We are exhausted, spent, drained, aching, sleep-deprived…To Joe and everyone at Move America Forward.... job well done and Thank you.
but also exhilarated, motivated, and determined that we will continue to fight on every street corner in every town across this country whenever any individual or group or government body attempts to do what Berkeley has done these past few weeks: dishonor our troops and their brave and honorable service to this nation.
Yesterday that meant going into the Belly of the Beast, where the city was against us, the cops were NOT there to protect us, and the decked was totally stacked against us (by teachers who let their students out of class with the instruction to go take part in their "civic duty", by city officials who made us go through hoops but then emboldened Code Pink to attack our supporters, by city officials who told our supporters that they could ONLY speak to the Council if they first marched through riot police to stand among the violent mob of anarchists and aggressors from International ANSWER, World Can't Wait and anarchist groups).
But we did it, and we did it in numbers (the pro-military crowd grew and shrank throughout the all-day AND all-night event, in the morning and afternoon hours varying between dozens and hundreds only to swell to the point that the media said 2,000 or so folks were lined up outside the City Council chambers before the meeting began).
It was an amazing day, Susan, and although the Berkeley City Council couldn't bring themselves to issue a formal apology to our troops (they couldn't get a 5-vote majority to agree on WHO they should apologize to), we had them listening to our testimony for hours on end, and then listened with glee as at lesats 5 or 6 members on the Council did "mea culpa" statements about how they had screwed up in one fashion or another with their actions.
Again - they couldn't get a majority to agree on WHAT SPECIFICALLY they screwed up on, but they knew that they had made a disgrace out of Berkeley, and ya know what -- in an odd way they managed to unite this country behind our troops at a time when the Code Pink crowd are trying to undermine support for the troops.
Game. Set. Match. And in Berkeley of all places. What a great achievement for the pro-troop movement!
HOOOOOOOOOOAH.
For the Marines that have been keeping an eye on these threads.......
SEMPER FI.
.