Spokane7
49°Quick links: NCAA tournament • Gonzaga hoops • Easter photo contest • Washington Legislature • Idaho Legislature
November 20, 2009
AP Photo/Paul Sakuma
Demonstrators struggle with police with a barricade in front of a closed off building on the University of California, Berkeley on the Berkeley, Calif., campus, Friday,. Nov. 20, 2009, during a demonstration against university fee hikes and layoffs.
Berkeley. Why is it that despite having lived on the edge of the Berkeley campus for over 3 years, attending school each day and having witnessed some of the essential goodness that occasionally reared its head in that town, that each time someone mentions its name, I still recall the bloody, gory and totally repugnant series of riots that swept through Berkeley over People’s Park? The Alameda County Sheriff’s Department went on a head-hunting session after students overturned a Berkley Police squad car in front of Sproul Hall Plaza, and in the process of out-of-control police a Circuit Court judge threw out the cases of everyone they arrested, even those who were guilty. A peaceful poet, standing atop Shakespeare’s Bookstore on Telegraph Avenue to take a better picture of the “festivities” was shot dead by an Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputy who thought his zoom lens was a gun.I remember the anti-war demonstration that turned into a riot where several City Council and former City Council members were among the arrested. Joan Baez sang in front of Moe’s Bookstore on Telegraph Avenue while, up the street, people were overturning squad cars and getting themselves arrested.
In my day, people protested all manner of things, especially against war in all its formidable forms. However, my generation never protested about the price of education.
My how times have changed.
Dave
999 W. Riverside, Spokane, WA 99201
P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210
Main switchboard: (509) 459-5000 • (800) 338-8801
Newsroom: (509) 459-5400 • (800) 789-0029
Customer service: (800) 338-8801
© Copyright 2010, The Spokesman-Review
ChefGus on November 21 at 7:27 a.m.
Dave, i concur… I too was part of the mid sixties and the “riot scene”… Black Panther's on my campus etc… and it was about Peace and Justice… and righting wrongs… not about the cost of my education…
Watched the movie Farenheit 9-11 last night… and there is plenty to riot about in that movie… the Bush stolen election, the trumped up war… the Bin Laden family ties, Hamad Karzai as an oil company executive, the Natural Gas Pipeline in Afghan soil…
It is seemingly to all too many to be a “Win or Lose” battle, rather than one of respect and courtesy for other's …
The level of “outrage” among the win/lose crowd with our President being respectul of Japanese culture, where a “Bow” is merely recognizing the “other” as a person who's sharing the ride on this planet…
One group I belong to “Veterans for Peace” is advocatiing for the elimination of the School of the Americas' that was training and arminig both sides on the Panama/Costa Rica border for the time I served in the army in Panama….
There is plenty to riot about… if one is so inclined… but the current topic seems to me a bit self serving and peurile … looking around for Alice this morning.. j
Flag as inappropriate
Rifleman__Dodd on November 21 at 8:56 p.m.
we have contracted out our sense of social justice. No one cares because they know that no matter what you do, its not going to make a hill of beans. We have bred the perfect toothless sheep.
For example our wonderful McMorris who refused to have a OPEN town hall on healthcare. She curve balls it into a meeting on Elder Care WAY out in the valley at a time/date/place where no one can get to, to participate.
Anyone seen Murray/Cantwell “listening' to anyone here in Spokane? One of their tactics is to not advertise any meetings until AFTER its over.
I dont have a problem with wishing the overthrow of our government, since of course its the enemy of my Country.
Everyones' just hanging on till they reach retirement anyway.
Flag as inappropriate
Diana on November 22 at 4:49 a.m.
Perhaps they would have demonstrated if the cost of a year of higher ed was $10,000. Who can afford that?
Flag as inappropriate
Lewis on November 22 at 9:43 a.m.
good to see someone is demonstrating, where is the anger in spokane?
Flag as inappropriate