Berkeley Report - Protest of the City Council PATRIOTS IN BERKELEY: AFTER-ACTION REPORT

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Posted By:
MAF Blogger Danny
Permalink
Berkeley Report - Protest of the City Council

For Move America Forward staff, our pro-troop demonstration against the Berkeley City Council actually started the day before when we sent off MAF Director of Operations Ryan Gill in a 10-foot moving truck. His mission was to secure supplies, and pick up MAF spokesperson and Gold-star mom Debbie Lee who flew in from Arizona to the Oakland airport.

The remaining staff spent the day in Sacramento faxing and emailing out last minute press releases and media advisories. Most of us went home around 11 pm, with plans to leave Sacramento by two in the morning to get there before five. I slept for about an hour and a half, woke up at 1 in the morning and was in the office by about 2:15. Some of our staff bypassed sleep altogether, as there was much prep work to be done in the final hours before we stood our ground in support of our troops. We weren’t packed up and on the road until about 3:00 AM and we stopped for a quick breakfast at Denny’s before hitting the road again and arriving in Berkeley at almost 5:00 AM.

Other supporters were traveling via car and caravan from Oregon, Nevada, Colorado and Southern California. People went to great efforts to make it to this important event.

By 4:30 AM Ryan Gill arrived at the rally location along with Debbie Lee. Blue Star Mom,Deborah Johns – whose son is a Recon Marine who served in Iraq for three tours of duty, arrived moments later.

By 5:00 AM I arrived in Berkeley along with MAF Deputy Executive Director, Mary Pearson, and MAF Grassroots Coordinator, Joe Wierzbicki. We were joined by about two-dozen pro-troop supporters, including Gold Star Father Scott Conover and his wife, Julie. The enemy was also present with about two-dozen or so anti-military protestors and already it looked like the scene was turning ugly.

As we approached Martin Luther King, Jr. Way I got a call from Ryan on the phone, saying, “It’s hot already, already some people have been knocked down and everyone’s getting in each others faces.”

When we turned the corner of MLK Way, I saw why Ryan had said that the situation was boiling over at critical mass. There was an angry mob on the street, about to tear itself apart as anti-war and pro-troop supporters were clashing in close quarters! Cameras were already everywhere, lighting up the area of the park, despite the fact that it was still dark as midnight and only the pale, dull yellow light of some streetlamps bathed the streets of Berkeley.

As soon as we parked I jogged down to the corner where the mob was self-imploding upon itself. I squeezed between some cameras just in time to jump between Scott Conover and some anti war protester who was jabbing his finger in Scott’s face and yelling angrily while holding a sign depicting images from Abu Ghraib prison.

“This is the reality of War” he said, “The US Military is a bunch of war criminals!”

“My son was not a war criminal!” responded Scott, who seemed ready to tear the man apart, and from the looks of it, sizing up the difference in size between Scott and the anti-war guy, it looked as if he could. “#$% you! You are a traitor you piece of #@$%!”

But Scott pulled himself back, cooled off and thanked me for stepping in, I know that Scott is familiar with MAF, but we had never met before so it was a good way to get introduced.

I looked across the street and saw several police vehicles parked. Across the park there was another one parked at the opposite end of the street. Yet I could see no police officers, and the throngs of angry protesters were boiling with rage.

When I looked across the street again I saw that there were now some police congregating around the crosswalk. I walked over and picked one to introduce myself to, I told him I was the communications director for MAF and he didn’t seem very interested. Okay, fine, well I asked what we were going to do about getting a handle on the situation over there across the street. I was told I would have to make a phone call and talk to his Lieutenant.

Around 5:30 or 6:00, as the crowd got bigger, more pandemonium ensued. At one high point of craziness, one of our supporters, a really big guy in a red sweater, was literally pushing back a whole line of anti-war people, wading into several at a time and slowly forcing them back.
The effort only served to enrage others to push back and soon the whole crowd was tussling. I still had no clue what the police were doing, so several people jumped in, myself and this anti-war guy holding a sign that said ‘dialogue corner’ were jumping in between people and holding our hands out to try and keep the crowd away from each other.

It was only sort-of working, but finally the police formed a single column and marched through the middle, putting a line in between. I was caught on the anti-war side of the line, and while for a moment the crowd was separated, we were still all yelling at each other.

I got a phone call from the police dispatch telling me to come across the street and speak with Lieutenant Hart of the Berkeley PD. Hart told me that Code Pink had voluntarily decided to bring their people across to the other side of the street at 7:00 am.

I was pretty sure that our permit said they weren’t supposed to be on our side anyways, but Hart told me her understanding was that despite the permits, neither side was prohibited or guaranteed to be in either location, the park or the city council.

One of the Code Pink ladies, Rae, kept trying to talk to me, saying things like, “oh, you look like someone who’s trying to keep order and control your people. You have a cool head.” She kept trying to tell me to control my people and saying we were being aggressive. it was obvious to me that the Code Pinkos were the ones provoking and egging people on, and had deliberately marched across the street from their permitted area into our area to show the families of dead soldiers pictures of bloody mutilated bodies of innocent Iraqis blown up by insurgents or pictures of dead soldiers.
She was pissing me off, trying to get me to admit that our people were being overly aggressive by being nice to me or whatever. Finally she went away.

It's our Patriotic duty, if we can, to be at events such as these.

It was heartening indeed to see so many Patriotic Americans on the front lines in one of the most Marxist areas of the Belly of The Beast where anarchy reins and un-American activities are encouraged.

Thanks for your bump and comments, Angelwood.

Here is the last section of Danny's report on the Move America Forward website (All pictures may be clicked upon to see in a larger format):

Note: I have punged/panged/pinged a bunch of names of posters that I think may be interested in this last part of the report, if you didn't read the whole thing at the MAF link. The altercations and the outcome of the City Council Meeting are in this last section of Danny's report:

ALTERCATIONS

One of our supporters was assaulted by a teen who actually used his skateboard to hit her.

Joe was tackled by a group of about 20 World Can’t Wait kids intent on burning a flag they had stolen from us. What happened was, Joe was standing around the table we put in the middle of the rally, it had our t-shirts and a box full of flags to hand out.

Joe saw that three of the girls from WCW snatched one of our larger hanging flags mounted on a wooden dowel and were walking off with it.
Joe followed them, at a distance, and observed them meeting up with some other kids, one of which brandished a lighter.

Joe says the kids were debating whether to take the flag back across the street to the other side or to just burn it right there. The boy with the lighter insisted they burn the flag immediately, and lit his lighter.

Well Joe then swooped in and grabbed our flag from the girl holding it, but he couldn’t get it completely away. She and her two friends still had a hold on one corner of the flag and started screaming wildly, as several kids tugged at the flag and Joe on the other side had the rest of the flag in a death grip.

Then about 15 more kids started jumping on Joe, trying to get him to release the flag that was being held by 4 or 5 other kids who intended to light it up. Joe tried to march the flag back to safety, but the kids were all over him, punching, hitting, slapping…hell, they even PINCHED him all over…everywhere! But Joe was still holding a death grip on the flag, he did not want to see it get burned. The dowel it was mounted on was broken into six pieces, the flag stretched and possibly ripped by now.

Anti-military protesters were shouting at Joe as if he was the aggressor saying, “Does it make you feel like a big man to pick on little kids?”

Then a small tender lady came up to Joe, rubbed his left hand and said, “I’m on your side, come with me, I don’t want to see anything bad happen to you. Come on, the deck is stacked against you and these kids will just try to get something bad to happen to you or get your arrested.”

Her calming logic convinced him to let go and walk back to the MAF booth., We don’t know what happened to the flag that Joe relinquished, we pray it was not burned disgracefully by these punk kids.

Unfortunately, I would be willing to bet that poor flag no longer proudly flies the stars and stripes. We later asked if flag-burning is legal in Berkeley. Apparently is it illegal to burn an American flag in Berkeley, but you wouldn’t know it by watching how this protest was handled by law enforcement.

Also at this time there were mobs of other kids trying to mess with our sound system. We had a sound permit for only four hours, and we were just playing some music with it before our principle spokesperson (Melanie!) returned.

But the WCW kids were actually trying to cut the wires leading to the speakers with a knife! The Lafayette Flag Brigade pushed the kids away and before the wires had been cut through. They appealed to the cops to step in and do something and were told that they were on their own.

Another confrontation occurred when some of the WCW teens assaulted a member of the College Republicans who were agitating the Code Pink side of the street.

When the police arrested two WCW people in relation to this assault, and took them into the police station, the WCW crowd rallied and marched over to the police station under the leadership of Medea Benjamin and began chanting and laying down in front of the Berkeley Police Station screaming “Let them go! Let them go!”

I still have not received information about whether that kid was released or charged with something.

This woman tries to show a Marine how helicopters fly. On her platter is a scene of broken up bodies of toy soldiers with fake blood all around...disgusting

TAKING BACK THE FIELD

If nothing else, this commotion served one purpose: it gave our side the opportunity to reorganize on our side while all the WCW and Code Pink crowd were crowding the police station.

This time, we did NOT let the WCE or Code Pink back on our side. And police or no police, we KEPT THOSE ANTI-TROOP PUNKS OUT of our area – including the kids - as Melanie decided it was time to rally our supporters together and focus everyone on the work that we needed to do as the Berkeley City Council meeting start time approached.

Our people made a strong showing, we had that sidewalk packed from corner to corner!

Army Rangers “Lead the Way” Hummer!

Taking the microphone into hand she quickly whipped the pro-troop crowd of patriots up into a joyous frenzy! I was in a meeting with MAF Executive Director Cat Moy and some people from the city, discussing the plan for the council meeting later, but I could hear Melanie working the crowd from up on the second floor of the building.

After the rally and the speeches, I was back in the park again, trying with Cat to spread the word among our members about our plans for getting into the City Council meeting.

This young lady’s boyfriend just deployed to Iraq, GOOD LUCK SOLDIERS (don’t they make a sweet couple?)

Also, the back of her sign was irresistibly clever

THE CITY COUNCIL MEETING

We had to find members to go into the council chambers LONG before the council was scheduled to hear the item regarding the Marines – as in FOUR to FIVE HOURS ahead of time. Despite the complete lack of logic behind this demand, the city INSISTED that we send in our supporters at 4:30 PM where they would be forced to sit through another City Council meeting, THEN sit through all the preliminary items on the regular City Council meeting, until the city finally brought up the Marine Corps item. Only then would our people would be allowed to speak, after which they would be allowed to leave the meeting and be replaced by more pro-troop supporters until every single last person had the chance to speak, both from the pro-troop side and the anti-war side.

Medea Benjamin (the Osama of Code Pink herself) admires the shiny reflective polish of the handrail as she steps up the stairs into the City Council chambers

If we did not have 30 people agree to this demand then they would give the seats to the Code Pink, International ANSWER, and the anarchist World Can’t Wait crowd.

Fair? Vaguely
Smart? Yes, if you want to obstruct the ability of those with an opposing viewpoint to express themselves at your little city council meeting.

We found some supporters who were basically willing to ‘jump on the grenade’ and sit through 5 grueling hours of the bizarre left-wing City Council hearing, so that we could have some seats saved. We sent in our bravest and resigned ourselves to waiting and watching.

STREET PROTESTS

By now the police had aligned themselves in the middle of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Way, the WCW and Code Pink crowds had been expelled from our side, the American flag-waving, pro-troop supporters were standing hundreds upon hundreds of people strong and the police took the opportunity to create a line straight through the middle, closing down the street and taking up positions between.

I talked to the young lady pictured here in the reflective sunglasses and some of her friends who came by from Berkeley High School. It was awesome to see people their age with their heads screwed on straight.

They told me that they catch a lot of flack from fellow students and their teachers for their beliefs. Hows that for tolerance!

Both sides were still active, and the streets were filled with camera crews rushing from one point to another, covering the chants of protesters at each other from across the street and yelling on their bullhorns in impromptu policy debates!

I saw Leigh Wolf from the College Republicans debating WCW through megaphones and he was absolutely STUMPING all the anti-war people!

“Why did you people come here, give me one good reason why the Marines should have to go” he said.

They answered back… “We don’t want them here. They are preying on children.”

Leigh pounces on them, “Are you aware that is an OFFICER RECRUITING STATION? It’s also MY recruiting station, that’s where I SIGNED UP!” He retorted. “Do you know there is only one way to be recruited in an officer recruiting station, that’s if you have a four-year degree, do you think that people who have gone to college for four years can’t make a decision about the military?”

They were practically speechless. “Let someone else talk!” one of them shouted. Classic.

This young man, also from Berkeley High, was proudly waving this ‘don’t tread on me’ flag

ANOTHER FLAG BURNING

The scene turned very ugly when another flag was burned by the anti-war protesters. The night-sky was illuminated by a pillar of flames.

One minute I was standing around, the next I heard a LOUD pop and a crowd of people running towards something.
I looked and saw what appeared to be a street sign ON FIRE raining down flames onto a bicycle chained to the street sign.

At first I thought it was a Molotov cocktail someone had thrown because I could see chunks of flaming debris laying around the street and literally oozing from the top of the street sign and onto the bikes below.

What happened was, the anti-war people set another flag on fire, but it was a large flag and the flames got out of control so they threw it up on the street sign on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Way and a sign directing people to the “Peace Wall.”

Pieces of the flag had fallen on the bikes below and caught them on fire. The loud pop I heard was from the bike’s tires and the “burning rubble” all around was pieces of flaming rubber from the tire.

There was a huge crowd around the bike, I was yelling at people to back up and let the police take care of the situation. I thought for sure that with a fire clearly burning that any second now police were going to rush in and surround the area, so we should back up. But nobody backed up, and no police came. I went up to one of the officers standing guard in the street.

For the third time that day, anti-war protesters burned an American flag. In this incident, they threw the flaming banner up onto a street sign, where pieces of it fell on a couple bicycles chained below.

The tires of the bike caught fire, popped loudly, and the burning rubber melted all over the bikes ruining them. I was standing nearby and a father and his very young son came over to see that their bikes were ruined.

Some of the World Can’t Wait people started screaming, saying we did it, and saying “Get the (f-word) Out of Our Town!”

“Hey guys, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but there’s something on fire over there, I don’t know for sure but I thought, you know it might be dangerous or something, did you have any plans to check it out?”

I asked some random officer. He muttered something I could not hear, so I left him alone. The fire went out and the owner of the bikes came over to inspect the damage.

Police did absolutely nothing...appalling
Little kid got his bike burned by the same angry mob his dad brought him to protest with…pretty sad.

ENDGAME

We waited and waited until the city council finally took up the resolution on the Marines. My voice was gone by then. When the floor became open for discussion the City Council began hearing our voices, five from Code Pink, five from Move America Forward, and back again and again over and over. We sent in our supporters five at a time, as five came out.

It was awesome for me to see that there were a lot of young people on our side, but I wonder if she knows that the City Council IS the commie occupation of Berkeley!

29 Languages, 29 ways to say I Am (a proud) American!

Old Glory was, as it always is, well represented at MAF events!

With the star spangled banner flying everywhere on our side, the anti-war crowd kept mocking us, asking why we would ‘love a stupid flag’ or ‘worship a piece of cloth’ they don’t realize that true Americans LOVE AND WORSHIP what our flag represents, real freedom and liberty, something they don’t understand!

Ryan delivered the fat stack of over 18,000 petitions, plus hundreds more we collected hand-signed at the rally, and more still that we had not printed out, totaling well in excess of over 20,000.

All of our spokespeople gave their stories, from Deborah Johns and Debbie Lee to Gold Star Fathers Kevin Graves and Mark Crowley.

We had residents of Berkeley who were ashamed at the actions of the city, people from Berkeley High School, Cal Berkeley, even a high school teacher.

One Berkeley resident who supported our efforts had been on the phone during the day with Dr. Alvita King, the niece of Martin Luther King, Jr. who gave her advice on how to communicate her views in a manner that was peaceful yet forceful.

We had veterans who had come from all across the country, some Vietnam vets who had actually BEEN to Berkeley after Vietnam and had been treated SO incredibly poorly, had been SPAT on by it’s residents back then.

We had comments from Iraq war vets a few wounded even who were proud of the work they had done and that their fellow soldiers were still doing over there.

And so it went for hour after hour. After it was all over, the council made comments and discussed their options amongst each other. Many in the council expressed, in comment, a seemingly sincere recognition that the Marines were being discriminated against and were owed an apology.

Some wanted to apologize to the city for bringing such shame and disgrace upon the city and its residents. One councilmember even thought an apology was in order for giving preferential speech rights to Code Pink over those on the pro-troop side.

It actually sounded like there was a majority on the council who wanted to take meaningful action to rectify their transgressions.

But when it came time to vote on the resolution that offered the biggest retreat from their previous anti-military actions the “swing votes” on the council – despite having issued statements of apology in their comments – deliberately abstained so that the move to undo the most egregious misdeeds fell one vote short.

They wouldn’t vote “NO” but they would also not vote “YES” – obviously fearful of the fury that would have been directed upon them by their base: Code Pink, International ANSWER and the anarchists who comprise the radical Left in Berkeley. . Thus the motion to send a letter of apology was defeated. Code Pink retained their special permits, the city will still try to kick the Marines out by having the city attorney attempt to exploit the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy. And their statement endorsing Code Pink and encouraging Berkeley residents to “impede” the work of any military recruiters in Berkeley still stands..

I was seeing red. Code Pink rejoiced. All of our supporters were deeply disappointed. For the veterans most of all, it was another slap in the face to them, another cutting-off-at-the-knees.

Are you proud of yourself Berkeley? You’ve done it again (disgraced yourselves and your town).

But there was a realization that gradually spread over our contingent of staff at Move America Forward: the City Council had not only made a partial retreat, but a majority of council members had verbally acknowledged the wrongful nature of their actions.

They didn’t have the guts to vote this way on the record – for the political reasons mentioned above – but we nonetheless heard them say the impossible: THEY KNEW THEIR ACTIONS WERE INDEFENSIBLE.

The portable restrooms provided for the people at the protest were vandalized by the anti-war people, inside, phrases like “NO WAR”, “(F-word) Bush” and Anarchy symbols were spray painted on the walls

THIS IS WAR

We vow to continue the fight, to carry on the struggle again, in Berkeley if we have to, or in any other city across this nation, wherever the fight takes Move America Forward.

If you attended the rally and have a story to post up about your experiences, pictures, or links to you tube videos, etc, etc, etc, SEND THEM TO me!

Also if you have comments or further information that would contribute to the richness or accuracy of this blog post, please email me at mafbloggerdanny@gmail.com and I will include them in the Berkeley Report

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.