free speech in berkeley? not anymore!

You're pissed about this, and there's been not a word on Indymedia about Mayor Bates admitting he stole and destroyed 1,000 copies of the daily cal because it endorsed his opponent?

I'm sure free republic, 10 000 other forums, and a vast array of television and radio are already doing so.

Years after Mario Savio led a movement to protest the suppression of freedom of speech at UC Berkeley censorship there is still an issue. I remember in 1999 going to a meeting for the Third World Liberation Front defendants when they faced prosecution for protesting in defense of Ethnic Studies, and noticing that the janitors were tearing all flyers down.

First I was shocked to read about what Tom Bates was alleged to do, but when I read the witnesses were from a so-called "conservative" paper, I decided they should be taken with a grain of salt. This could be a smear.

He admitted responsibility for it, after a month of denials, and smears of those students who saw him by his supporters.

The story was in the Daily Cal on Friday, and the SF Chronicle, Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, New York Times, and the AP newswire today. All of them have Bates admitting responsibility.

Incidentally, the story was posted twice, and hidden twice, right here on Indymedia.

http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/12/1548068.php

and

http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/12/1548027.php

holee shit,

http://www.dailycal.org/article.asp?id=10513

i can't believe it!

well at least he's honest enough to admit it.

i worked hard on the bates campaign and i can understand the frustration he would feel, but i'm
astounded that he would personally involve himself in such a thing

there was insane repression of people's literature going on, one friend even had her bates sign run over in her yard, some *hole came and drove his pickup truck through her yard!

the daily cal thing was such a lame piece of corrupt reporting that i question whether it deserved free speech protection. it was not factual. it was just pro-business, pro-dean, and corrupt like she was

the damage dean did is so much more criminal than tossing some papers in the recycling.

but still, bad form to say the least.

but remember this was an election said to be decided by 200 votes. the students were the most critical place where votes could swing.

dean was sending out FALSE LYING BULLSHIT hit pieces everyday with piles of money, much of it likely laundered. her last-minute dirty tricks in elections have never been punished.

cut bates some slack. he was using reasonable measures against worse behavior, even though it was wrong.

There has been discussion here of the Bates (Tom, not Russell)

With the free speech tables, that sounds totally odd. That can't last. I wonder who ordered that. If you look even briefly into the free speech movement of 1964, it was all about people distributing flyers and setting up tables at Bancroft and Sproul, and how the administration decided they needed permits, and then this led to Jack Weinberg stuck in a patrol car surrounded by student protesters.

With Tom Bates, that is naturally awful that he did that. But you want to know the strangest, freakiest part of that? Apparently it was Steve Se xton of the Young Republicans, ex-editor of the Daily Cal, and frequent guest on Fox News who just happened to be standing there, out of 30-40,000 people at the university, while he did that.
Steve Sex ton:-- was on Fox News for airing a scandal, where it was dubious whether it was even a scandal, that some gay guys had hooked up and gotten together outside of their extracurricular, student-led human sexuality de-Cal class. He sat next to Ward Connerly badmouthing the university.
--he totally made up this story tha tthe university had banned the Star Spangled Banner and the flag at the 9/11 anniversary memorial, forcing the chancellor to hold a special news conference denouncing him. There was strong evidence that he was working directly with David Horowitz and Frontpage.com to spread the story and get the false version into the AP wires, and cause a big scene where hot-talk radio listeners showed up at the memorial. It gave a totally bad and inaccurate portrayal of the climate of the university to the outside world - the young republicans at Cal have about 300 members and they are externally funded and have a lot more media savvy than any 6 member little nutty communist group like the spartacist league.
-- the selection of 'news' during his period at editor was a bit suspect. Even as a nonundergraduate who doesn't focus on the details of student politics or what gets published in the paper, I was able to notice his name because there was always something really biased going on every time I picked up the paper.
-- There was an odd situation when the young republicans apparently got copies of the Cal Patriot stolen from their office, and they very loudly accused MeCha without any evidence other than motive - because they had just insulted MeCha in their issue. I said that there was equal evidence that they could have staged it themselves just to get 5X the attention. Still, no one was caught, so MeCha probably didn't do it. How would a group break the door to the young republican office in the crowded Eshleman hall student center, walk out with stacks of papers, and get outside, and find somewhere to dump them without anyone seeing, without a single witness - especially the loud breaking of the door part - although the door wasn't 'broken', it was found open.
So, it is positively strange that Steve Sexton always is the nexus of every big news event emanating out of campus.


Anyway, it's horrible about Tom. I guess he's some sort of democrat? A lot of people trusted him. The thing is, they showed Shirley Dean on the news saying she thought it was corrupt and that they should make her mayor again. It's like, oh yes - after she traveled all the way to Kriss Worthington's hometown in Ohio or Pennsylvania and found his high school and went into the librarya nd started systematically going through old student newspapers in order to dig up some sort of campaign dirt against him? They were talking to staff at the school etc. to find info. too. That's as creepy as picking up a stack of newspapers and putting them in a shallow trashcan next to the dispenser. And yes.. people are always tearing down flyers and stuff in my building - and someone tore down someone's pictures of the world trade tower too.

Russell - so how are people proceeding? I know you're not just going to go home.
I can't guess what the city officials are thinking, because why do they think people come from out of the area to shop on the short 5 blocks of telegraph? There are shopping centers all over the place, but the reason Telegraph is always packed is because of it's history, and because it's interesting and has people selling crafts on the sidewalk etc. If you took away the interesting people holding up history, it would be about as interesting as the section of Telegraph around 50th street where there is much less traffic.

Anyway, you know that tons of people in Berkeley would be willing to defend your right to sell bumper stickers and hand out pamphlets. How is local information passed around in Berkeley these days? We can read about stuff on indymedia, but only a small fraction of Berkeley people will regularly show up here. The Daily Planet is dead, and the Tribune and Chronicle don't cover any daily events of Berkeley. Even Red Bluff, population 15,000 has a daily newspaper.

Isn't it ironic that the politicians who ran on a platform of "civility" spawn groups that use the creepiest, sneakiest tactics around? The College Republicans, Young Republicans, and Federalists all use the same strategies. If you are in school, run for student government and watch them! It helps. Check out http://www.yaf. org to see how they operate.

One of them just ran Horowitz' BS about reparations (remember that?) again in the school paper at Hastings. We wrote articles in response but the school paper hasn't come out yet. So it will be months before the articles are available to the students.

I heard a rumor that I'm trying to confirm that Russell Bates is so "down" with the nationalist struggle of Palestinian that he coverted to Islam. Sounds wingnuttish, but a whitey with inconsistently lefty/nationalist politics is par for the course on Telegraph Ave. As nationalism is a variation of racism and religious fanaticism is of the same alienated way of seeing the world, it doesn't surprise me.

FUCK ALL FORMS OF RACISM, NATIONALISM AND RELIGION.

They're all opiates of the people. Let's fight against nationalist hatred and FOR INTERNATIONALISM!!!