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Tag: Berkeley
Berkeley Police May Now Use Pepper Spray to Control Crowds: 20 Ban Overturned
Ahead of Ben Shapiro’s speech on September 14, 2017, and the upcoming Free Speech Week featuring Milo Yionnapoulos, Steve Bannon and Ann Coulter, Berkeley Police ask for an overturn of a 20-year ban on pepper spray as a means of crowd control. The Berkeley City Council approved the request.
Upcoming events at UC Berkeley:
Free Speech Week begins September 24, 2017
Milo Announces Berkeley Free Speech Week September 24-27, 2017
According to Milo Yiannopoulos, Berkeley Free Speech Week will be a peaceful event with speakers and surprises at different locations on campus throughout each day. Berkeley Free Speech Week is open to all political ideologies, with speakers representing conservatives, libertarians, and even liberals.
Berkeley has proclaimed this to be a “free speech year” and Milo Yiannopoulos will host the event in conjunction with the Berkeley Patriots. Milo hopes to include other speakers previously banned from speaking at the campus. A full line-up of guests has not yet been announced, but on 9.12.17 Milo announced Steve Bannon will be joining him during Free Speech Week.
Each day of Berkeley Free Speech Week will have a theme:
- Sunday, 9/24 — Feminism Awareness Day
- Monday, 9/25 — Islamic Peace & Tolerance Day
- Tuesday, 9/26 — ZUCK 2020
- Wednesday, 9/27 — Mario Savio is Dead. MILO will present the first annual Mario Savio Award for Free Speech on Wednesday evening to close out Berkeley Free Speech Week.
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Violent protests forced Milo’s last appearance at UC Berkeley set for February 1, 2017.
The Daily Cal published footage of the protest.
Milo recorded the following video on the night of the event after he was escorted away from the violence.
Ben Shapiro Event at Berkeley to be Countered with Speak Out Event
A PEOPLE’S SPEAK OUT AGAINST WHITE SUPREMACY, MISOGYNY, XENOPHOBIA AND FASCISM
THE FIGHT FOR WHAT’S TRUE &
WHAT WE MUST DO
Sproul Plaza, UC Berkeley Thursday Sept. 14th, 6pm
Who Is Refuse Fascism?
RefuseFascism.org is a movement of people coming from diverse perspectives, united in our recognition that the Trump/Pence Regime poses a catastrophic danger to humanity and the planet and that it is our responsibility to drive them from power. This means working and organizing with all our creativity and determination toward November 4 when many thousands of people will fill the streets of cities and towns, beginning a struggle that continues day after day and night after night, eventually involving millions of people, demanding: This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!
The September 14, 2017 Event
Sproul Plaza is where students, faculty, and all concerned people should be on September 14 when Ben Shapiro speaks at 7pm on so-called “Campus Thuggery.” Shapiro is coming to campus to spread ugly fascist views dressed up in slick-talking “intellectual” garb. Beneath his “reasonable” tone lies Shapiro’s real thuggery: Shapiro mocked Trayvon Martin on what would have been his 21st birthday, insists that being transgender is a “mental illness,” compares abortion to the Holocaust and thinks women should be forced to bear children against their will, argues that racial discrimination is not a “continuing factor in American life” and that poverty among Black people is not a result of racism but of Black culture, believes in a “clash of civilizations” and calls Islamic civilization “the polar opposite of the West,” wrote that “Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage,” and more. This is harmful! He, along with fascists of many stripes, have targeted Berkeley because reversing Berkeley’s radical history would be a major advance for the consolidation of fascism on campuses everywhere and throughout society.
Fascists must NOT have an audience. DON’T GO. Or if you do go, WALK OUT when Shapiro starts to speak, and come to the Speak Out.
No, Chancellor Christ, speech by fascists and those who intellectually defend them is not what humanity needs and will not contribute to campuses acting as centers of critical thought and debate. Fascism already has a platform – the biggest and most powerful platform in the world: the White House! Not only do Trump, Pence, Sessions, Kelly, and the rest of the Regime constantly put forward fascist ideas about Muslims, immigrants, women, LGBTQ, Black people, people around the world, and more… they are using the power of the state – and unleashing the extra-legal mob – to destroy countless lives and threaten humanity as a whole.
What this moment in history requires is resistance to fascism, including discussion and debate over what fascism is, its roots, where it can lead, and what needs to be done to stop it. And, people – especially students – joining in the fight to drive the fascist Trump/Pence Regime from power! Stand up on Sept 14 and start getting organized for November 4th, when many thousands will take to the streets in cities and towns across the country, day after day and night after night, growing to millions and refusing to leave until our demand is met: This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!
Contact Refuse Fascism to endorse, to speak or perform, or bring your class or organization to participate. EVERYONE, from a diversity of perspectives, who refuses to accept a fascist America is invited!
There is NO moral “equivalence” between those seeking to impose white supremacy and fascism, and those fighting against this nightmare.
Berkeley Vows to Protect Free Speech Rights
“The law is very clear: Public institutions like UC Berkeley must permit speakers invited in accordance with campus policies to speak, without discrimination in regard to point of view.”–UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ in a message to the campus community on August 23. 2017
Dear students, faculty and staff,
This fall, the issue of free speech will once more engage our community in powerful and complex ways. Events in Charlottesville, with their racism, bigotry, violence and mayhem, make the issue of free speech even more tense. The law is very clear: Public institutions like UC Berkeley must permit speakers invited in accordance with campus policies to speak, without discrimination in regard to point of view. The United States has the strongest free speech protections of any liberal democracy; the First Amendment protects even speech that most of us would find hateful, abhorrent and odious, and the courts have consistently upheld these protections.
Berkeley, as you know, is the home of the Free Speech Movement, where students on the right and students on the left united to fight for the right to advocate political views on campus. Particularly now, it is critical that the Berkeley community come together once again to protect this right. It is who we are.But the most powerful argument for free speech is not one of legal constraint — that we’re required to allow it — but of value. The public expression of many sharply divergent points of view is fundamental both to our democracy and to our mission as a university. The philosophical justification underlying free speech, most powerfully articulated by John Stuart Mill in his book On Liberty, rests on two basic assumptions. The first is that truth is of such power that it will always ultimately prevail; any abridgement of argument therefore compromises the opportunity of exchanging error for truth. The second is an extreme skepticism about the right of any authority to determine which opinions are noxious or abhorrent. Once you embark on the path to censorship, you make your own speech vulnerable to it.
Nonetheless, defending the right of free speech for those whose ideas we find offensive is not easy. It often conflicts with the values we hold as a community — tolerance, inclusion, reason and diversity. Some constitutionally protected speech attacks the very identity of particular groups of individuals in ways that are deeply hurtful. However, the right response is not the heckler’s veto, or what some call platform denial. Call toxic speech out for what it is, don’t shout it down, for in shouting it down, you collude in the narrative that universities are not open to all speech. Respond to hate speech with more speech.
We all desire safe space, where we can be ourselves and find support for our identities. You have the right at Berkeley to expect the university to keep you physically safe. But we would be providing students with a less valuable education, preparing them less well for the world after graduation, if we tried to shelter them from ideas that many find wrong, even dangerous. We must show that we can choose what to listen to, that we can cultivate our own arguments and that we can develop inner resilience, which is the surest form of safe space. These are not easy tasks, and we will offer support services for those who desire them.
This September, Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopoulos have both been invited by student groups to speak at Berkeley. The university has the responsibility to provide safety and security for its community and guests, and we will invest the necessary resources to achieve that goal. If you choose to protest, do so peacefully. That is your right, and we will defend it with vigor. We will not tolerate violence, and we will hold anyone accountable who engages in it.
We will have many opportunities this year to come together as a Berkeley community over the issue of free speech; it will be a free speech year. We have already planned a student panel, a faculty panel and several book talks. Bridge USA and the Center for New Media will hold a day-long conference on Oct. 5; PEN, the international writers’ organization, will hold a free speech convening in Berkeley on Oct. 23. We are planning a series in which people with sharply divergent points of view will meet for a moderated discussion. Free speech is our legacy, and we have the power once more to shape this narrative.
Sincerely,
Carol Christ
Chancellor
Ben Shapiro at Universities: Why Are Students Driven to Seek Counseling?
“Facts don’t care about your feelings.” Ben Shapiro
Best-selling author, journalist and media personality Ben Shapiro was scheduled to speak at UC Berkeley on September 14, 2017. Security surrounding Shapiro’s speech was unprecedented, and Berkeley issued an invitation to students and faculty to seek counseling at the University Health Center if they found the event too unsettling. (See Berkeley counseling for impact speakers “have on individuals’ sense of safety & belonging” https://skepticreview.com/2017/09/08/uc-berkeley-offers-counseling-impact-speakers-may-individuals-sense-safety-belonging/
So what exactly is Ben Shapiro doing or saying that is causing folks to seek mental health treatment?
Ben Shapiro is a conservative promoting traditional values. Shapiro advocates for capitalism, traditional marriage (man and woman), intact family units (two-parent households) and morality derived from religion (unless it’s Islam–more about that below).
Shapiro is a prolific author. His conservatism is reflected in some of his more popular titles:
Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth (2004).
Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future (2005).
Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America (2013).
How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them: 11 Rules for Winning the Argument (2014)
In Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth, Shapiro writes:
“At my own beloved UCLA the numbers are just as frightening. There are thirty-one English professors with registered party affiliation. Twenty-nine of them are affiliated with the Democratic party, the Green party, or another leftist political party. Out of thirteen journalism professors with registered affiliation, twelve are affiliated with leftist parties. Fifty-three out of fifty-six history professors are affiliated with leftist parties. Sixteen out of seventeen political science professors are affiliated with leftist parties. Thirty-one of thirty-three women’s studies professors are affiliated with leftist parties.”
In Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future, Shapiro says:
“Never in our country’s history has a generation been so empowered, so wealthy, so privileged—and yet so empty.”
But where Shapiro really goes hard on college students is in his book How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them: 11 Rules for Winning the Argument:
“College students’ sense of moral righteousness doesn’t come from achievement – it comes from believing that you are a bad person. You are a racist and sexist; they are not. That makes them good, even if they don’t give charity, have never met a black person, stand for policies that impoverish minority communities across the United States, and enable America-haters around the globe.”
And this, also from How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them:
“The leftist bullies have taken over the major institutions of the United States. The university system has been monopolized by a group of folks who believe that it’s no longer worthwhile debating the evidence on tax rates, or whether the Laffer curve is right, or whether Keynesian policies actually promote economic growth. They don’t want to debate those issues. What they want to teach instead is that is you are personally ignorant, bigoted, corrupt, and mean if you disagree with them. Their opinions are not opinions; they are fact. This is the hallmark of being stuck inside a bubble. The people who occupy the professoriate have not had to work a real job – a job with real-world consequences — in over 30 years. They’ve lived on a campus where everyone agrees with them, convincing them that their beliefs are universally-held. Anyone who disagrees is a “flat earther.” Anyone who disagrees is a monster. You are a monster.”
In 2014, Shapiro ruffled feathers when he published this video titled, “The Myth of the Tiny Radical Muslim Minority is Just That.”
And then, in 2015, Shapiro got in heated debate with transgender journalist Zoey Tur, after which Shapiro filed a police report.
So that’s Ben Shapiro. Berkeley’s message to students and faculty reads: “No one should be made to feel threatened or harassed simply because of who they are or for what they believe.”
As Ben Shapiro says, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.”