I couldn’t wait till 7 am, which did eventually come around, and much of their crowd did establish itself on the other side. We had our space, for the most part – though there remained a couple of leftist agitators straggling on our side—when MAF Chairman Melanie Morgan arrived on the scene shortly after 6:00AM.
Scott Conover, a Gold-Star dad, talks with this one guy who stayed on our side of the street most of the day...
I talked to the guy for a while too, he was willing to listen, but made ridiculous assertions...what a kook
Melanie had heard about the melee and even though she was in the middle of her radio program, she left it and rushed down to Berkeley so she could rally her troops! We all got into a circle and around the megaphone held a little impromptu press conference, with our Blue and Gold-Star parents taking turns speaking to the crowd about their stories of the service and sacrifices of their children and their disgust, contempt and frustration with the Berkeley City Council.
This scene from early in the morning, Melanie Morgan took off -DURING HER RADIO SHOW- to support us when open war seemed imminent
Mark Crowley, Gold-Star dad, talks about his son Kyle’s story
Debbie Lee, Gold-Star mother of Marc Allen Lee, who was the the first US Navy S.E.A.L killed in Iraq
Deborah Johns, Blue-star mother of Will Johns who has served three tours in Iraq
THE INTRUSION
World Can’t Wait and Code Pink crowds mix and mingle in front of the city council chambers
It was not long after most of the Code Pink people had gone across the street that they were already back on our side, encroaching on our territory. Several Code Pink people, and some members of World Can’t Wait came over and got into a confrontation with Scott Conover.
This one young man, he looked like he could have been Arabic (but I don’t want to assume anything) was wearing a keffiyah around his neck and was screaming something about millions of Iraqis dead and millions more displaced.
At first I was just trying to keep him safe from ole’ Scott Conover, but when he started yelling about American barbarity and economic sanctions and millions of dead Iraqis, I had to yell at him.
How dare these people say that we’re somehow responsible for Saddam Hussein’s rape and domination of his own countrymen because we didn’t want to do business with an aggressive nation!
Soon enough he slinked back behind Code Pink’s reps, Zanne Joi and Rea, who were back again.
I asked them what their people were doing over on our side and they tried to tell me it was because the portable bathrooms were on our side of the street and we needed to let them use it. I looked around and noted that we were probably about 50 yards away from the porta-potty and there was actually a small crowd of anti-war people over here and they didn’t look like they were waiting to use the john.