March 19: Shutting Down Marine Recruiters in Berkeley

BHS kids rock!

shit down? that would keep he marines away.....

I love it!

sorry for the typo. not sure how useful it would be to shit them down since they are already so full of shit. ;)

I spoke to one of the Marines from the OSO on Thursday, he says they have enough work that its really not a problem to work out of the office for a day now and then, so they just stayed out of the way on Wednesday. They seemed pretty calm about the whole thing, which leads me to think accounts of Code PINK and WCW! driving them out of Berkeley have been grossly exaggerated...they have no intention of leaving Berkeley - and Mayor Bates has reaffirmed that they have the legal right to be there.

its great to see lots of students still involved and active, and ive heard the berkeley anti-recruitment actions resonate all the way up to my town in sonoma county. however, without appearing condescending, my personal opinion is that many of these students, with their World Cant Wait shirts and signs, and their Revolution newspaper propaganda, are being manipulated by a very dubious organization with an even more dubious ideology. whatever the propaganda, WCW and the Revolutionary Communist Party are MAOIST organizations. a little history lesson- Mao was directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people through famine and political repression. he was also a close friend of Stalin, whose brutality is comparable only to that of adolf Hitler, if not worse. what these organizations are doing is using the genuine rage and energy of some awesome student activists to bolster a quite unreal, and unjust alternative to capitalism. what we have seen in the last few years is a massive DEmobilization of the anti war movement due to authoritarian communist and liberal groups who care more about spreading their fucked up ideologies than stopping any war, and theyll lie and manipulate anyone they can to do that.
sorry for the tirade, but the anti war movement is in its last dying gasps because of shitty, maoist and other communist groups like WCW. we need more consensus based, democratic organizations, such as DASW, who facilitated one of the most impressive and de centralized demonstrations i have ever been a part of.

Peace, Justice, and Anarchy for ever
Carlos

"sorry for the tirade, but the anti war movement is in its last dying gasps because of shitty, maoist and other communist groups like WCW. "

Absolutely. There is a reason that public support for the war is at an all time low, but public attendence at these rallies has also significantly declined. Carlos is right.

Here's my favorite photo from the ANSWER rally

Do you really think that the presence of communists in the movement is why the anti-war movement has not been able to stop the war and isn't larger?

I really do think that five years into this war with one million Iraqis dead, million displaced, the possibility of war with Iran looming we need to get beyond this sort of anti-communism and that people who want to stop this war -- communists, anarchists, religious people, democrats need to deal with what it will take to really END THIS WAR! In my view part of the reason the demonstrations have in general been in a decline since the start of the war is that people tried to march in the streets to stop it -- I think these were the biggest mass demonstrations in world history but they were dismissed as a focus group. Clearly more is needed in terms to stop the war. Why don't we try and discuss that rather than blame each other. One of the great things about the Berkeley actions is that they have gone against the whole idea that you have to support the troops and have put forward a politics of actually stopping the war.

Also, we need to end the whole economic and political system that gives rise to war. That means we have to understand what capitalism and imperialism are and whether we can actually bring into being a different system, one moving toward a world without classes, without men over women, without the division of the world into nations. This is what the world cries out for today. Humanity needs revolution and communism.

Yikes guy, if you look at these pictures and see something negative, you need to look again. These students are coming into political life around these recruiting center actions. Some are even grappling with deeper questions, like - why is this country's history drenched in the blood of oppressed nations? and can we bring about an end to this system? and yes, is communism the answer?
If you really hated this war, you'd love these protests and if you really hated capitalism, you'd love that high school students are debating how to end it.

I enjoyed the protest in Berkeley on the five year anniversary, and it caused me to write an article that day, but mostly about the system of military recruiters.

Lasse J. Schmidt

Did you see the Daily show rip apart Codepink and their efforts to shut down this illegal murder recruitment center!! That was ridiculous. I think everyone needs to contact the Daily show and complain.
Keep up the good work!!! They can't ignore all our voices!!



http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=163653&title=Marin