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Berkeley and the Marines

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a pack of wolves:

--- Quote from: CmonMiracle on 12 Feb 2008, 14:13 ---
What do you guys think of this? While I am not pro-war, I believe Berkeley is making a huge mistake doing this - if you don't want to join the Marines, don't walk in there! People have a choice! You can't just BAN people and institutions you don't like! While it is highly unlikely that this could lead to bans of other places - if some town decided to ban all gay bars, for example- that shouldn't be justification for this. You can't bend the rules one time and expect no one else to do the same - but worse. I'm especially shocked at the wording encouraging and giving protestors a free pass to basically harass Marines. Does this include preventing Marines from entering their workplace? What about people who DO want to join? What defines nonviolent means? What happens when someone -a protester or a Marine- snaps and retaliates?

Let's hear your thoughts, we need a good discussion.

--- End quote ---

Banning people and institutions a government or council dislikes happens all the time. This ranges from brothels to drug dealers to polluting industries, and just those people governments decide they don't want in their country. Most countries will only allow people to be within their borders for very limited amounts of time on tourist visas and they ban them from remaining longer, and there are vast amounts of the world's population they simply wouldn't allow to enter the country at all. Berkeley has simply done what councils and governments do all the time, which is to decide that this organisation's activities are detrimental to their area and not allowed them to operate there anymore.

What's wrong with preventing marines from entering their workplace? That's one of the oldest non-violent tactics in the book, it's what you do when you're on strike to prevent bosses just replacing you by using scabs. If you don't disrupt the activities of those organisations you're against then you'll just be ignored, you need to make it unprofitable for them to continue operating. Using protest to raise public awareness is all very well but it will mostly be ignored by the people who actually make decisions. The anti-Iraq war protests in the UK are a good example. Roughly a million people marched against the war in London and were promptly ignored by the government. If those same million people had blockaded and disrupted the activities of the government and armed forces the effect would quite possibly have been very different. It would have been impossible to arrest them all and the government would have not been able to continue with its activities until it backed down from its pro-war position.

What about people who do want to join? Tough, they want to do something you're against so they need to be prevented. They should have it made clear to them that if they sign up they're doing something a lot of people think is deeply wrong, I see no reason for them to be protected from that. It's true, somebody could snap and retaliate with violence. It happens, protesting isn't easy and often involves physical danger. This isn't a reason not to do it.

In short: good for Berkeley.

NarwhalSunshine:
Well that's stupid, my dad is a retired staff sergeant of 21 years so I've been around the military a lot and get lots of calls from recruiters and the marine recruiters are the most laid back, they don't have to do anything the future grunts come to them. If anything take the Navy recruiters' phone privileges away, they are worse than telemarketers.

Patrick:
Some photos taken in Berkeley:





THIS IS THE CITY WE'RE TALKING ABOUT HERE, YOU GUYS.

KickThatBathProf:
God, If you're gonna make a protest sign, don't make it so you have to stand there for five minutes reading it

It's got to be simple
Examples: 
"Moar peace plz thx"
"God cries when you masturbate"
"Ur Doin It Wrong"
"I hate kittens"

onewheelwizzard:
Dude, you can find people that crazy anywhere.  Berkeley's just the only place where people have enough fun humoring them that they have the confidence to go public.

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