Free Republic

The Free Speech Movement lives on at UC Berkeley - 45 years to the day after a barefoot, 21-year-old student named Mario Savio energized thousands from atop a police car by exhorting them to do all they could to stop the administration's restrictive policies. Today the issue is less about freedom of speech than about freedom of access to a quality education, as thousands of students have protested rising tuition, employee layoffs and course cutbacks in recent weeks. "We're the ones fighting for this to be a public university that everyone can afford!" Ronald Cruz, a Berkeley activist, told a...

BERKELEY — Calling UC Berkeley's 1960s turmoil "a dead movement," protesters on Wednesday knocked a tribute to the Free Speech Movement off the steps of Sproul Hall and voiced their own concerns about student-fee hikes and other issues. Exactly 45 years after the face of the movement, Mario Savio, spoke to thousands on the same steps, a few dozen demonstrators forced student-government leaders to cancel their commemoration. The same protesters later read a line from Savio's Dec. 2, 1964, speech in unison. Organizers of the invading demonstration said it was time to focus on "a living, breathing movement" rather than...

The Nov. 28 New York Times article about the efforts of a few pro-Israel activists to shut down the Daily Planet for its publication of reader contributions critical of that nation's policies provided a fair introduction to the story but failed to fully elucidate the nature of the campaign. Though the first stirrings of this censorship campaign began several years ago, it did not begin in earnest until this year, when PR professional Jim Sinkinson began a more organized and deliberate campaign to intimidate advertisers. The Planet first alerted its readership to Sinkinson's efforts in a March 19 editorial. The...

BERKELEY -- Berkeley activists can sue federal agents for their role in a 2008 raid in which officers seized their computers and records in search of alleged threats by animal-rights advocates, a federal judge ruled Monday. The activist group Long Haul Inc. can try to prove that the search of its Berkeley offices exceeded legal boundaries, that agents misled the judge who issued a search warrant, and that it was targeted because of its left-wing views, said U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White. An unaffiliated group with offices in the same Berkeley building, East Bay Prisoner Support, also won the right...

A student group at UC Berkeley’s school of law Tuesday called on the U.S. Justice Department, the Pennsylvania Bar and the University of California to “conduct full and thorough investigations” of former government lawyers who crafted the Bush torture memos, including John Yoo, a tenured faculty member at their school. Comprised of a coalition of student groups and individuals, the Boalt Alliance to Abolish Torture (B.A.A.T.) has gathered over 275 signatures which call for investigations into “potential violations of professional and ethical duties, as well as possible criminal conduct.” Both the Pennsylvania Bar Association where John Yoo is registered and...

The UC strike reached its peak at 3 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 19, when students and custodians dumped days-old trash from the different campus buildings outside California Hall, where UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau works, to protest recent custodian layoffs. Although California Hall was locked and looked deserted, a couple of people could be seen peaking out from behind the blinds. “Tell me what democracy looks like, this is what democracy looks like!” shouted Kathryn Lybarger, an organizer for the workers union, as students threw used paper cups, apple cores and banana peels at the front door. “What does a regents’...

As part of the ongoing protest over the University of California's 32 percent fee increase, UC Berkeley students marched to UC President Mark Yudof’s office in Oakland Monday afternoon and staged a sit-in, demanding to meet with him. The students went to Yudof’s office after finding out at the Alameda County Superior court that burglary charges against three Wheeler Hall occupiers had been reduced to a misdemeanor. UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof confirmed that there were students in Yudof’s office “who were engaged in peaceful conversation with officials there.” Mogulof said Yudof was not present. An employee at the UC...

BERKELEY -- UC Berkeley students took over a campus building in protest this morning, a day after the University of California regents voted to raise tuition by 32 percent.An undetermined number of protesters have barricaded themselves inside Wheeler Hall, which houses the English department. Several demonstrators wearing bandannas opened a window and used a bullhorn to denounce the regents' decision.

West Berkeley activists are dead set against the mayor's "green corridor" vision, saying it will cause gentrification, too much density, and high rents. The vision of a denser San Pablo Avenue won't come to pass if area residents have their way. Fifty years from now, after the polar ice caps melt and West Berkeley is under water, people might look back on 2009 and say, "What the hell were they thinking?" Why were old hippies in what could be the most liberal city in America working overtime to block the widespread proliferation of green-tech businesses and dense urban development in...

OAKLAND -- The Alameda County judge who presided over the dispute between UC Berkeley and tree-sitters seeking to block a construction project, Barbara J. Miller, was found dead Friday at her home in Oakland. She was 58. Judge Miller was found a little after 6 p.m., Oakland police said. The cause of her death has not been determined. Judge Miller was elected to the Superior Court for Alameda County in 1996 after having been a commissioner of the court since 1987. She served as presiding judge in 2004 and 2005. During her years on the bench, Judge Miller's best-known case...

The recipe calls for 536 sheets of edible seaweed, 100+ pounds of rice, 167 pounds of surimi, 67 pounds of cukes and an equal amount of avocados. The finished product? A 330-foot long California sushi roll to best the world record one made in Maui in 2001. That beast of traditional cuisine was 300-feet long. More than 350 UC Berkeley students on 58 teams will build the ginormous roll on Sunday. The teams, with names like Smashin' Sushi, AvoCALdoes and Roll Me California Style, are made up of students from sororities, fraternities and other campus groups. After a learning lesson...

Berkeley once again dipped into U.S. foreign policy Tuesday when its City Council unanimously passed a resolution asking the Obama administration to withdraw troops and private armed contractors from Afghanistan and cease drone attacks on Afghanistan and Pakistan. The issue proved to be the liveliest of the evening, with members of the public protesting when councilmembers Susan Wengraf and Linda Maio suggested postponing the item to correct ambiguous wording in the resolution. Code Pink, CopWatch and Berkeley’s Peace and Justice Commission, which recommended the resolution to the council, voiced their support for immediate troop withdrawal. Melody Ermachild Chavis, author of...

Growing up, I was expected to be quiet. Silence is necessary to maintain secrets. Parents drinking? Keep your mouth shut. White kids targeted at school? Don't tell or you'll be sorry. When you have no words to describe your world and no one wants to hear about it anyway, a part of you goes mute. But this doesn't mean you stop observing and sensing. When my mother flew into rages, I knew something was wrong. When my parents were rarely home, I sensed that this wasn't normal. Being robbed of language is a state of isolation, of suspended animation. It's...

A group of UC Berkeley law students will launch a torture accountability initiative next week dedicated to holding the authors of the infamous torture memos accountable, reinstating respect for the prohibition against torture and ending executive abuse of power and impunity. Called the Boalt Alliance to Abolish Torture (B.A.A.T.), at their kick-off Oct. 13 the group will host a panel of lawyers and legal academics to discuss the memos crafted by the Bush administration’s legal counsels at the Department of Justice, including Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo. Yoo, who spent the previous semester at Chapman University, returned to the UC...

John Yoo is back teaching at the University of California Berkeley Law School this semester and there doesn’t seem to be much anyone can do about it. A few UC faculty members have pronounced that they consider this to be disgraceful, and some of the more colorful citizen protest groups have trained their sights on Yoo’s public appearances and even hounded him at home, but the Law School itself seems to be paralyzed. One would think that being an obviously incompetent or dishonest practitioner of the legal trade would be enough to disqualify him from teaching impressionable students, but law...

Tuesday will not go down as a day of triumph for Berkeley moonbats. After laying plans to stage a spectacle at the Marine Corps recruiting office as part of a nationwide campaign to target recruiters, communist militants from World Can't Wait/We Are Not Your Soldiers arrived to find the building defended by patriots: This welcoming committee nixed any plans the activists may have had to vandalize the building again. Instead they stood around in the street, inanely shouting through megaphones at passing cars: Concerned about this traffic hazard, a conscientious citizen called the police. The commies found themselves confined to...

UC Protest Movement Continues to Unfold By Richard Brenneman and Riya Bhattacharjee Thursday October 01, 2009 UC Berkeley students headed back to Sproul Plaza Wednesday evening to discuss possible actions to protest the university’s budget cuts and related topics. After a hugely successful student and faculty walkout Thursday, Sept. 24, which received national and international media coverage, about 200 students took part in a general assemby at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 30. The meeting had barely begun by the time the Daily Planet went to press. Student organizers said the meeting was intended as a grassroots effort to brainstorm ideas...

(09-29) 23:08 PDT BERKELEY, CALIF. -- Berkeley became the first city in the United States, and possibly the world, to agree to international human rights treaties on Tuesday night, after the City Council approved a measure usually reserved for countries. After a brief but spirited debate, the City Council voted unanimously to allow unpaid interns to report to the United Nations on how, or whether, Berkeley complies with treaties on civil liberties, racial discrimination and torture. The council also agreed to take the first step in raising parking revenue by voting unanimously to add 420 meters and increase the parking...

Berkeley would become the first city in the United States to independently try to comply with U.N. treaties on torture, civil rights and racial discrimination, if the City Council passes a measure on the issue tonight. The measure would require the city to file biennial reports to the United Nations on how - or whether - the city meets international human rights standards. In Berkeley, that could include its record on homelessness, the achievement gap among different racial groups at Berkeley High and the presence of John Yoo, a UC Berkeley School of Law professor and Berkeley resident who authored...

When Oakland’s Bishop Salvatore Cordileone visited Berkeley’s Jesuit School of Theology at the Graduate Theological Union on September 22, he was greeted by approximately 20 protestors. The protestors were seminarians and faculty from the theological union’s schools. The bishop was there to commemorate the merging of the Jesuit school with Santa Clara University. The protesters were there to oppose Bishop Cordileone for his defense of natural marriage. According to the QueerToday.com website, protestors included Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, president of the Starr King (Unitarian Universalist) School of Ministry; Rev. Roland Stringfellow, the organizer of the GTU’s Center for Lesbian and...

Computers Researchers Remote Control Flying Beetles Via Electrodes by Terrence O'Brien (RSS feed) — Sep 27th 2009 at 3:01PM The military and researchers across the country have been working on putting tiny bots in the air for quite some time. They've talked robotic spy-bats, dreamed up cyborg crickets, dragonflies, and all matter of other bug-sized bots. In fact, they've successfully implanted electrodes into the brains of crickets, moths, and beetles to exercise some control over their movements -- they even got a beetle to briefly take flight. But until now, the amount of control over motions has been very limited....

Here is video of conservative comedian Steven Crowder going undercover as a liberal student in ultra-liberal Berkeley, California. Crowder asks students on campus several questions, including "Who is your favorite President?" He also asked a question about slavery inside a classroom. Perhaps the best moment is when Crowder approaches a table set up to promote the Health Care Public Option with a sign saying it was "in memory of Ted Kennedy." Crowder asked those manning the table, "Does Mary Jo Kopechne support this too?" The students responded, "I'm not sure," and "I think so." Crowder certainly exposes the liberal bias...

Berkeley has finally come up with an answer to the question posed by the annual parade: How Berkeley Can You Be? The answer is: Very Berkeley - as long as you don't sell beer off the back of floats, toss candy to kids or walk naked down University Avenue. Those restrictions, plus some unexpected permit fees, ended the 13-year run of the How Berkeley Can You Be? parade and festival, a bacchanalian romp through downtown that featured everything from flame throwers to Nobel laureates to motorized couches. Daunted by the new restrictions, organizers have decided to cancel the event, slated...

BERKELEY — Six months after Tristan Anderson, a former UC Berkeley tree sitter and Bay Area activist, nearly died after being struck in the head with a tear-gas canister fired by Israeli troops, friends are holding a benefit Sunday to raise money for his recovery costs. Anderson, 38, remains at a rehabilitation hospital near Tel Aviv and continues to have setbacks and infections after skull surgery last month, supporters said. The operation came after doctors learned Anderson was suffering from post-traumatic hydrocephalus, a blockage of the ventricles — open spaces in the brain — that causes poor circulation of cerebral...

A Berkeley store owner has agreed to stop selling candy bars and sodas to middle school students who come to his store for a morning fix in a move school officials say is a first in the city. That means students seeking Snickers, Twix or Coca-Cola will be out of luck from 8 to 9 a.m. before they start their day at Longfellow Middle School. Friendly Market owner Yaser Musid, who has five kids of his own, said he will lose up to $100 a day in the deal. But he agreed with school counselor Rosina Keren that keeping junk...

The recent viral prairie fire over White House "Green Jobs Czar" VAN JONES being discovered (by your's truly) on a video made in Berkeley, CA, made earlier this year calling Republicans a less-than-flattering A-word obscenity, and also questioning "How's The Capitalism Going For You This Year!?" is the tip of the iceberg.I've notated various points in the Czar's controversial, hour-long mid-February presentation, and where these public statements by Jones occured in the video, for further research and dissemination purposes.

Obama adviser: Republicans are "a**holes" By Tony Romm - 09/02/09 09:59 AM ET A video in which White House green jobs adviser Van Jones calls Congressional Republicans (and himself) "a**holes" is quickly making the rounds on the Internet this morning. Jones made the off-the-cuff remark in February, during his lecture at a Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative (BERC) event on the green economy. At the time, the Obama administration had not yet tapped Jones to serve as a special adviser on the White House's Council on Environmental Quality. The slip happened in response to a question about the Democratic Party's...

VAN JONES FEB. 2009 VIDEO HERE.See Video and kindly archive before it is conveniently "removed".This is a speech delivered by White House Green Jobs "Czar" Anthony K. (Van) Jones in Berkeley before a very leftist activist/student group, a few weeks after Obama was inaugurated.A relatively high-quality, recent, clear video of VAN JONES, with somewhat damaging public comments during this talk he made which could be part of the rope to hang his senior White House job. In this speech and presentation, Van Jones uses words such as "Comrades", "Maoists", discusses his strategy now that the White House has been seized...

Berkeley may take great pride as a champion of free speech and civil rights, but an unusual campaign has been under way - led by most of the city's top elected officials - to stop residents from signing a citizen's petition. Opposing a petition, in this case asking for a public vote on a controversial downtown development plan, might not be unusual in many cities. But in Berkeley, which promotes extensive citizen involvement in city affairs, the campaign has provoked some unusual arguments. "Sometimes democracy can go too far," Councilwoman Susan Wengraf, one of the six council members opposing the...

Opponents of a downtown Berkeley development plan were still on the streets Wednesday gathering the 5,558 signatures needed by Thursday to put the plan to a citywide vote. City Councilman Jesse Arreguin, 25, who is behind the campaign to overturn the Downtown Area Plan, which allows for taller buildings, more housing density, more open space and which imposes green building requirements, said he is "cautiously optimistic" his group has enough signatures to go forward. Arreguin was at the Downtown Berkeley BART station Wednesday gathering signatures. Shadowing Arreguin and holding a sign that said "Don't Sign The Petition," was 27-year-old Salvan...

Four generations of UC Berkeley law school alumni joined activists, community members and lawyers on the Boalt Hall steps to protest former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo’s return to campus Monday. The group called for Yoo to be prosecuted and fired from his position as professor of law at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law for writing memorandums which were used to justify extensive policies on detention and interrogation, even torture. The Obama administration has so far showed little interest in prosecuting those who worked for the Bush administration. Despite criticism from protesters and from the National Lawyers’ Guild...

Protesters Want UC Berkeley Law Professor Fired By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS August 17, 2009 BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) -- Anti-war activists protested Monday at the University of California, Berkeley to call for the firing of a law professor who co-wrote legal memos that critics say were used to justify the torture of suspected terrorists. Campus police arrested at least four people who refused to leave the university's law school building. The demonstrators said John Yoo should be dismissed, disbarred and prosecuted for war crimes for his work as a Bush administration attorney from 2001 to 2003, when he helped craft legal...

Berkeley is scrambling to line up state tax cuts and credits for Bayer, which is considering moving some or all of its 1,700 jobs out of town. The pharmaceutical giant, which manufactures a hemophilia drug called Kogenate from its Seventh Street plant, will decide in a couple of months whether it will eventually move some or all of its manufacturing of the drug elsewhere, spokeswoman Trina Ostrander said. Bayer will soon produce a new version of the drug, called Kogenate-ph, that will require retooling its plant and retraining workers, Ostrander confirmed. The company is deciding whether that could take place...

After 12 years, I am tired of living in South Berkeley. I am tired of the incessant noise: blaring car stereos, loud parties, people yelling at each other as they walk down the street.

BERKELEY -- A 27-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of possessing explosive materials at a home in the Berkeley hills, police said today. Emoru Oboke Obbanya, 27 was arrested .. by officers investigating a 911 hang-up call at about 12:30 p.m. Saturday, authorities said. Obbanya refused to open the door at first, then came outside and immediately closed the door, police Lt. Andrew Greenwood said. He appeared nervous, cursed the officers and refused to provide evidence that he lived there, police said. Officers decided to search the home to make sure no one inside needed help, Greenwood said. They obtained...

. In 1798, during the Quasi-war with France, Congress, with President John Adams’s support, passed the Sedition Act. Outraged by attacks on her husband, Abigail Adams supported the act, which was opposed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, among others. “Let us not establish a tyranny,” wrote an alarmed Alexander Hamilton to an ally in Congress. Indeed, the Sedition Act, an obvious violation of the First Amendment, made a permanent blot on Adams’s presidency. Here is part of its text: “If any person shall write, print, utter or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or...

Symbols of communism and marijuana and a prediction that "capitalism will fail" aren't exactly the sort of end-of-year messages you'd expect from an eighth grader. But that's precisely what some students at the Black Pine Circle School, a private school in Berkeley, Calif., chose to include in their "Class of 2007" mosaic. The symbols, which are prominently displayed outside the school, have prompted questions about the appropriateness of images like a hammer and sickle and a marijuana leaf on school grounds — and have led critics to say they are blatant proof of political indoctrination of young children. Black Pine...

Susan B. Jordan, a prominent attorney known for her work defending women charged with violent crimes, and who is credited with the creation of the battered spouse defense, was killed Friday in a plane crash in Utah. She was 67. Jordan, who split her time between homes in Berkeley and Ukiah in Mendocino County, formerly had a law office in Berkeley, and since 1972 had run a law practice in Ukiah. Jordan had been a licensed pilot since 1981, but longtime friend and professional colleague Ann Moorman said she was not flying the plane when it went down. Health care...

Santa Clara County agrees to pay $1 million in lawsuit over Naked Guy's suicide To many, Luis Andrew Martinez was simply the Naked Guy — a Berkeley fixture who gained national notoriety in the 1990s for refusing to wear clothes. About 10 years later, on May 18, 2006, isolated and alone in a Santa Clara County Jail cell, Martinez — a diagnosed schizophrenic — tied a plastic bag around his head and killed himself. Today — on the third anniversary of his death — lawyers for his family plan to announce a $1 million settlement reached with Santa Clara County,...

Recently I have posted articles ranging from showing that American Muslims are not assimilating and forming their own communities, to Muslims openly calling for jihad just blocks away from Ground Zero. As long as they go unopposed they are going to continue to move forward with their agenda of an Islamic USA. Now two prominent American Muslims are close to finalizing their plan to open an Islamic College right here in America. The school will be lead by two Islamic scholars, the first being Sheik Hamza Yusuf, who in the past had made this statement.

They were feasting on organic endive and popping open the herb tea Wednesday at Berkeley City Hall, as staff celebrated the City Council's unanimous approval of an ambitious, painstakingly researched plan to fight global warming. "After two years pouring your soul into something, to see it passed 9-0 is just intoxicating," said the city's planning director, Dan Marks. "This plan is a model for cities everywhere. As usual, Berkeley is a leader." The City Council on Tuesday night voted to move ahead with its 145-page Climate Action Plan, approving a host of last-minute amendments and striking mandates from most of...

Berkeley's City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to eliminate homeowner mandates from its climate action plan, in part because of an uproar from infuriated residents. The plan required owners to upgrade their homes' energy efficiency, based on an independent audit of a home's windows, roof, appliances and insulation. The goal was for all of Berkeley's 23,000 homes and 25,000 duplexes and apartment units to reduce energy use by 35 percent by 2020. Many homeowners vehemently protested the mandates, saying the cost to upgrade a typical drafty prewar Berkeley home would be astronomical. Hills residents particularly fought the portion requiring white...

Berkeley Studies Conservative Groups by: Deborah Lambert, April 27, 2009 If you want to delve into the history of conservative thought, you might want to try Berkeley. That’s right. The same school that provided a launching pad for ‘60s free speech protesters Mario Savio et al, according to the New York Times. This fall, the school will open its new Center for the Comparative Study of Right Wing Movements, funded with $777,000.00 from an anonymous donor. Conservative historian Lee Edwards noted that the comparison aspect should be handled with care, since the “so-called right wing or parties of the right”...

Berkeley will have its equivalent of the harmonic convergence Saturday: a visit by the Dalai Lama, a raucous Earth Day festival and special farmers' market celebrating the elimination of plastic bags. Fear of 'public outrage' over girl's autopsy 04.24.09 What do you expect? It's talk radio, court says 04.24.09 New UC admissions policy angers Asian-Americans 04.24.09 Visitors are advised to use public transit, car-shares and ride bicycles downtown, which is expected to be near gridlock due to the Dalai Lama's security detail and the multiple festivals. The city will close Allston Way between Milvia Street and Martin Luther King, Jr.,...

This space doesn’t usually take requests, but when my 94-year-old mother calls up and insists, it’s hard to say no. What she wanted when she called last week is not hard to come up with, after all: a forthright denunciation of the Obama administration’s apparent plan to let the torturers and their instigators off the hook. Thinking people everywhere (I’m one of them) have rushed to their keyboards to do their best to make sure the current government doesn’t get away with letting their predecessors get off scot free. MoveOn is on their case to make sure they don’t forget....

Berkeley property owners may soon be asked to approve a 20 percent increase in city refuse fees in a somewhat controversial “majority protest” mail-in voting procedure. The unusual ballot process automatically counts votes not received as “yes” votes. The Berkeley City Council is scheduled to consider sending the rate increase proposal to property owners at the council’s next regular meeting, Tuesday, April 21, following a March 23 Zero Waste Commission decision recommending the increase. If approved by property owners, residential refuse collection rates for the average 32-gallon can would rise $4.52 per month, from $22.58 to $27.10. Commer-cial rates would...

If you’re interested in studying left-wing social movements like organized labor, civil rights or feminism, there are dozens of universities and colleges that have created special programs and research centers devoted to the subject. But hardly any similar institutions exist in academia for those looking for a place to study the right wing in America and abroad. Now, with backing from an anonymous donor, the University of California, Berkeley, where ’60s-era students stood atop a police car and ignited free-speech protests, is creating a Center for the Comparative Study of Right-Wing Movements. According to experts in the field it is...

BERKELEY — The U.S Marine Corps Recruiting Center, which has been the target of protests for the past 18 months, was badly damaged by vandals Wednesday night, the eve of the 6th anniversary of the Iraq war. Today, broken windows are boarded up with sheets of plywood at the recruitment center in downtown Berkeley. CodePink and other anti-war groups picketed in front of the Marine recruiting center at 64 Shattuck Square in downtown Berkeley since the fall of 2007. The groups say the Marines do not belong in liberal Berkeley and they should find a new spot for their center....

When Tristan Anderson, now 38, was living illegally in the trees at UC Berkeley to protest the administration's ultimately successful bid to cut down the trees to build a sports training center, life was good. For 21 months, Berkeley's tree sitters happily fouled their nests with little interference from the authorities. Their biggest fear was falling. When Berkeley finally erected barbed-wire fences and began to shine spotlights on the canopy campers, the tree huggers complained that UC had turned their grove into "Guantanamo." UC retaliated by giving the tree sitters energy bars. In June 2008, Anderson, who went by the...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A state appeals court breathed new life Tuesday into campus integration efforts, ruling that Berkeley does not violate California's ban on racial preferences when it considers the makeup of students' neighborhoods in deciding where they will go to school. Berkeley's policy "does not show partiality, prejudice or preference to any student on the basis of that student's race," said the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco. "All students in a given residential area are treated equally." The ruling is the first by an appellate court on a school district's voluntary integration plan since California voters...