hateful things posted by "BlackThugsMatter" have been down-voted by other Reddit users, but the account had some of the most highest rated comments recently posted on r/Berkeley, which has a relatively small number of users compared to other Reddit forums. The account user referred to protesters as "black thugs", "idiots", etc. There have been multiple threads on the message board, the most being 'Students block Sather Gate to protest police brutality.', which is located at https://www.reddit.com/r/berkeley/comments/33bu0r/students_block_sather_gate_to_protest_police/

The Daily Cal video which gained attention shows repeated attempts by white male students to break the line at Sather Gate. There has been a narrative spread by the opposition to recent protests that the line made it difficult for students to get onto campus and to their classes. This narrative doesn't make sense, because Sather Gate is in the middle of campus, and there are alternative routes on both sides of the gate. The line at Sather Gate really was a minor inconvenience, and did not keep anyone from being where they needed to be. There was no reason for anyone to have to break through the line to get to class. Attempting to break the line was an expression of direct opposition to the protest; getting to class is just a excuse for trying to disrupt the protest. If conservation of time was so important to the counter-protesters, going around the protest would have taken less time than trying to argue and break through the line. (Direct link to Daily Cal article is here: http://www.dailycal.org/2015/04/14/students-block-sather-gate-protest-police-brutality-express-campus-climate-concerns)

There are people online trying to spread disinformation that the protest blocked physically disabled students from going to class. There is no footage or any evidence that anyone with any physical disability was blocked from passing through Sather Gate. There is disinformation that the protest wasn't near the police station. Sather Gate is in the plaza right next to the police station.

A link to the video was posted on the Reddit forum /WhiteRights. A link to the video was also posted on r/Conservative. There was a thread on r/Video which was attracting vicious dialogue, but the thread was removed by a moderator of r/Video. The video was removed, because footage of political protests are not allowed in the forum: http://np.reddit.com/r/undelete/comments/33c869/831894231_bored_entitled_sjw_college_students_at/cqjqvzt

The Southern Poverty Law Center released a study (http://www.splcenter.org/Black-Hole) on internet hate speech, and found that Reddit is becoming an increasingly popular website for hate speech. The video of the Cal Day protest has become a topic of conversation by people who have hateful things to say. Some of this discussion is lead by people not in town, and who might not even be in the state of California. But unfortunately, there are some students who are posting very harsh criticism of their protesting peers. There is a reddit user "SurvivorInBerkeley" who identifies as a computer science major. "SurvivorInBerkeley" posts in a forum for hate speech called CoonTown (r/CoonTown). The CoonTown forum has a little over 7,000 subscribers, and many more regular visitors who aren't subscribers. In this Reddit forum, the Black Student Union has been referred to as the "nigger student union", and people are attacking the BSU's desire to name a building after Assata Shakur, a dancer living in exile in Cuba and also the aunt of 2-Pac.

The response to the Black Student Union, and to the other groups working for equality, has been very revealing. The Cal Day blockage of Sather Gate and the prior blockage a few days before hand were peaceful events, yet these events have drawn very angry criticism. The April 14th blockage of Sather Gate drew physical confrontation, where white students tried to break up the line. This confrontation gained attention in online forums, where people associated with hate speech are trying to rile greater opposition and spread inaccurate statements about the protest.
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