Where Was Berkeley Stop The War Coalition ?

many people do not live or work anywhere near berkeley campus or go to school there, so we did not know about it. people should post more of their stuff to sf indymedia! there is a lot of shit going on right now and it is hard to keep track of

There were closer to six hundred people there at any given time, with over 2,000 students taking our flags (assume that about 500 of those went to anti-war types, that still leaves 1,500). You claim that this is the minority viewpoint. I suggest you go to http://www.asuc.org and examine their polls. Also, I suggest you take a trip through the dorms. While students who are supportive of America are not nearly as high energy or dedicated to the cause, since they have real classes, as opposed to things like Ethnic Studies which are routinely cancelled to allow time to prepare for rallies. Additionally, did you ever consider that the satire you call so "wonderful" was not far removed from the so-called "racist cartoon" by Darrin Bell, and in fact was a direct call to violence against muslims? Sure, you knew it was a satire, but didn't your people argue against the statement "but it was just a cartoon!"? I believe that there is a lot of hypocrisy you need to address within your own stances and that you need to wake up to the world around you- Berkeley students support America, and you and your anti-American compatriots will be cast aside as the insignificant and pointless relics you are.

nobody wants to speak out against the war.
i guess the liberals convinced everybody its ok to be pro-america, anti-reality

I only heard about it when I walked by at 11:50 on the way to something else. I didn't see any indymedia announcements, or anything on the various campus mailing lists. Some of the people who had driven long distances seemed to fit the description of 'haters'. someone was going down Telegraph taping up pictures of osama bin laden saying "thank you people of Berkeley, for your support". It's like, can't these people think of anything at all to do that doesn't involve making up lies. but alas I couldn't stay.

'try again'.
What is this you're saying about holding the american flag indicating that you're 'pro war'. Kriss Worthington of the city council has been wearing flag gear for the past couple of months, and Donna Spring too.
I really don't accept this pro vs. anti america stuff that is coming up in your rhetoric. It seems to indicate that you haven't even spoken with or read any essays from anyone outside of the Free Republic (freeper) camp, or turned off of 560AM hot talk. I assume you're conservative in addition to 'proAmerica' as you describe it. There are lots of anti-war conservatives out there. Pat Buchanan opposes overseas interventions. http://www.antiwar.com is run by economically and socially conservative people. Read this guy's columns: http://www.antiwar.com/justin/justincol.html
There are not two sides to this issue like the media tries to channel everyone into. I take those '85% support the president' polls with a grain of salt because they are offering people a choice between 'do nothing' and 'get osama bin laden', so of course everyone chooses the latter. However, if they were to allow people to choose between a 6-10 different possible options, it would be very clear that the vast majority of people are not hawks who want to "rain death and destruction" or say "we must use our unequaled army with a force unseen since the end of WWII to destroy all branches of the Iraqi Afghani, Iranian and Palestinian governments" as Rory Miller of the California patriot wrote http://www.calpatriot.org (this was the same guy who Kriss Worthington mopped the floor with at the city council meeting). (I forwarded some of the letters from Ben Carrasco and other Patriot folk to my friend Jon who is a Lieutenant in the army, Westpoint grad, and he laughed for a long while and wrote a nice response. What do we want to estimate are the chances that any of these UC Berkeley patriot people are going to ever serve a day in the military - end of tangent. At least Colin Powell, who I barely trust, has been displaying some sense so far and has been looking for a quick-out with little use of ground troops.).
Really, the majority have a moderate stance that does not involve support of deaths of US military or Afghani civilians. So much for your pro vs. anti america dichotomy.
Christine

ack.

and also... There were some conservatives out on Sproul who had driven there all the way from Truckee to attend this rally??? I don't know, but that sort of fits the definition of 'loser' to me. of course... maybe the same applies for me taking the time to type this out.
You clearly can't be employed or have many other concerns in life if you can drive almost from Nevada just because you heard some gossip about the horrid people in Berkeley, and you need to set the students straight. It seems more like they have general feelings of anxiety and need a focus for their anger, like a '2 minutes hate'.
You know, it was the conservatives on the city Council who wouldn't support Kriss Worthington's simple proposal for endorsing a statement of sympathy for the victims of the World trade center collapse.

Either this is a poorly timed joke/hoax, or the biggest plague of brain drain in the history of west coast campus life. Duh?

Find yourself in EST, Scientology or your future job at Burger King, but don't waste my time and drain resources when there are viable people with substantive insight and info speaking out about reality.

The reality is that we don't want to fight. We have to. We will fight, as freedom fighters for the cause of peace. As our country was founded on these principles...geez I never (I was a peace activist my whole life) I would have to say these things but by God, I would give my life for my freedom and countrymen/women in America. And we should say that we will fight the oppresive terrorists and murderers without prejudice!

There was only about 150 (200 tops) pro war people and at least a third weren't students. One guy from afghanistan slipped (posing as pro war) onto the mic and told the pro-war crowd they weren't informed at all. The rally was encouraging in that it attracted so few people.

the point is that you don't know any details of the situation and would rather 'kill them before they kill us'
Maybe the afghani people, nicaraguans, iraquis, etc. should take up that ideology and kill us all too, it would only be fair.
keep off this site unless you have something meaningful to say

I was trying to be generous when I said 250 in the interests of fairness, but I guess that still wasn't enough for the 'macho man' crowd.

Signs they waved included "Barbra Lee can go to Afghanistan".

And of course the above 'proud American' proves the racism of the 'pro America' movement by calling Ethnic Studies pointless.

Anything that is about the brown people is pointless at best, huh? They're only good for our cannon fodder.

Nevertheless it would have been nice to see BSTWC overwhealm them again and get in their racist faces.

Con Amor,
Dirty Anti-American Hippy who is planning on 'swimming back to Cuba' where all us damn spics and commies belong anyway.

Mr. "Try Again" claims that there were 600 protestors at any given time for Wednesday's astonishingly pathetic pro-war rally. This is true if s/he counts every sentient being within 300 yards of the Sproul steps -- which is to say, "Try Again" is a straight up liar. I was there for the entire spectacle and would say that at it's peak -- and this is a generous estimate -- there were no more than 175 demonstrators, counting the stragglers. There was a knot of 50 or so flag-waving, USA! USA! USA! chanting yahoos who, in a proud display of unity, marched up to the steps about half way through the rally. This was an unwise maneouver on their part because it only served to underline how pitifully small their ranks were (are). The stragglers could have joined them but chose not to; I suspect many -- still not fully committed to this dubious "cause" -- were embarressed to be so closely associated with what appeared to be a fascist fraternity shin-dig.
To say the oratorical skills of the speech-makers were lacking would be a severe understatement. The best of the bunch was a grad student who bravely batted down a few straw-men, while, to his credit, conceding that the disparity of wealth in the world might be part of the problem.
Not one of the speeches elicited cheers that could have drowned out a small drum-circle.
This grim affair, did, however, have a few highlights. A small group of satiric leftists antagonized the erst-while war-mongers by raising a large banner behind the speakers that proclaimed:
TODAY'S CHILDREN,
TOMORROW'S TERRORISTS!
KILL 'EM ALL!! -- Students Hating Islamic Terrorists (SHIT)
But the coup de grace was one of the last speakers, introduced as an Afghani, who, a bit off message, pronounced that the USA was bombing a desperately poor country populated by millions of near-starving people. He instructed the flag wavers to get the facts about US foreign policy, specifically, how the US helped bring about the Taliban and Unocal's plans in Afghanistan. The pro-war assemblage just stood there, mouths agape; all the red, white, and blue only serving to accentuate the clownishness of them all.
I'd give 'em an F.