The Berkeley City Council’s passed a resolution on Jan. 29 calling U.S. Marine recruiters in downtown Berkeley “uninvited and unwanted intruders.” The unequivocal statement set off a firestorm in right-wing media circles, including a call to rescind more than $2 million dollars in federal aid for Berkeley school lunch programs.
The item on the Marines had been introduced by anti-war forces, which have held daily picket lines at the recruitment
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The right wing group Move Forward America, led by KSFO host Melanie Morgan, called for people all over the country to come and defend the Marines when the item was revisited at the Feb. 12 council meeting.
Fox News and other corporate media outlets around the country called for people to descend on Berkeley in the name of “God and country.” Internet, radio and TV warmongers picked up its cue, whipping up reactionaries everywhere to go to defend the Marine recruiting station.
What they did not anticipate was one of the largest anti-war protests that the city of Berkeley had seen in years—one that would last for over 24 hours with sporadic clashes pitching the Berkeley police and pro-war reactionaries against the anti-war movement.
Code Pink and the World Can’t Wait, the organizations who have been organizing the daily picket lines called for a 24-hour vigil on the lawn of City Hall, with scores of people spending the night. Corporate media vans camped out lining Martin Luther King Jr. Park across from City Hall.
The pro-war forces strategically planned to be at the park at 5 a.m. to get coverage of their flag-waving fed back to
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Feeling entitled because of their permit to be in the park—which, ironically, is named after a Civil Rights movement leader who staunchly opposed the Vietnam War—the reactionaries were taken off guard as protestors confronted them.
But the two-hour skirmish would be only the first in a day of intense struggle.
Youth take the lead
Over 3,000 students attend Berkeley High School just next to the park. Some students arrived before school to skateboard in the park as they often do. The pro-military forces who were yelling out “cut federal funding to Berkeley” immediately confronted the youth.
Recognizing unwelcome intruders in their neighborhood, the students started to crowd around and demand that they leave. By lunch time, the word had spread throughout Berkeley High and several hundred came out to confront the pro-war occupiers in their park.
Black, Asian, Latino and white students as young as 13-years-old faced off against them. The students seemed well aware of the intentions of recruiters as they chanted for them to leave their city.
Tensions soon escalated as police in riot gear were called on the scene. It was clear to all that the police were there to protect the pro-war demonstrators as they pushed and beat the crowd of youth. Over and over, the students and the anti-war forces outflanked the police to get in the right-wingers’ faces.
Clearly frustrated, the police arrested three students aged 13, 15 and 18, hoping to subdue the crowd. Their attempt at
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Protestors stayed in the streets while the beleaguered Berkeley Police Department summoned backup from the notorious Oakland Police Department. None of this curbed the crowd’s militancy. Students sang and danced to revolutionary hiphop, denouncing the war and the racist police well into the night.
After stalling on other matters for hours, the City Council had no choice but to finally address the matter at hand. Dozens of Berkeley residents and their supporters addressed the council and urged it to not waver from its original position. Outside, hundreds listening through loudspeakers cheered in support well past midnight.
Not surprisingly, the Berkeley City Council toned down their statement with sterile wording in opposition to the war but in “support” of the troops. Their decision hardly can be said to represent the sentiment of the people of Berkeley, who cast the struggle’s real defining vote in the park and in the streets.
