Berkeley Report

Berkeley Report

Feb 12 I decided to show up in Berkeley in support of the Marine's in Berkeley. The city council had called the Marines "Uninvited, unwelcome, intruders". A group called Code Pink had been defacing the Marine recruiting office there and generally causing a bunch of grief.

I left Fresno before 3am on tuesday planning on being there early as the protesters were scheduled to start that early. I rode through light and patchy fog alone, through the Tracy area I encountered quite a bit of early morning traffic but it moved along well. Upon arriving in Berkeley and it still being dark, it was hard to tell where the protesters were and where the Marine supporters were. I parked on the opposite side of the square where a some people were gathered. I could here some shouting and hollaring, news crews were everywhere. Seemed to be more new media than protesters to me. As I sat there, unfurling my flags and getting ready to ride around the square in an attempt to find out what was what, I had 3 different folks come up to me and ask what was going on. After I explained what I knew, each and every one of them thanked me for showing up and said they supported the Marines also.

As daylight came I was able to find a spot to park my bike amongst the media vans. The groups, protesters and Marine supporters had been pretty much together on one side of the street early on, but my dawn the protesters were on one side of the street and the Marine supporters were on the other side of the street. By 8 or 9 am a fair crowd had gathered and the games began. It actually took until around 11am for there to be enough people there that the organizers of each side could get much of a reaction to their rants.

Early on I talked to the woman who was the organizer for Code Pink people, after talking for awhile she agreed that talking with each other would have better results than hollaring across the street at each other and she also thought that putting a table up on their side and calling it a discussion corner would be cool. I noticed later that she did in fact put up that table and put a sign on it inviting discussion. But she couldn't restrain herself from taking up the bullhorn later on. Oh well.

In summation I would say, " I came, I saw, I laughed!" and let it go at that. You can't take people serious who dress and act like the folks that showed up to protest. It was a true circus.

Later that evening the Berkeley city council changed their position on the Marine's presence in Berkeley.

Here are some pics, enjoy.