Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin has asked that the plug be pulled on Free Speech Week, an event that was being put on by conservatives at UC Berkeley next month.
The request comes in light of violent protests at a rally this past Sunday where anarchists chased attendees from a park.
Isnât it bizarre that the mayor is demanding a free speech event be shut down, but says nothing to the anarchists, who were members of radical left-wing group Antifa?
The SF Chronicle reports, In the aftermath of a right-wing rally Sunday that ended with anarchists chasing attendees from a downtown park, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin urged UC Berkeley on Monday to cancel conservativesâ plans for a Free Speech Week next month to avoid making the city the center of more violent unrest.
âI donât want Berkeley being used as a punching bag,â said Arreguin, whose city has been the site of several showdowns this year between, on the one hand, the left and its fringe anarchist wing, and on the other, supporters of President Trump who at times have included white nationalists.
âI am concerned about these groups using large protests to create mayhem,â Arreguin said. âItâs something we have seen in Oakland and in Berkeley.â
The mayor wants UC Berkeley to halt plans by a conservative campus group, the Berkeley Patriot, to host right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos during its scheduled Free Speech Week from Sept. 24-27. Berkeleyâs right-vs.-left cage matches began with an appearance that Yiannopoulos was to have made in February at a campus hall, an event that was aborted when black-clad anarchists like those who broke up Sundayâs downtown rally stormed into Sproul Plaza, smashed windows and set bonfires.
Trump himself denounced UC Berkeley in a tweet the next day, and his supporters have since made a point of bringing their fight to the famously liberal college town.
Common sense would say that instead of cracking down on free speech, which is a God-given right protected by the Constitution, the good folks in charge at Berkeley should be cracking down on the violent left-wing extremists who are stirring up trouble.
Have a police presence there who takes no guff from these people and lock them up. Over time theyâll lose the fire in their belly and stop the nonsense.
Doing anything less than this is tantamount to throwing support behind the group.
Also, the media should be out in full force denouncing these folks just like they did with the white supremacists. Both groups are evil.
Unfortunately, we arenât likely to see that, given how Antifa is a liberal group and progressives bend over backwards to protect their own.
Source: Allen West
