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Indybay Feature

EMERGENCY 24-Hour Peace-IN at Old City Hall

by zanne joi (mzsam [at] bayareacodepink.org)
Calling all peace-loving people: Come to our EMERGENCY 24-Hour Peace-IN in front of Old City Hall in Berkeley.

City Council took a small stand against the powerful forces of the war machine last Tuesday when they voted to ask the Marine recruiting station to leave our town. Pro-war forces are retaliating. Council is feeling the pressure.

We need to BE THERE! To stand for peace, no matter what. To let Council know "We have your back! Join us 7:00pm Monday thru 7:00pm Tuesday prior to Council's meeting - and then stay for the meeting.


Calling all peace-loving people:

We need to protect our city from outside pro-war and religious right forces. We need to support our elected officials who represent our peace-loving stand.


The right has put out the call to invade our city 5:00a.m. on Tuesday morning Feb 12th.

They intend to spend the day further attempting to intimidate our peace-loving City and City Council while they hammer home THEIR war propaganda.

We are putting out the call for all peace-loving people to come to our Emergency 24-hour Peace-In Vigil in front of City Council Chambers.

This fight is about war and ending war. This fight is about ending recruitment of our youth to be the fodder of war. It is not about the marines. It is not about being anti-American. It is not about rights, freedom, or apple pie.

It IS about this occupation of Iraq : about the 1.2 million dead Iraqis, 3950 dead U.S. soldiers, trillions of dollars of our tax payer money, the attack on our civil rights and constitution, torture, rape, wounded and neglected soldiers, suicide, depleted uranium.

It IS about recruiting our youth to be the occupying forces.

Women say ENOUGH! Basta! The People of Berkeley say ENOUGH! Basta!

We MUST take back the language from the right: END WAR NOW! We MUST take back the messaging. We must stand up for Peace.

Bring your tent, sleeping bag, all your peace and anti-war banners, props, photos, hot pink fabric. Or just BE THERE!

7:00pm Monday February 11th until 7:00pm Tuesday February 12th , Maudelle Shirek City Hall, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berkeley.Calling all peace-loving people!
Join 24-hour Emergency Peace-In Vigil outside Berkeley City Hall

When: Monday, February 11, 7pm until 7pm on Tuesday February 12th, when the Berkeley City Council meets.

Where: Maudelle Shirek City Hall
2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way
Berkeley
(at Allston Way, 4 blocks west of the Downtown Berkeley BART).

What you can do:

Help spread the word. Send this out far and wide.

Come for the whole Peace-In or take a 3-hour shift. Sign up here: (http://volunteerforchange.org/e/1181?refcode=o23).

Bring your tent, sleeping bag, all your peace props, and hot pink fabric.

Support the campers: bring food, drinks, a song, sign & banner-making materials, your creativity and peaceful, positive energy

Come to the City Council meeting at 7pm: Even if you can’t make the vigil, please come to the City Council meeting at the same site, where councilmembers will discuss the city's position about the Marine Recruiting Station. It starts at 7pm; try to be there by 5pm (or earlier) to get a seat.

For more information, call CODEPINK at 510-524-2776 or see
(http://www.codepinkalert.org/berkeleyrecruiting)
Add Your Comments

Comments (Hide Comments)

Yesterday, this story seemed to be gaining secondary momentum, and it is still posted at the top of the cnn.com website. So my friends and I decided that a bunch of right-wingers probably will come for the Tuesday protest that they announced.

Later, I'll try to look for links to articles about similar historical cases where radio hosts or David Horowitz sent a bunch of followers to UC Berkeley, based on hype about an antiwar protest or some contrived thing. I have gone to Sproul to take a look, and saw some confused 50 year old guys with flag gear who clearly had been expecting the communist activists they'd been told about on the radio, but they didn't know how to react to the disinterested students going to class and drinking coffee. It is very funny and worth documenting on film.
There have been other weird eruptions at city hall, say five years ago, when the council had made an antiwar resolution, and Fox News decided to cover it.

Anyway, here is what my sign would say, if I could make it on Tuesday.
Protesters should have a theme of arguing *for* cutting off federal funding to UC, because a huge sum goes to weapons research funding. UC manages Los Alamos, the Livermore and Sandia nuclear weapons facilities in the east bay, and various military funded physics and engineering projects on the local campus.

The $2million cut to Berkeley for the Waters school lunch program is almost silly. Pull out your calculator and that is like $15 per resident. Meanwhile, the high earning residents of Berkeley are taxed thousands of dollars per year, and essentially half of it goes to military targets. It's like numbers with more than three zeros hypnotize some people so they can't distinguish. Paying off the $2trillion for the Iraq escalation is going to be tens of thousands of dollars per capita.
We really need to start balancing the budget by cutting off this research funding at Berkeley. Most of UC is state and student funded. And it would be great for people to be defiant on this point.
If you look at news.google, various commentary and coverage of this story have dumb conservatives chortling about how Bates made an apology, and blabbing about 'vast' sums being cut from Berkeley. Most other cities probably have far more earmarks, and Berkeley typically is cheated.
by cp

Here are some other cases where the 'freepers' and right-wing Protest Warriors have invaded Berkeley. They tend to use 'let's freak out the squares' approach, where they clearly assume that by showing up, everyone will be shocked and revolted by their presence, but then most people barely turn their head.

Here is a previous marines recruitment protest on Sproul. Many of these people came from outside the city. http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2005/04/21/17342601.php

And here was a council vote against bombing Afghanistan that produced a media circus. Various wingnuts and bigfoot researchers came to act up in the audience
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/news/seven_days/Content?oid=282857
by to make a point?
I'd rather keep the 2 million in federal moneys in Berkeley than have our taxes go up yet again.
You don't like the Marines? Don't join them.
by cp
Yes. UC Berkeley does not have a conservative student body, but it does have one of the largest memberships of College Republicans in the state or country - they said over 500 students. One can see this in the first link above. The ROTC is not quite as large as where I went to school, but there is a substantial number in the officer corps, and they jog up and down the hill by the life sciences building. Zombietime is based out of Berkeley etc.
However, a short search of 'Berkeley' and 'code pink' on news.google or regular google reveals a huge number of non-Berkeley sites where they're discussing retaliation on Berkeley, and most of the dialog and comments reveals funny imagined conditions in Berkeley.

By the way, look at some of the planning here. They are promising full national news treatment - probably more serious than the 2001 eastbay express account above (by Chris Thompson). I was at that meeting, and could barely believe it was so long ago, yet... nothing has changed? http://gatheringofeagles.org/forum/?forum=46&topic=3115&page=1
by cp
sorry to overpost, but here is a quote from Gathering of Eagles:

"P.S. We have received feedback that many of you will be traveling long distances to get here - many from out of state. So if you are thinking about coming but aren’t sure it will be worth the effort, please realize how many people are making that effort to come. Join us in solidarity for our troops and insure that we have the large numbers we need to show the Berkeley City Council - and the news media - that America will not stand for this disgraceful action!"



By the way, I don't think it bothers anyone that they're from out of town. Previous incidents like this have been fun, exciting, and highly photographable... if that is the sort of thing that amuses you, like me. I would not want to be the police officer having to spend the whole night and day out here scanning the crowd for nuts. Hopefully no violent cretins decide to drive in from Reno.
http://www.zombietime.com/bus_19_berkeley/
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/06/29/18283707.php?show_comments=1
by Roger Helbig
depleted uranium. -- what exactly does Code Pink know about this -- not much more than they do about Marines -- too bad that they really did not learn much beyond how to be repugnant on a grand scale!

For those of you who would like to learn that depleted uranium is a manufactured controversy -

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/DUStory/message/57

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/DUStory/message/55
by John Thielking
I could not download any of the files on the above Yahoo group. I have some background info on DU at my website http://www.pagesincolor.com/depleted_uranium.html .

To summarize, one half gram of DU contains as much radioactivity as all of the Carbon 14 in your body. The concentration makes the dose, as the C14 is distributed throughout your body and does not pose a significant danger because any one cell is not likely to be significantly irradiated by the C14. However, having 1/2 gram of DU inhaled is a significant danger because all the radioactivity is concentrated in one area or a few areas.
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