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4,000 at Berkeley Peace Vigil
4,000 attend Berkeley Peace Vigil
4,000 Students Attend Vigil At Berkeley
Berkeley, California, 9/11/01 -
About 4,000 Berkeley students attended a "free speech candlelight vigil for
peace" in the wake of the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. The vigil
began by one student singing "Imagine," the anti-war theme by John Lennon and
then over 50 students and community members spoke for 2 minutes at an open
mic. Some students talked about people they knew who died in the attacks and
a few supported President Bush's call to war but the vast majority spoke
against the U.S. responding with violence and for the defence of Arab
Americans and Muslims civil rights. After one student called the attacks a
"new pearl harbor" and urged the crowd to prepare for war only about 10% of
the crowd applauded. The next speaker said, "remember how Pearly Harbor
ended? With the incineration of 100,000 men, women and children in Nagisaki
and Hiroshima." The vast majority of the crowd cheered. A young woman from
Students for Justice in Palestine called for respect for all human rights and
said that Muslim women on campus had been harassed earlier in the day for
wearing head scarves. She condemned the attacks in New York and D.C. and
asked that "no student should be targeted because they are Arab, or Muslim,
or Middle Eastern" and the vast majority of the crowd cheered. The vigil was
organized after one student put out large blank sheets of paper in Sproul
Plaza and asked people to write down what they were feeling about the
tragedy. Hundreds of students gathered all day long to express their
feelings, mourn silently and debate the causes of the attacks and what the
U.S. response should be.
The vigil was covered by the local NBC TV station as an anti-war event
and they showed a leaflet that said, "Don't Turn Tragedy Into War." The
turn-out proves that not everyone is ready to support Bush's calls to war and
the growing racist backlash against Arab and Muslim people. However, it will
not be easy going. After the news report ended, the local TV anchor
editorialized, "Today's attacks inspired patriotism in most Americans,
nevermind those students at Berkeley."
Todd Chretien
report for Socialist Worker newspaper
Berkeley, California, 9/11/01 -
About 4,000 Berkeley students attended a "free speech candlelight vigil for
peace" in the wake of the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. The vigil
began by one student singing "Imagine," the anti-war theme by John Lennon and
then over 50 students and community members spoke for 2 minutes at an open
mic. Some students talked about people they knew who died in the attacks and
a few supported President Bush's call to war but the vast majority spoke
against the U.S. responding with violence and for the defence of Arab
Americans and Muslims civil rights. After one student called the attacks a
"new pearl harbor" and urged the crowd to prepare for war only about 10% of
the crowd applauded. The next speaker said, "remember how Pearly Harbor
ended? With the incineration of 100,000 men, women and children in Nagisaki
and Hiroshima." The vast majority of the crowd cheered. A young woman from
Students for Justice in Palestine called for respect for all human rights and
said that Muslim women on campus had been harassed earlier in the day for
wearing head scarves. She condemned the attacks in New York and D.C. and
asked that "no student should be targeted because they are Arab, or Muslim,
or Middle Eastern" and the vast majority of the crowd cheered. The vigil was
organized after one student put out large blank sheets of paper in Sproul
Plaza and asked people to write down what they were feeling about the
tragedy. Hundreds of students gathered all day long to express their
feelings, mourn silently and debate the causes of the attacks and what the
U.S. response should be.
The vigil was covered by the local NBC TV station as an anti-war event
and they showed a leaflet that said, "Don't Turn Tragedy Into War." The
turn-out proves that not everyone is ready to support Bush's calls to war and
the growing racist backlash against Arab and Muslim people. However, it will
not be easy going. After the news report ended, the local TV anchor
editorialized, "Today's attacks inspired patriotism in most Americans,
nevermind those students at Berkeley."
Todd Chretien
report for Socialist Worker newspaper
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The loudest cheers came when the same speaker called for a movement to replace this system of greed, oppression, and violence, with a just society.
because of bush, or because of clinton.
I lost two friends, and we lost thousands of our neighbors and family and friends tuesday because
one region of this world is populated with animals. I don't blame all muslims. I have great
muslim friends. I don't thin kthat can be helped anymore. If they are not punished they will
do it again and angain. Why? Because it is in their nature and their society. The mideast, specificially israel, palestine, pakistan, india (like it or not NOBODY is free from blame in the mideast), kuwait, saudi arabia, afghanistan, egypt, etc.. They've been at this for over two thousand years. They
can't be changed with candle light vigils and tears. There is only one thing these animals know,
survival of the fittest.
We are the fittest. Without american money being sent back to these counries, most of them would
have only one industry, oil, with a smidgen of tourism money. We are their fathers. We created these monsters by giving them money. We must now destroy these monsters. Make no mistake, the people
who did this were monsters. They are not human. They just look human. The human spirit
is to survive. What they did is sacrifice themselves due to brainwashing. What kind of country..
What kind of parents raise their children like that? Not human parents.
The only fair thing, for the advancement of this world, is to set the entire mideast ablaze, and
leave nothing but a sea of trinitrite. These are not humans. We can not live like they live. Murder,
carnage, terrorism is a part of their daily lives. The next generation, the children of
the mideast are cheering for the death of our friends.
I have no compassion, and no sympathy for anyone who would have me dead. If you do, then
please, by all means, turn the other cheek, to catch the bullets for me, and i'll shoot the man who
pulled the trigger.
9/11
Never Forget
You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard.
What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward's attack on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What was it you hoped we would learn? Whatever it was, please know that you failed.
Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause.
Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our resolve.
Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us together.
Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a family rent by racial, social, political and class division, but a family nonetheless. We're frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous emotional energy on pop cultural minutiae -- a singer's revealing dress, a ball team's misfortune, a cartoon mouse. We're wealthy, too, spoiled by the ready availability of trinkets and material goods, and maybe because of that, we walk through life with a certain sense of blithe entitlement. We are fundamentally decent, though -- peace-loving and compassionate. We struggle to know the right thing and to do it. And we are, the overwhelming majority of us, people of faith, believers in a just and loving God.
Some people -- you, perhaps -- think that any or all of this makes us weak. You're mistaken. We are not weak. Indeed, we are strong in ways that cannot be measured by arsenals.
IN PAIN
Yes, we're in pain now. We are in mourning and we are in shock. We're still grappling with the unreality of the awful thing you did, still working to make ourselves understand that this isn't a special effect from some Hollywood blockbuster, isn't the plot development from a Tom Clancy novel. Both in terms of the awful scope of their ambition and the probable final death toll, your attacks are likely to go down as the worst acts of terrorism in the history of the United States and, probably, the history of the world. You've bloodied us as we have never been bloodied before.
But there's a gulf of difference between making us bloody and making us fall. This is the lesson Japan was taught to its bitter sorrow the last time anyone hit us this hard, the last time anyone brought us such abrupt and monumental pain. When roused, we are righteous in our outrage, terrible in our force. When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any cost, go to any length, in the pursuit of justice.
I tell you this without fear of contradiction. I know my people, as you, I think, do not. What I know reassures me. It also causes me to tremble with dread of the future.
In the days to come, there will be recrimination and accusation, fingers pointing to determine whose failure allowed this to happen and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. There will be heightened security, misguided talk of revoking basic freedoms. We'll go forward from this moment sobered, chastened, sad. But determined, too. Unimaginably determined.
THE STEEL IN US
You see, the steel in us is not always readily apparent. That aspect of our character is seldom understood by people who don't know us well. On this day, the family's bickering is put on hold.
As Americans we will weep, as Americans we will mourn, and as Americans, we will rise in defense of all that we cherish.
So I ask again: What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that's the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange: You don't know my people. You don't know what we're capable of. You don't know what you just started.
But you're about to learn.