Code Pink Declares Victory, and Retreats from Shattuck Square

Sometimes I think a real difference between whacked-out progressives and their more conservative counterparts is simply the ability to tolerate, to focus, to remember what's important. I really could not care less whether Code Pink needs to fabricate a victory before pulling up their tent and moving on. What's important is that they go away.

Zanne Joi was gone all Summer helping her daughter deliver a child. Despite having voiced her desire for that baby to be a future womyn like its grandmother, she seems to be coping with its (initial) maleness. As soon as she left, Code Pink abandoned Shattuck Square. I almost feel badly at the way in which Code Pink seems to have exploited Zanne Joi -- for a year they totally dominated her time, her truck, her place of business -- they've even co-opted her phone number as the contact number for their group. One obvious difference between Zanne and a suicide bomber is that she will now have years to wonder whether she ever got the respect and glory she was promised, and whether her sacrifice served any greater purpose. I wish her all the best in her career as grandmother, and a fresh start at a more meaningful life.

Protestshooter.com says they had an intern out serving as a placeholder from time to time, but the protest was basically over. It may be that others, like me, stopped paying attention after Judge Jacobson told those arrested and tried for trespassing that they had to stay within 4 feet of the curb, and not even touch the USMC OSO building... and Code Pink reported that as a win, too. A group loses credibility when it loses the ability to see or tell the truth about even minor issues.

I think even the City Council got tired of the protest -- and was distracted by the tree sit at CAL, a more interesting circus act this Summer. Code Pink's parking space sign disappeared on schedule and without comment. Captain Lund has moved on to a new post, the office continues to provide the service of facilitating the process of volunteers who choose to enter Officer Candidate School after college graduation.

So is this goodbye? Oh most definitely no. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and in Berkeley something always seems to pop up again.

I want to encourage you to look at Protestshooter.com and Zombietime.com for ongoing coverage of this and other moments in Bay Area craziness, and I'll be watching what goes on.

Code PINK has dissipated, or maybe they're on vacation?

I've resisted the impulse for weeks to do the Code Pink thing and proclaim "Victory in Shattuck Square!" because those wailing wimmin have become absent -- even though their absence is in no way my doing. Granted I've been busy and often out of town and may have missed one or two assaults on the USMC OSO -- but I've encountered no one for weeks. The last person I remember seeing was Toby Blome, one of the whiners, I mean wailers, chalking important messages along the court mandated DPZ (DePinkedZone) and then stepping back into the no-fly zone to admire her work. That would have been a day or two after Judge Jacobson's ruling that the gurls need to stay within 4' of the curb -- a ruling they called a victory because they didn't have to stay entirely away from the OSO. Zanne Joi put icing on the little Pink cupcake by announcing as part of her victory statement that they didn't need to touch the building anyway, "we have other people to do that." As I've probably said before - but maybe not here, my first-grader knows better than to act like that. CP goes on advertising their big demonstrations on IndyBay.org and their own website -- but I truly believe that the battle is forfeited when even the activist/demonstrator/witch-crones are no longer showing up.

The Code Pink site says you can just pick up the "action kit" at People's Cafe if you want to be your own protest. I'm tempted to pick up the "action kit" and toss it in a dumpster....but I won't.

Part of the problem with being on this side of the issue (in the good company of the USMC and much of America), is the constraints that come with reasonable behavior. Reasonable people can't just proclaim victory "We Shut them DOWN!" or behave like small, hungry children (wailing, having tantrums, sitting down and refusing to move until they get their way). Reasonable people behave reasonably and quietly, confidently. They don't attract undue attention, if they attract attention at all.

If you haven't yet read Capt. R. Lund's "Open Letter to Code Pink" and Zanne Joi's response (both in the Berkeley Daily Planet Archives, on line) you will surely see what I mean.

Throughout this odyssey the protesters have been extreme. I'm sure they feel strongly about their positions... but so do I. So do many of us, unfairly hobbled by our sanity and maturity. If you are looking for another interesting viewpoint on all this, Google "Jane Stillwater Blog". Ms. Stillwater is currently embedded with troops in Iraq -- its her third time -- As much as she wanted to hate the Marines first time she went, she came home with a healthy respect for Marines and their work, and an unhealthy respect for dining hall food, especially dessert. Strangely enough, the Berkeley Daily Planet has not published anything by Jane Stillwater since she started saying nice things about The Troops. As a privately owned newspaper, that is the Planet's right, but its not really journalism.

Lest you, or the Planet, think Stillwater has "drunk the Kool-Aid" -- her hatred for President Bush remains, which makes her support for the military, as humans doing hard work, more gratifying. I mention her because of the way in which her opinions have been shaped, through time, by facts and rational thinking. Zanne Joi and Medea Benjamin are incapable of that kind of adjustment. For them the World is seen in shades of pink -- or everything else.

I hope Code Pink has given up and gone home. They went into SF to help World Can't Wait! this week, and have been hanging out with the Berkeley Tree Sitters for months. But, allying themselves with Communist front groups and would be anarchists doesn't give them any credibility with anyone outside the Movement... For all their talk of Peace, Code Pink, WCW!, and most of the local anti-war groups here support continued fighting -- by anyone but the United States of America. As one who grew up thinking the "Menace of Communism" was a phobia affecting my parents' generation... I'm telling you, its real here. "Zombie" a local photographer, photographed and counted the number of Communist groups at a Iraq 5th Anniversary Protest this year -- the pictures are on his site ------> Zombietime.com. Please check it out!

And Then it was July

There's a lot to catch up on, and most of it is just annoying. Code Pink persists, and is making no headway, but yet they persist. They balance their lack of progress with statements CLAIMING progress.

Just last week a judge instructed the "Wailing Four" (Medea Benjamin, Toby Blome, Pam Bennett and Zanne Joi) to stay away from the building in which the USMC OSO is housed. They declared it a victory because they only have to stay 4 feet away -- not 30 feet or yards or whatever. Zanne Joi is quoted in the Berkeley Daily Planet as saying that it doesn't matter that they can't touch or stick things to or enter the building, because there are lots of other Code Pinkers to do that.... the arrogance is appalling. The story of the court date appeared in several progressive sources, with accounts based on the Code Pink press release and claiming unmitigated victory for the forces of "free speech". One source based an account on the facts of the case: http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_9709941?source=rss and the Berkeley Daily Planet was at least savvy enough to attribute all their information to Zanne Joi as quotes.

I'm sorry to have grown quiet. I'm just so tired of the manipulation and fibbing that the "anti-war" groups use in the service of what they think is a noble cause. If the ends justified the means they'd be out of several of the arguments they've made about the USMC OSO in Berkeley. Fortunately their positions are so many and so inconsistent that any action or reaction can be massaged into a show of support. Morally vacant. Pathethic.

Today's Letter to The Berkeley City Council (and Chamber of Commerce):

April 3, 2008
To the City Council:

I was sent this item from the Daily Cal this morning. Please have your staff read it to you, and pay careful attention to the tone in the quotes from Dona Spring, and to a lesser extent Ted Garrett. Both are dismissive of the reasons given for one more business leaving Berkeley. How can they be so unprofessional?

[editor's note: the italics are mine - please compare Spring's quote to Medea's in the prior post]

In Dona Spring's case, she's also wrong both times she is quoted. 1) "(Police) involved in the Marine recruiting center demonstrations are overtime, it's not the regular crew" -- Unless Berkeley is bringing in a separate police force for the CodePINK protests the Berkeley Police are being stretched and stressed; community policing is effected. Being compensated for their time isn't the same as being relieved and rested. 2) "... I don't see how the businesses in that square can sustain the kind of controversy that the Marine recruiting center has had on that locale."-- Regardless Ms. Spring, or anyone's, personal opinion about the USMC OSO staying in Berkeley, the controversy here rest on the shoulders of CodePINK. The OSO was in Shattuck Square for 9 months before CodePINK (or pretty much anyone) noticed. All the Police overtime and bad publicity date from AFTER CodePINK noticed the Office. As of April 1st CodePINK is even creating their own news to generate publicity.

Here's the Video:

http://www.dailycal.org/article/101127/local_company_to_leave_berkeley_due_to_protests