Sometimes the people in Berkeley, CA can go a little overboard. They mean well. But they consider themselves the cradle of the free speech movement and sometimes don't stop to think that everything they say doesn't need to be said. If people are constantly talking, free speech or paid, they are not thinking about what they are saying.
Well, last week they really stepped into it. It wasn't enough for the local City Council to vote to ask the USMC to remove its recruiting offices from the city, but they also sent along a rather impolite letter to the USMC with it basically reinforcing the decision with unflattering prose. Needless to say, this set off a controversy at the state and federal levels of government calling Berkeley traitors, unpatriotic, and much worse. To give them credit, unlike some political leaders, the Berkeley City Council did not make a bad decision worse by insisting that they were right and refusing to reconsider. They immediately called for the item to appear on their next meetings agenda.
That meeting was last night. Besided the City Council, two armies of concerned citizens descended on Berkeley City Hall (pro and con) and camped out front, shouting slogans, chanting, singing, and generally mocking the other side. Riot Police separated the two groups, but other than four arrests, chaos didn't rule the evening. Instead, one by one, for one minute each, hundreds and hundreds of citizens got up and spoke to the City Council, pro and con, about their feelings on the matter. The City Council stayed late into the early morning to hear everyone's concerns.
Its almost not about the outcome. The way the decision was made was a quintessential example of free speech and democracy. People of different sides came forward and peacefully expressed their opinions in a passionate and poignant way. They were allowed to speak, and they were heard. And in the end, when everyone had had their say, a vote was made. The City Council, in this case, came to realize that their freedom of speech was guaranteed and protected by those same Marines they were trying to kick out. They decided to rescind the letter.
I point this out because its a good example of the way free speech is supposed to work in this country. We are all going to have ideas and some people are going to love our ideas and some people are going to hate them. But we've got to have the freedom to express the ideas we have, even the bad ones. And we've got to be given the leeway to change our opinions and to withdrawl bad ideas and move on with new ones.
On the other hand, certain lawmakers still want to punish Berkeley for the original letter. They are talking about withholding Federal and State dollars from Berkeley because of the letter that they rescinded. This would undermine the entire process of democracy that was so perfectly played out last night. We've got to get to the point where we can stop punishing people for having different opinions than our own. Either that, or this great nation, this great experiment of freedom, will perish from this earth.
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