Public Comment

"We do not need to militarize our response to protests." - Former Defense Secretary James Mattis, The Atlantic, June 2020

A plaintive voice, apparently from the chair of the Police Review Commission, asked the Berkeley City Council on Tuesday, June 2, 2020, to please, please allow the commission to meet. The commission has apparently been shut down for weeks in a moment when the whole world is writhing over the pain of yet another black man murdered by a police officer in plain view, even videotaped, while other police officers stood casually by or held him down.

Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin referred the matter to the City Manager. The more pressing matter for the mayor was the establishment and extension of a curfew, the ham-handed approach to this international turning point. And establishing special permits for the very businesses who've been urging the city to clear the streets of anyone visibly poor so they can use public space for their own profit. 

Meanwhile, the public fencing of open space at the intersection of Telegraph and Dwight, at the University edge of 4th Street, under the Gilman underpass where people could at least shelter from the rain goes unremarked. Even People's Park is threatened primarily on the grounds that visible poverty is just such a downer. 

Arreguin embraces these optics for the same reason Ronald Reagan did; politically, it sells like hotcakes. The good news is four members of the Berkeley City Council objected at least to the curfew being instituted at the same moment other cities were putting theirs away in recognition of the larger constitutional right and need of people to gather to mourn, to protest, and to organize. 

Thank you, Berkeley councilmembers Ben Bartlett, Cheryl Davila, Kate Harrison, and Rigel Robinson for recognizing the international clarion call eluding our tone deaf mayor. Other elected officials are rejecting choke holds, pepper spray, CS gas, and other police tactics as inherently dangerous in a system which is inherently racist. Other elected officials are redirecting the funding of militarized police forces toward community needs. Would that the brave example of these councilmembers inspire the rest of the council.