I’m just glad I didn’t apply to UC Berkeley at this point, was seriously considering since it was considered the best public university, with this type of garbage students though…just no.
I live in San Antonio, attending a high school with mostly Hispanic individuals, I celebrated Trump’s victory by wearing the hat to school on Election Day and Inauguration Day, there were disagreements, but none were remotely violent, and that’s with a school full of Mexican individuals who strongly opposed Trump, the school itself ain’t even good, to see a top notch university degraded to such a disgusting low level really breaks my heart
Sorry, those days of silly PC talk are over. Berkeley is not a victim. It is a responsible party that knew about this in advance and failed to properly respond. This went on for hours. Well, how about calling in more police and breaking it up and arresting people on the spot, as a poster above stated? Hm… Berkeley never did that. The result is what happens when adults are complicit is this behavior and decide to not step in as necessary.
To illustrate how this victim talk is just convenient gobbledegook - imagine if this was a private company and a rioting crowd went through its publicly accessible parking lot destroying cars etc. and some people got hurt, while the company security just stood around and watched it happen for three hours - all because the company did not plan ahead enough? No one here would be saying the company was a victim and would be suing talking about corporate irresponsibility. And people would be screaming, “Why did they not call more police?” The company would be on the hook for millions of dollars.
In this case, Berkeley is clearly the irresponsible company with thousands of paying customer forking over $30,000/yr. Hm. I would think these customers are worth protecting properly, just like any other company would be held responsible for, and not hiding behind the school is a victim nonsense.
Considering this is an EDUCATIONAL forum I recommend people EDUCATE themselves about the difference between the peaceful protesters and the anarchists that could have been paid (who knows with breitbart/milo y) to cause issues. Generalizing a whole movement based on a few vocal/violent ones is useless. We might as well be assuming all republicans are like Milo Y because he’s the most vocal one lol. Also, UC Berkeley has around 37k attendees? Seems like a stretch to call them all “garbage” doesn’t it @Cookiegod ?
@ucbalumnu
Yes, there was a degree of surprise about what happened at this protest and the university and the police were unprepared. My comment was not meant as a criticism about how they handled this event, it is that they should be prepared in the future and handle it better from this point forward. They need to publicly set standards, set aside the manpower to ensure peaceful protests, and let students know they intend to enforce the standards as to what constitutes legal, peaceful protests.
This was not a protest, this looks like what happened with the G5 meetings in Seattle and the like, where those spoiling for a fight and to create chaos turned what was supposed to be protests into a violent confrontation. I don’t know who is behind it, there are claims that for example Steve Bannen was somehow behind some of the confrontations in DC that turned violent so they could send in the National Guard to quell it and show how the ‘other side’ were these violent thugs…(and again, not claiming that is true)…this kind of thing has been done before, sending in provocateurs to instigate violence then using that to make all kinds of claims, this was routinely done in the late 19th and early 20th century in the labor rights movement where instigators would cause some sort of violence, blow things up, then the government would use that as an excuse to suppress the demonstrations (there is evidence out there, for example, that the bomb that killed people at the Haymarket Square ‘riot’ was thrown by someone paid for by business interests to do exactly what it do, a reason to suppress labor activity).
As far as Berkeley goes, the school is not what it was in the 60’s and 70’s (or even 80’s when a friend of mine went there), it has changed a lot, the students are focused very differently then they were back then. I am sure some students were protesting, but this isn’t the days of the SDS or weather underground, either, and I suspect whoever did this was from outside, I think it has nothing to do with the school. It sounds to me like the cops and such expected a typical protest, and it turned ugly.
For the record, I also don’t support when students do something like stop a speaker from speaking, it was wrong when Yale Students prevented William Shockley from talking about his ideas of race and intelligence, it is wrong, period IMO, it is wrong when more conservative schools have dropped speakers because they were critical of the president whose politics mirrored that of the school (it happened during my time in college in the 80’s, I was involved with booking speakers at my school and was aware of incidents happening from talking to speakers bureaus and the like, so it isn’t just the ‘liberal’ bad old schools doing this). My take on it is even as vile as I find this guy (I think I heard him talking on NPR the other night, the guy reminds me of Wormtongue in the “Lord of the Rings” movies) he should be allowed to speak, and the answer to that is to speak out against him and make certain how you feel. Take it from me, even someone like this guy or his best bud, for all their bravado, feel it when a ton of people show up protesting and saying what they feel of him, in private they likely are both angry and hurt to be called the things they likely are). The answer to speech or ideas you find disquieting or wrong is to answer it with a lot of speech.
I will say that the speaker in question if he is surprised his ideas could generate violence doesn’t listen to himself, when someone is a professional bomb thrower who has offended and denigrated and said truly vile things about a wide swath of people the way he has, including things that very well could have incited violence against those he denigrates, I suspect even a Ghandi or Christ might be tempted to take a swing at him…
I’m sorry the police were not able to arrest the vandals, but they did a good job keeping things contained and getting the peaceful people to safety. A few injuries, but it could have been much worse.
I assume they are reviewing all the camera/cell phone/security footage available, and will make arrests if possible. It’s not over yet.
The speaker deserves to be roundly ignored, but not everyone can do that as easily as I seem to be able to.
I am just wondering if Milo Y is representative of the conservative or libertarian platform? At this point I am not sure.
@hebegebe Please accept my apologies. I didn’t consider that was political.
Milos has his followers, that’s evident.
He seems to thrive on being controversial. That’s pretty evident.
I’m sorry if it seems that I strayed from fact to inciting some sort of political perspective. It just seemed very straight forward fact to me.
It’s like saying the Rolling Stones sing rock.
They sang rock to their fans
The fans got excited.
Similar line of reasoning and no political perspective on this. I don’t necessicarily like or dislike the Rolling Stones.
@Ohiodad51 When I said “alt-right” I was speaking of Milo Y, not Trump or Republicans. He calls himself the “Alt-Right Provocateur.” Just pointing out that some are, indeed, provoked.
I also think it’s unreasonable to expect college administrators to be able to handle security situations like these perfectly. They are not the Secret Service.
No problem. I enjoy a good political debate, but since it’s not allowed on CC, I just want to prevent the thread from getting shut down.
As to who was actually behind the black-mask protesters, it is really unfortunate that none were caught so the world could know who was behind it.
I think the speaker is a self-promoting provocateur that does not represent any large political constituency. But he does get people riled up.
I completely agree. It seemed like a fairly slickly organized thing, from what I’m discerning.
You have to wonder: Can students be that organized??
Hard to say.
I have to move on to other things as interesting as this discussion is.
awcntbd , I am sorry that I don’t know how to quote a post directly, but could you clarify what you mean by, “Sorry, those days of silly PC talk are over.” in post # 142?
I agree @MomofJandL
To associate him with either the libertarian or conservative political movements would be insulting to either/both of them.
I would be interested in @awcntdb’s thoughts on Milo Y. At least as of last October Milo was on record as saying he wanted to destroy the R party to make way for a libertarian party – so he seems to identify with libertarians (although he is a chameleon.)
I heard an interview the other day on NPR with George Will, and I think he classified what Milo Y and the rest of the atl right/supposed populist thing is about, he said it wasn’t conservative or liberal, that those are ideologies whether you agree with them or not, come generally out of thought on how things should be run. He said the alt right was a movement that basically tossed aside thought and everything they do is tossing out things right and left to appeal to the emotions of those listening, and because they appeal to emotions they get a very strong reaction, the problem (to him, Will) was that there was no depth to it, no thought, that its primary purpose was to incite people into emotional reactions, because emotions are often a lot stronger than thought. He and I are on two different poles politically (though we both love baseball), but I agree with him about that…and it is why the reaction to a lot of this is so huge, the emotions that might flare up followers also flares up in those who oppose the statements of people like Milo Y. As angry as I am, I don’t want to see a return to riots, the Black Panthers, the SDS and the weather underground, and I hope and pray it all stays with words and protest and political action, all you have to do is look at Iraq or anywhere else torn apart to understand why, and it isn’t as farfetched as some may think.
This thread has just gotten too difficult to manage, partly because the subject matter touches on politics. You’ll have to PM each other to continue the discussion. Closing thread.