Berkeley Council Opposes Marine Recruiting Center

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BERKELEY (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ― Local officials in this liberal city say it's time for the U.S. Marines to move out.

The City Council voted 8-1 Tuesday to tell the Marines their downtown recruiting station is not welcome and "if recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome guests."

The council also voted to explore enforcing a city anti-discrimination law, focusing on the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

The City Attorney's office will investigate that possible action and report back to the City Council within 60 days, but City Manager Phil Kamlarz says it's "unlikely" that the city has the ability to enforce the city's law against the military.

In a separate but related action, the City Council also voted 8-1 to encourage the peace group Code Pink to disrupt the recruiting office on a weekly basis.

The council's vote gives Code Pink a designated parking space in front of the recruiting office on Shattuck Avenue from noon to 4 p.m. every Wednesday for six months and a free sound permit during those same hours.

Marines Capt. Rick Lund declined to comment on the resolution Thursday except to say, "We have no plans to move."

The recruiting office opened in Berkeley about a year ago, operating quietly until about four months ago when Code Pink began regular sidewalk protests.

"I believe in the Code Pink cause. The Marines don't belong here, they shouldn't have come here, and they should leave," said Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates.

The lone council member to vote against both measures was Gordon Wozniak.

Code Pink is circulating petitions to get a measure on the ballot in November making it more difficult to open military recruiting offices in Berkeley if they are near homes, parks, schools, churches, libraries or health clinics.

Some employees and business owners aren't happy with the weekly protests.

"My husband's business is right upstairs, and this (protesting) is bordering on harassment," Dori Schmidt told the council. "I hope this stops."

In another related action, nearly 40 members of the anti-war group The World Can't Wait and Code Pink rallied outside the recruiting office Thursday to call for the office to be shut down as well as to allege that the U.S. military is engaging in war crimes.

Stephanie Tang of the World Can't Wait said the organization engaged in a national day of protest in a number of cities across the country today as part of "mass, non-violent civil disobedience against war crimes because we're trying to stop war, torture and lying."

Despite steady rain, protesters gave speeches, chanted slogans such as "Shut it down!" and marched around the block where the recruiting office is located.

Although Lund declined to comment Thursday, in the past he has said that the Marines opened the recruiting office in Berkeley because they had to abandon an office that was located in an old federal building in Alameda that was being torn down.

Lund has said the Berkeley office is conveniently located because it's near the downtown Berkeley BART station and the University of California, Berkeley and is close to major freeways.

City Councilman Max Anderson, who attended Thursday's rally and was one of those who supported the resolution against the Marines, said he doesn't see any contradiction that city officials in Berkeley, the home of the free speech movement, are in effect telling the Marines that their brand of speech isn't welcome.

Anderson said, "The military has hundreds of millions of dollars to run ads on TV" aimed at recruiting young people.

He said, "This small counter-demonstration by us should in no way stop them from propagandizing and recruiting," he said.

Anderson said the council's resolution is only symbolic because it doesn't intervene in the Marines' lease with the landlord who owns the building where the recruiting office is located.

But he said the resolution expresses "the popular will of the people" of Berkeley against war and is telling the Marines "this is not fertile ground here" for recruiting.

Also attending Thursday's rally was Sharon Adams, a member of Code Pink and the National Lawyers Guild who is gathering signatures for a petition that would put a measure on the November ballot in Berkeley that would make it more difficult to open military recruiting offices near homes, parks, schools, churches, libraries or health clinics.

Supporters of the measure need to gather 5,000 signatures by the end of July to get it placed on the ballot.

Adams said the measure wouldn't ban military recruiting offices but would require public hearings if they're within 600 feet of schools, homes, churches or similar facilities.

However, the measure wouldn't apply to offices that already are open, so it wouldn't affect the current Marines recruiting office, she said.

(© CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The Associated Press and Bay City News contributed to this report.)
http://cbs5.com/local/Berkeley.Marine.recruiting.2.643130.html

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By The Associated Press
02.04.08

BERKELEY, Calif. — While anti-war protesters chained themselves outside a U.S. Marines recruiting center here, a spokesman said the Corps does not plan to abandon the office even though the City Council has officially rolled up the welcome mat.

The Berkeley City Council voted on Jan . 29 to tell the Marines that if its recruiters choose to stay in their rented downtown space "they do so as uninvited and unwelcome guests."

Gunnery Sgt. Pauline Franklin said on Feb 1 that while the Corps respects city officials' right to free speech, the Marines would not be leaving.

Conservative bloggers and Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., lashed out at Berkeley following the Jan. 29 resolution. DeMint said he would draft legislation to strip the city of federal money, including funds destined for the University of California at Berkeley, for school lunches in the Berkeley Unified School District and public safety.

"The First Amendment gives the City of Berkeley the right to be idiotic, but from now on they should do it with their own money," DeMint said in a statement.

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates said he would speak with the Marines' landlord to see if the recruiters could break their lease early without penalty.

A retired Army captain, Bates also said on Feb. 1 that he wanted the council to amend its resolution because it "did not adequately differentiate our respect and support for those serving in the armed forces and our opposition to the Iraq war policy."

Berkeley police arrested three of the protesters who chained themselves together and blocked people trying to enter the recruiting station. They were cited for misdemeanors and released.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=19632

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Berkeley firefighters told to remove Stars and Stripes from rigs
By The Associated Press
09.21.01

BERKELEY, Calif. — Old Glory sailed into new controversy when firefighters were ordered not to fly large U.S. flags from their trucks.

Fire officials gave the order out of concerns the rigs could become targets in a city that is home to a vocal anti-war contingent.

"We're just removing the temptation from the situation," said Assistant Fire Chief David Orth.

The decision came a day before 2,000 people marched in an anti-war rally yesterday at the University of California, just one of several similar events planned for upcoming days. Orth said officials would reconsider the embargo if the anti-war effort doesn't take a violent turn, as it sometimes has in the past.

Mayor Shirley Dean had another idea: Rescind the ban immediately.

"I will not have, I do not want to have, a city where we are trashing property for the thrill of it or to make a point. It is not right," said Dean, who doesn't have the authority to lift the ban herself but is urging the city manager to do so.

Orth said the concern was that if a riot developed, "and we go wading in there to suppress a fire or rescue somebody, that somebody is going to try to get to that flag either to wave it or to damage it, and either way it's going to cause the firefighters to take action to defend it instead of fighting the fire or rescuing somebody."

He said the ban was only for big flags, say four feet by six feet. Smaller flags might be OK if they could be mounted in areas the public couldn't easily reach. But firefighters are having a hard time finding smaller flags because of the national run on supplies.

The debate is nothing new for Berkeley, home of the 1964 Free Speech Movement that presaged the decade of often-violent anti-war protests that racked U.S. campuses during the Vietnam War.

Dean said free-speech protections extend to flag-wavers, too.

"Nothing wrong with a protest. Nothing wrong with a march. Nothing wrong with candlelight vigils for whatever it is, but we are not going to attack each other, the flag or property," she said.

Dean said the decision was particularly unfortunate considering that so many firefighters were killed trying to rescue victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Center towers.

"The flag means at this point something more to the firefighters than simply a love of country," she said.

Orth said officials didn't make the decision lightly.

"We have a lot of experience about this. We've been in a lot of riots. To put it simply, we've had rigs burned; we've been attacked. We know how dangerous it is," he said.

But, he said, he wouldn't live anywhere else.

"This is a wonderful community. It does take a different attitude. The issue of going to war or peace ... people deserve to be heard," Orth said

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=4610

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Teacher, Palestinian activist: My class isn't for 'conservative thinkers'
By The Associated Press
05.16.02

Editor's note: The Associated Press reported on May 20 that Snehal Shingavi was reworking his course description so that it didn't discourage conservatives — or anyone else — from attending the class. He said his warning to conservatives was a mistake and that he never intended to suppress free speech. "I like debates. I think debate is healthy and important," said Shingavi, who held a campus news conference on May 20.

BERKELEY, Calif. — Officials at the University of California at Berkeley are reviewing a class taught by a pro-Palestinian activist whose course description discourages "conservative thinkers" from enrolling.

Berkeley administrators said there was a "failure of oversight" by the English department to review the description for the class, "The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance," to be taught this fall.

Snehal Shingavi, 26, a fifth-year graduate student in English, included in the class description for his undergraduate course a warning that "conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections."

The description of the course, which examines the Palestinian narration of the resistance movement, also said there would be no debate about the right of Palestinians to fight for their own self-determination.

Chancellor Robert Berdahl said in a statement last week that the class would be watched to make sure qualified students are not turned away. The course currently is filled, with 17 students and a waiting list.

"It is imperative that our classrooms be free of indoctrination — indoctrination is not education," Berdahl said. "Classrooms must be places in which an open environment prevails and where students are free to express their views."

Shingavi, a leader of the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine, defended his course, saying he has a right to limit class themes.

"You can have a series of debates about Israel's right to destroy Palestine, but those are not germane to the questions about how Palestinians understand themselves and how they understand resistance," Shingavi said. "I'm not restricting the class. It is merely a warning that the course has certain kinds of themes that are at its core."

But civil liberties advocates say they consider Shingavi's attitude disturbing, especially at the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement.

"A professor teaching the African-American diaspora cannot say that any student who comes to this course has to accept my views of the struggle of blacks in America," said Thor Halvorssen, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=3889