Posted on 10/17/2007 2:58:11 PM PDT by SmithL
Berkeley -- Dozens of flag-waving military supporters squared off boisterously with peace activists today in the first major showdown over of a U.S. Marine Corps recruiting station that until recently had been operating below the radar in downtown Berkeley.
Demonstrators led by conservative radio talk-show host Melanie Morgan shouted down members of Code Pink, a group spawned by Bay Area peace activists, as both lined Shattuck Avenue and Addison Street outside the recruiting station, which was closed today.
Shortly before noon, there was a physical confrontation between the two camps, which prompted Berkeley police Sgt. Randy Files to bellow at Code Pink protesters to"move back," forcing them to gather at the opposite side of the street.
"I determined for everyone's safety to separate the two groups," Files said.
There were no arrests, and numerous police officers stood watch, including Berkeley Police Chief Doug Hambleton at one point. "As long as people stay peaceful, we're as happy as we can be," Hambleton said.
The two sides shouted at each other and at times yelled the same slogans, including "Support the troops."
"USA," one group chanted. "Out of Iraq," responded the others, who said they were angry that the station, which relocated from Alameda, is in close proximity to Berkeley High School, UC Berkeley and Berkeley City College.
Some demonstrators squared off individually.
"None of us is pro-war! I'm pro-defense," Kevin Graves, 50, of Discovery Bay shouted at one protester.
Graves, whose son Army Spc. Joseph Graves was killed in Baghdad in July 2006, continued, "My son died so you and I can stand here and disagree."
In an interview, Graves said, "I think they're misguided," referring to Code Pink.
But David Santos, 15, of Oakland, said the conservative element was on the wrong side of the issue.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
it makes me proud to see strong women standing up to these idiots. I was so impressed I immediately contributed to Move America Forward and you should too.
Hmmm...mid-day rally on a Wednesday...guess school was out for David...
But a pink-clad Carly Hue, 26, of Berkeley said, "I think you can't make sense out of people who don't make sense. You can't talk to people who won't listen."
Such an apt description of the Code Pink-os and the rest of the Soros "A-Team".
Yea, they brainwash them early.
David is so politically astute...I’m sure his moms or dads don’t think he needs formal learning.
Thanks for the ping to this thread!
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=6149
CODE PINK FOR PEACE (CPP)
733 15th Street NW, #507
Washington, DC
20005
Phone :202-393-5016
URL: Website
Founded by pro-Castro radical Media Benjamin
Presented “pink slips” in the form of women’s lingerie to President Bush
Launched on November 17, 2002, Code Pink for Peace describes itself as a “grassroots peace and social justice movement” whose self-defined mission is “to end the war in Iraq, stop new wars, and redirect our resources into healthcare, education and other life-affirming activities.” Rejecting “the Bush administration’s fear-based politics that justify violence,” the organization calls instead “for policies based on compassion, kindness and a commitment to international law.” Code Pink was founded by four radicals: Jodie Evans, Medea Benjamin, Diane Wilson, and a radical Wiccan activist calling herself Starhawk. Ms. Evans is the nominal leader of the organization, which works closely with Medea Benjamin’s group Global Exchange and Leslie Cagan’s antiwar coalition United For Peace and Justice.
As a parody of the Bush administration’s color-coded security alerts (regarding terrorist threats), the “Code Pink Alert” warns that this administration poses “extreme danger to all the values of nurturing, caring, and compassion that women and loving men have held.” Proclaiming that “women have been the guardians of life … because the men have busied themselves making war,” Code Pink calls on “women around the world to rise up and oppose the war in Iraq … to be outrageous for peace.” During one Code Pink demonstration in Washington, D.C., participants marched up the steps of the Capitol, unfurled their slogan-bearing banners, and stripped down to the dove-adorned undergarments they wore beneath their clothes. “We’re putting our bodies on the line,” they shouted. Another popular chant was, “We don’t want your oil war. Peace is what we’re calling for!”
During each of the first 100 days after its inception, Code Pink staged all-day antiwar vigils in front of the White House. Moreover, it initiated a campaign that involved presenting pink slips (women’s lingerie) to President Bush and other pro-war officials - an allusion to pink slips of the paper variety, which are traditionally given to employees whose jobs are being terminated.
In 2003 Jodie Evans led a delegation of fifteen Code Pink women to Baghdad, where they met with Iraqi women for the purpose of “creat[ing] the understanding that the people of Iraq are no different than you and me.” “We who cherish children,” said Evans, “will not consent to their murder ... in a war for oil.”
In addition to scorning America’s military action in Iraq, Code Pink also condemns the racism, sexism, poverty, corporate corruption, and environmental degradation they claim are rampant in the U.S. Depicting the financial cost of the Iraq War as a drain on resources that would be better earmarked for other purposes, Code Pink laments that “[M]any of our elders … now must choose whether to buy their prescription drugs, or food. Our children’s education is eroded. The air they breathe and the water they drink are polluted. Vast numbers of women and children live in poverty.” The threat of distant terrorists, claims Code Pink, is insignificant when compared to the “real threats” that Americans face every day: “the illness or ordinary accident that could plunge us into poverty, the violence on our own streets, the corporate corruption that can result in the loss of our jobs, our pensions, our security.”
In conjunction with Global Exchange and United For Peace and Justice, Code Pink helped establish Iraq Occupation Watch (IOW) to monitor potential American abuses — including “possible violations of human rights, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly” — during the reconstruction of Iraq. Code Pink’s and IOW’s stated objective is to thin U.S. forces in Iraq by causing soldiers to seek discharges and be sent home as conscientious objectors.
During the last week of December 2004, Medea Benjamin announced that Code Pink, Global Exchange, and Families for Peace would be donating a combined $600,000 in medical supplies and cash to the families of the terrorist insurgents who were fighting American troops in Fallujah, Iraq. In an article dated January 1, 2005, the online publication Peace and Resistance reported that Rep. Henry Waxman had written a letter addressed to the American ambassador in Amman, Jordan to help facilitate the transport of this aid through Customs.
For much of 2005, Code Pink for Peace staged weekly protests outside of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where many U.S. soldiers wounded in combat are treated. As one Code Pink sign put it, American soldiers were being sent overseas to “die for a lie.”
As part of a national coalition led by the Ruckus Society, Code Pink runs an aggressive Counter-Recruitment campaign aimed at dissuading young men and women from joining the U.S. military. According to Code Pink, this project represents a way of “standing up to these warmongers and liars” in the Bush administration.
Code Pink also endorsed the Civil Liberties Restoration Act of 2004, which was designed to roll back, in the name of protecting civil liberties, vital national-security policies that had been adopted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
In July 2005, Code Pink joined a coalition including individuals and organizations ranging from Eve Ensler, Gloria Steinem, Not In Our Name, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Culture Project, and United For Peace and Justice — who together demanded the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp and an “immediate independent investigation into the widespread allegations of abuse taking place there.”
In 2004, Code Pink was a signatory to a letter urging members of the U.S. Senate to vote against supporting Israel’s construction of an anti-terrorist security fence in the West Bank, a barrier that Code Pink described as an illegal “apartheid wall” that violated the civil and human rights of Palestinians.
Code Pink identifies another of its objectives as “creating space for women to speak out for justice and peace in their communities, the media and the halls of Congress.” Code Pink was a Cosponsoring Organization of the April 25, 2004 “March for Women’s Lives” held in Washington, D.C., a rally that advocated unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
Consisting of more than 90 chapters in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world, Code Pink is a member organization of the Abolition 2000, United for Peace and Justice, and After Downing Street anti-war coalitions, and a member of the National Council of Women’s Organizations. As of July 2006, Code Pink claimed that more than 30,000 people were receiving its weekly updates and “alerts.”
Code Pink works closely with Cindy Sheehan, founder of Gold Star Families for Peace.
Code Pink receives financial support from the Tides Foundation, the Streisand Foundation, and the New Priorities Foundation.
I welcome them to try me any time they please. They wouldn’t be the first, I returned from Vietnam through San Francisco two different times.
I guess driving to Bizerkely, getting "too" close to the pinko commies and posting from a hippie liberal cafe and then rushing home to post Ann Coulter's Column got me a little brain addled... :>)
Go get’em.
This means, “for the safety of the Code Pink traitors”
The way they were getting up in their faces, those traitors are lucky the cops broke them up, or someone would have hurt them. Americans are fed up with Anti-American traitors. Between Mexicans, Muslims and liberals we've had enough!!!
The picture of Debra Johns reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw the other day.
It said, “I might look harmless, but I raised a United States Marine.”
My husband, driving the car, saw it, and had to get up next to the vehicle. He laughed his arse off...she did indeed look harmless.
: )
Probably had a M16 sitting on the passenger side. Have a good one, I am off to the tub.
Apparently, school hasn't been an option at all for David....
It is a good thing that this was 3,000 miles away.
I would be in jail, and someone else would be in the hospital.
Nobody in the world gets in my face like that without becoming very injured, and I *am* like that.
hmpf...Hell, it's as if they think joining the military is some social disease. I know they probably think nothing about any liquor store, crack house or abortion clinic that might be "in proximity" to these places.
Possibly another phoney soldier.
"I think the color of my skin shouldn't make me be on the front line," Paredes said, adding that he left the Navy because he refused orders and opposed the war in Iraq.
Sounds like he probably didn't just voluntarily "leave the Navy" if he "refused orders".
Class versus Crass.
Can we start a fund and move all the Code Pinkos to Cuba?
That is great!!! LMAO!
It is funny(in a bad way) that the women are the ones with the balls in our party. (i.e. Move America Forward, Coulter, etc)
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