Posted by
Alan on Thursday, February 07, 2008 7:28:09 PM
Liberal City Takes on the Marine Corps
By JESSE McKINLEY,
The New York Times
Posted: 2008-02-01 10:19:25
BERKELEY, Calif.
(Feb. 1) —
While
the City Council here has little — read, no — sway
over foreign policy and distant wars, local parking is a different
matter. And so it was that a parking space directly in front of the
recruiting station here for the Marine Corps was awarded on Tuesday
night to an antiwar group in the hope of running the Marines out of
town. Having failed in recent years to impeach President Bush and stop
the
war in Afghanistan, members of the City Council approved a resolution
that encourages people to nonviolently “impede, passively or actively,”
the work of the recruiters. To that end, the council awarded the
group, Code Pink, exclusive use of the parking spot for four hours one
afternoon each week, for the next six months, to stage its protests.
“If you’re going to join the Marines, you’re going to join the
Marines,” said Zanna Joi, an activist with Code Pink, which favors
cotton-candy-colored garb and in-your-face tactics. “But you don’t have
to join the Marines from our town.” In taking on the Marines,
the council also directed the city attorney to investigate legal means
of ousting the recruiting station, calling the Marines “uninvited and
unwelcome intruders” in this bastion of liberal politics, 1960s free
speech and high-minded nonbinding resolutions. Tom Bates, the
city’s mayor and a former Army man himself, said the vote represented
his constituents’ longstanding — and frequently vocal — distaste for
current military activity. “Berkeley has been opposed to
the Iraq war since the beginning; it’s overwhelmingly unpopular in this
community,” Mr. Bates said. “And people feel this is an opportunity to
express their discontent.” One of the nine council members, Gordon
Wozniak, opposed the resolution and the parking spot. “I believe in
free speech, and I certainly respect the right of Code Pink to
protest,” Mr. Wozniak said. “But I’m also concerned we treat all sides
fairly, and I think the Marines recruiters are just doing their job.
They’re not evil people.” Mr.
Wozniak, a retired nuclear scientist who opposes the war in Iraq, added
that those advocating the parking spot were engaged in the same type of
selective treatment that many war opponents object to. “A lot of
the same people who voted for this felt Bush bent the rules,” Mr.
Wozniak said, referring to the president’s unfounded claims that Iraq
had chemical, nuclear or biological weapons. This is hardly the
first attempt by Berkeley’s civic leaders, many of whom fondly remember
the city’s antiwar heyday in the 1960s, to express their unhappiness
with the whole concept of war. In 2006, the City Council and voters
overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure calling for the impeachment of
Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, citing “high crimes and
misdemeanors” related to the war in Iraq and the fight against
terrorism. In 2001, the City Council also called for an end to
the bombing of Afghanistan just weeks after the terrorist attacks of
Sept. 11, something that earned some council members anonymous death
threats.
Despite the vote on Tuesday, Mr. Bates said it was not
clear if the city could actually force the Marines to move out of town.
“They still have a year and a half on their lease,” he said. That
said, the resolution also calls for the city attorney to look into
possible violations of the Berkeley municipal code regarding sexual
discrimination by the Marines, and asks the city manager to write the
Marine commandant and tell him that Semper Fi fans are “not welcome in
our city.” Maj. Wes Hayes of the Marine Corps Recruiting Command
in Quantico, Va., said the corps had not immediately been aware of
Berkeley’s actions, but added that they would have no effect on
recruiting efforts. “It’s business as usual,” Major Hayes said.“They
still have a year and a half on their lease,” he said. Inside the
Berkeley office, a small
storefront a block from the University of California campus, a pull-up
bar sits near the window as does a pile of weights, part of the
physical fitness test for any potential leathernecks. A poster on the
wall reminds recruiters not “to fear the winds of adversity.” After
being open earlier in the day, the front door was locked and the window
blinds drawn on Thursday afternoon, at least for a while, as Code Pink
protesters chanted happily outside. Brandon Rousseau, an
information technology consultant who works across the street and has a
cousin in the Marines, said both sides had a right to go about their
business.
“Even if that were a Nazi recruiting station,” Mr. Rousseau said, “they have a right to do that in America.”Copyright © 2007
The New York Times Company