Berkeley Kids Go to the Mayor (#BlackLivesMatter)

I love you, Berkeley.

The special Berkeley Council Meeting ostensibly held to address police misuse of force during the Berkeley protests was...interesting.

I've never been to a full council meeting before, so maybe this is normal. But if this is normal, I can see why people are in the mood to overthrow stuff.

Even though rain and obscure location reduced the size of what could have been a very, very angry mob, the Council still seemed to forget that the whole purpose of calling the "special meeting" was to hear the community speak. Instead they stalled for over half an hour.

It wasn't just the fact that they were obviously putting off hearing from the community, which was muttering (and occasionally shouting) from the peanut gallery. It was the way they did it. The old white Mayor - the very picture of the Evil White Man conspiracy from the X-Files - bloviated on this and that, setting agendas for agendas and meta-ing on meta of their own council. It was like Roberts Rules of Order from Hell! As the crowd got increasingly irked about it, he repeatedly threatened to adjourn the meeting so no one could speak at all. This was all the more threatening because he had already managed to delay the next Council Meeting until January 17th, leaving protesters unprotected from police actions until then.

Meanwhile, the people who wanted to speak had to stand in line this whole time. There were no chairs for the line (and I should mention there were a lot of stairs to get to the meeting place, too), so this situation was not disabled-friendly. I ended up taking out my ID card and my med list because I hadn't taken some meds when I should have, and I started to worry about getting a seizure between the stress of standing up for that long and the annoyance of listening to the Mayor over-indulge in the pleasure of hearing himself orate, when there was a whole room full of people who obviously wanted him to STFU for once.

The speakers themselves really brought it to the mic. They were articulate and succinct, with diverse things to say. Some spoke about the trauma of being tear-gassed, others spoke about who the police were supposed to serve, some spoke about the violation of their right to protest, and others spoke about putting property rights over human rights. One of the most memorable speakers was a high school girl who reminded the Council that the city's children had been among the peaceful protesters, and the city and randomly tear-gassed their kids. There were remarks that specifically addressed the black community - particularly how police abuse of power had intimidated people and made them hesitate to exercise their right to protest. Some comments drew chants of "Black Lives Matter!" and "No Justice No Peace!" from the meeting attendees. The people who were outraged over the next Council Meeting being delayed until January 17th got approving/outraged applause. The woman who ended her 2 minutes of speaking time by shouting that the Mayor should RESIGN! RESIGN! RESIGN! practically got a standing ovation. Great note to end on!

By the way, my sense that the black population of Berkeley had been going down (I wrote a post about this last week) was right. Someone on the Council said it has gone down from 30% to 10%. I would like to make a modest proposal that the Mayor's indirect policies to crush and drive out the poor had an unequal effect on race: those policies drove black people out first and, thus, were implicitly racist. Perhaps no city more than lily white Berkeley illustrates how the economic/class issue is a race issue.

Throughout this meeting, every time the audience got a little too rambunctious or started chanting, the Mayor would try to play block and tackle with threats to adjourn the meeting and not let people speak anymore. After calling a break, and speeding through a couple of unrelated agenda items, the Mayor didn't give members of the community much of a chance to regroup. He adjourned as swiftly as possible. I have a sneaking suspicion the Mayor is on the first plane he can find, since he is probably still imagining things will "cool down" if he can just stall long enough.



The Kids of Berkeley didn't exactly shut the Council Meeting down, but they persisted and insisted and had their say, and the Mayor looked like a real ass the whole time. Good for them.

ADDENDUM: I attended the second of two back-to-back meetings. I missed the first meeting, which was supposed to be stuffed with more Council calendar business. However, when I arrived, that meeting was ending with a roaring chant of "BLACK LIVES MATTER!" - so I imagine that one went more or less along the lines of the second one that I describe.