Christine:
``Look at Horowitz' recounting of the talk at Berkeley. It can be proven that *he* was the one who demanded all this security - not the university. It was all staged. There were not 200 protesters there (how many did you count Michael or Chuck?). That is delusional. All that happened before he went out was there he was talking over this guy who was trying to finish the 2nd part of his question for about 10 seconds, and then Horowitz got really pissed and stormed off, after they turned off the questioner's microphone. Nobody else in the room interpreted the sequence of events the way he is right here....''
``The need for security, as I noted from the platform, was itself a horrific commentary on the state of our campuses. The intention of the 200 protesters was to make certain ideas so toxic that one could discuss them only at one's peril -- moral or physical. As someone who spoke up in behalf of Marxist and communist ideas in the 1950s at Columbia with no such opposition, I can attest that McCarthyism was a tea party compared to this.'' David Horowitz.
-----------
At first I couldn't tell who was just waiting in line and who was actually protesting. If you consider just the group on the hill were I was sitting, there were fifteen people marching in a small circle with signs and a megaphone, and they were surrounded by perhaps another twenty at most, and then add maybe thirty spread out on the grass. There were about a hundred and fifty or so people waiting in line, as I finally figured out and they were there to go inside. So maybe all tolled there were maybe two hundred in a one third, two-thirds split, with the larger group headed inside.
But, hey we were noisy, we were fierce, we were violent, we were out of control. No telling what could have happened. . .
Hell I was scared, absolutely petrified---and I was sure glad there were THREE campus cops standing around their car with their arms folded talking to themselves. I am sure they had their helmets, face shields, flak jackets, M16's, and grenade launchers in the trunk just in case.
I'll tell you how to nip this violent anti-free speech movement in the bud. Pass a law than anyone arrested for misdemeanor offenses related to protesting, will get their social security and Medicare bumped from 66 to 75. That alone should cut the violence in half.
Chuck Grimes