Eamon Kelly stood, a cane holding his battered body on one side, and his mother propping up the other.
The
young Marine, who had major back surgery only days earlier, needed to
make a stand against the Berkeley City Council, which had denigrated
the Marines, calling them “uninvited and unwelcome intruders.”
After
the Berkeley actions ignited a national uproar, members of the City
Council responded by claiming not to have read the fine print of the
resolutions they had passed. But their words reveal the dishonesty in
their claims.
Mayor Tom Bates has been hard-pressed to plead ignorance when he declared to the city council and the media alike:
“I’ve been working with Code Pink, and I believe in their cause
and I believe that what they’re doing is the right thing, they are
bringing maximum pressure to bear on the whole question of the Marines
being in Berkeley, they don’t belong here, they shouldn’t have come
here and they should leave.”
Marine Eamon Kelly was a
living symbol of the national outrage against the Berkeley City
Council, and showcased the honor, character and determination that runs
abundant among our military men and women. That honor and character
appear to be absent from most members of the Berkeley council.
Kelly’s
physical pain was intense, yet he refused to leave the pro-military
demonstration that was organized by Move America Forward to protest the
actions of the Berkeley City Council. After standing in support of the
Marines throughout the day and night he was too weak to speak before
the City Council when he was finally afforded the opportunity at about
11:00 PM at night. Vietnam veterans offered to carry him into the
chambers, past the radical anti-war protesters in pink who taunted
those supporting the Marines.
“I can’t do it,” Kelly said. “I just have to listen to them.”
A
medic from the Vietnam War told the young Marine it was time for him to
go home. He was afraid shock might set in as the pain savaged Kelly.
“The
people with whom we gathered asked Eamon to go into city hall and
speak, but by this time his head was hanging down, and I was afraid he
was going to collapse,” said Elizabeth Kelly. “By now I was struggling
to hold him up.”
The standoff between pro-troop folks and
anti-war anarchists closed down a part of Berkeley on Tuesday and early
Wednesday morning.
Prior to Tuesday’s meeting, folks from
across the United States sent almost 30,000 emails to the City Council;
with the tally running 15 to 1 against the council’s shameful actions.
Move America Forward also collected over 23,000 signatures on a
petition condemning Berkeley’s actions.
Thousands of Marine
supporters and anti-war activists clashed in Martin Luther King Park,
across from the City Council chambers. Move America Forward (MAF) had
permits for the space, but Code Pink and their supporters invaded the
space and attacked patriots with skateboards, signs, rocks, and
bullhorns.
Police made no arrests of the aggressors early on and
stood by as the attacks continued. Anarchy reigned. Multiple pleas from
MAF for police protection went unanswered. Even the California Highway
Patrol refused to help.
Anti-war protesters set a flag on fire
that also burned a city sign that said “Peace Wall.” Two bikes, one of
a child, also burned in the fire. The “peace” protesters stole flags
from patriots and then set them aflame.
Early
Wednesday morning after hours of fighting, screaming and flag burning
by the anti-war side, the council agreed to rescind its
request for the
city manager’s office to send the offending letter calling the Marines
“intruders.”
But the council refused to apologize to the Marines,
or to rescind its gifts of public funds to a special interest group,
Code Pink, which has given over $600,000 in aid to the families of
Islamic terrorists. The group will continue to harass Marine recruiters
in Berkeley, and they will do so with both the blessing and
encouragement of the Berkeley City Council.
Council members Betty Olds and Gordon Wozniak were the sole shining lights among the council. Despite their
opposition to the war in Iraq, they
recognized that the council had wrongly chosen to attack not a policy,
but the people who put on the uniform of the United States
military. Olds and Wozniak pleaded with their fellow council members to
support them in a resolution that would apologize to the Marines and
others for the brouhaha that got worldwide media attention.“We
insulted the Marines and they deserve an apology,” Wozniak said. “At
this point, the issue is not the war. The issue is what the Berkeley
City Council did. We failed our city.”
The behavior of both city
officials and far-left radicals stunned and hurt veterans. Vietnam
veteran Rod Ferroggiaro of Fairfield, Calif., couldn’t believe what he
saw in Berkeley on Tuesday.
“Facing this group was an assortment
of old hippies dressed in pink reliving the antiwar years of the
sixties - the same ones who spat on us when I returned to California
from my first tour of duty in Vietnam in 1965,” Ferroggiaro said. “The
frightening people were the young . . . dressed in black shirts with
orange bandanas. They were cursing and running into Blue Star moms and
veterans with skateboards.
“They would get face to face with an
older man or woman and chest-bump them trying to provoke an
altercation. I saw one rip an American flag from a 46-year-old Blue
Star mom and later set it on fire,” he said. “This was all witnessed by
the Berkeley police, who did nothing to stop these radicals. Later I
learned that they were Berkeley High School students who were brought
there by their teachers.”
There will be no apologies to Marine
Eamon Kelly or Vietnam veteran Rob Ferroggiaro, but across the nation
reasonable Americans are letting it be known that they are not alone in
their protests against the Berkeley council.
Lawmakers at the
state and federal level are pushing legislation to take more than $5
million in earmarks for Berkeley. Groups around the country are
boycotting Berkeley, and businesspeople have said they will close shops
or refuse doing business in that liberal city.
“The action by the
Berkeley City Council indicates that they have a disdain for and do not
appreciate Marines for what they do and have done for this country, our
democracy, and our freedoms,” said Rep. John Campbell, who is
introducing the Semper Fi Act in the U.S. house.
“If they have so
little respect and understanding of that, there is no reason for the
rest of us, outside the city of Berkeley, to subsidize their actions
with our taxpayer funds,” Campbell said Thursday.
California
Assemblyman Guy Houston has also introduced legislation that would
strip Berkeley of millions of dollars of state transportation funds
since the city has given the parking space in front of the Marine
Recruiting Station to Code Pink with the request that the Marxist
organization use it to “impede… the work of any military recruiting
office located in the City of Berkeley.”
As people left the
pro-military rallies outside the City Council chambers late Tuesday and
early Wednesday, one thing was clear: Berkeley is no longer the home of
liberals who honor and protest the First Amendment. It is now a city
that embraces fascism that allows radicals to suppress the free speech
of those with whom they disagree, even those who have died to give
America her freedoms.
“Driving home on Hwy 80 I pulled off on an
exit, walked away from my truck and wept,” Vietnam veteran Ferroggiaro
said. “I really do not know why. But as I watched those thousands of
cars and trucks that passed by, I knew that most never knew what was
happening in Berkeley -- and most more than likely did not care. I also
thought back 40 plus years and wondered if we have gained anything in
this country.”
Catherine Moy is a nationally recognized award-winning journalist and coauthor of “America Mourning: A story of two families.”
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