Berkeley City Council Cancels Ceasefire Meeting; Activists Respond with a Spirited Rally

“I am committed to giving the voiceless a voice… we need to stand strong.”

Grace Morizawa, Chair of the Berkeley Peace & Justice Commission, exhorted the crowd of 100+ activists on the evening of September 3rd at the South Berkeley Senior Center to never give in to the repression of Berkeley’s tyrannical city government.

Authoritarianism behavior is normalized in Berkeley City Hall, it seems. Igor Tregub, a new city council member, ordered longtime Peace & Justice Commission member Diana
Bohn to withdraw her support of a ceasefire revolution. When she declined, he had her removed from the Commission, and replaced with a staunch Zionist.

The Berkeley City Manager subsequently canceled the Commission’s meeting scheduled that night. But the fight wasn’t over…

Swiftly responding, an impromptu rally was held to support the Commission’s goal to get Berkeley to adopt a “Resolution for an Immediate and Permanent Ceasefire in Gaza, and an End to U.S. Military Aid to Israel, and Support for Palestinian Self-Determination.”

Berkeley has a glorious radical past, but now it’s an embarrassing hub of militaristic conservatism. Many neighboring cities - Oakland, Richmond, Hayward, Daly City, etc. - passed measures condemning Israel’s brutality, but myopic Berkeley continues to rah-rah the apartheid, racist, colonialist state.

Numerous dynamic speakers roused the crowd, including Dr. Feroze Sidwa (trauma surgeon recently returned from Gaza), Zeiad Abbas (MECA), Lara Kiswani (AROC), Professor Hatem Bazian (SJP), Andrea Pritchett (Berkeley Cop Watch) and more.