Code Pink Finds Marine Recruiters In Berkeley - Protests Begin
In a city where opposition to the Iraq war is routine, a U.S. Marine Corps recruiting station has been operating quietly in downtown Berkeley for nine months without even a peep from peace activists.
The recruiting station, in a storefront at Shattuck and University avenues, opened in January to recruit young men and women from the northern half of the Bay Area to the Marine Corps officer training school in Quantico, Va.
But it wasn’t until last week that the first protesters arrived. Code Pink and Grandmothers Against the War staged a peaceful, low-key rally outside the station and repeated the action Wednesday.
“We’re going to be here every Wednesday. We need to protect our children,” said Zanne Joi, a spokeswoman for the Code Pink activist group. “We don’t want this in our city - we’re horrified they’ve come to Berkeley.”
The station, which relocated from Alameda, is between Berkeley High and UC Berkeley. Last school year, 29 men and women were recruited at the two stations, said Capt. Richard Lund. He said he did not know how that compares with other recruiting stations.
“We’re getting more people than you may think in the Bay Area,” he said. “We’ve certainly been busy.”
Lund said he was expecting protesters to come out when his office moved to Berkeley.
“It’s been pretty peaceful,” Lund said. “It’s just like any other city. I was kind of surprised.”
In recent months, the City Council has approved resolutions opposing the war, including one that supports prosecution of former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes.
Joi said Code Pink, a group spawned by Bay Area peace activists, didn’t even discover the recruiting station until about a week ago and immediately launched the first protest. Few City Hall staffers knew it was there, either.
The military had worse luck at Berkeley High, where it pressured administrators for years to comply with a federal law allowing recruiters access to students’ names and contact information.
Berkeley High’s policy was to not turn over students’ names unless the students requested that their names be released. The Pentagon threatened to withdraw federal funding for the school unless administrators reversed the policy and turned over all the names, only omitting the names of students who opted out in writing.
The school became the last in the United States to comply with the law when it changed its policy in the spring.
Meanwhile, a few blocks away, students could walk into the recruiting office unhindered by sidewalk protesters. But that may be changing.
On Wednesday, protesters clad in pink hats and dresses engaged a few young men in civil but earnest hourlong discussions about the war.
Passing motorists honked and waved in support throughout the day, and the atmosphere was lively and festive. Protesters waved pink banners and waved at passers-by.
Lund said the protesters so far have been cordial and polite, happily exercising their right to free speech.
Code Pink is bringing in other peace groups to join the protest, with demonstrators expected to be in front of the station from when it opens at 8 a.m. until doors close at 4:30 p.m.
“We’re not going to leave until they leave Berkeley,” Joi said.
E-mail Carolyn Jones at carolynjones@sfchronicle.com.
© 2007 The San Francisco Chronicle
shut down the recruiting stations everywhere! military out of our schools!
Keep the young men and women poor, jobless, uneducated, without healthcare or future and blame the liberals, immigrants, people of color, arabs, etc. to keep them fired up and you have cheap corporate cannon fodder recruits.
“keep” them poor? Huh?
Yes, keep them poor. Most people in their early 20s start with very little. Perhaps they are already in debt. Manufacturing is outsourced to the third world, but you can be a clerk at Walmart (this keeps corporate profits high). Prices for housing are astronomical because of speculation and predatory lending (this keeps corporate profits high). Gasoline and heating oil become ever more expensive (this keeps corporate profits high). Health care and drugs are through the roof (this keeps corporate profits high). It wasn’t so long ago that you could get lunch for $2. The modest rise in “average” income is an artifact of greater wealth for the top 20% - everyone else’s wages have lost ground. Is it becoming easier or more difficult for you to buy that second SUV? Why or why not?
ÈThe Pentagon threatened to withdraw federal funding for the school unless administrators reversed the policy and turned over all the names, only omitting the names of students who opted out in writing.È
Has any self-absorbed , snivelling , whining poor-me Americans whether poor high-school students or relatively rich teachers and administrators ever bothered to find out what other people do when they find themselves in a financial crunchÉ Ever hear of the Special Period in Cuba when the USSR stopped cheap oil and machinery exports to Cuba and stopped inflated-price Cuban-sugar exports to USSRÉ. Putting it in stark and understandable terms,the whole population of 11 million lost an average of fifteen pounds of body-weight.
Even at the present , the average monthly income for a Cuban working citizen is fifteen dollars. The secret of survival is called benign socialism . Of course, Americans are too independent to so share with one another. That is why recruiters will bamboozle hapless suckers one at a time for the Iraq slaughterhouse with the aid of spineless school administrators.
Credit to CodePink for belated protests but let them go to Cuba to find out how teachers and administrators coped with the threat of withdrawn funding. My mistake , it wasnèt a threat it was WITHDRAWN FUNDING. Maybe poor highschool students scaping by on $100 per month who are enamoured by the $20,000 signing bonus to be dead or injured can be dissuaded from enlisting knowing that their peers in Cuba are scraping by with a fraction of that amount. Then again , it may be very difficult because they have been conditioned to believe in Sondheimès satirical song Only in Amereeca.
When that highschool potential enlistee is among the roughly 25% of semi-literate Americans and the remaining 75% are unwilling to share resources because that smacks of the Monster Socialism ,it is not surprising that he is such an undiscerning , unsuspecting target for the recruiters.
Hillary Clinton wants to be Command-n-Chief of the Armed Forces and she wants to be the best friend of Code Pink which is attacking the Marines, harassing a Marine recruiter at work and at home, and vandalizing federal property.
Hillary Clinton, you can’t have it both ways, you cannot give a two-faced political answer, you have to choose. Where is your loyalty? Are you loyal to the military you want to control or the Code Pink?
Rex