Kate McVaugh: September 2017

Tonight, at 7pm, Ben Shapiro will speak at Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. I would have liked to have been in Sproul Plaza to document the Antifa thugs that I am sure will be there. However, I don’t want to be out there at night so I went down to see what was happening this afternoon.

Where Free Speech Started: Sproul Hall

They have already blocked traffic to Bancroft Avenue, which runs by Zellerbach Hall, and the crowd barriers are already up. At 3:30, they will start to restrict entrance into the heart of the Free Speech Area, Sproul Hall Plaza.

For now, there are a few people out with the requisite tables and flyers protesting the right of anyone with a conservative viewpoint to speak, and referring to them with vile labels. I had no intention of getting into a discussion with any of these folks, but my inner flower-child took over.

Crowd Blockers

One non-student, surrounded by Cal students, was getting quite worked up about an Yiannopolous poster announcing his coming speech. He had ripped it off a wall, insisting that it was offensive. The students he was addressing were adamant that Yiannopolous had the right to speak. Granted, “Yiannololous is cumming” is rather crude, but not compared to what was scrawled in chalk on lower Sproul Plaza in front of Zellerbach. At this point, I could no longer keep my mouth shut. I said to him, “Sir, what is offensive to me is the Fuck the Police that is written on the ground.” And then I walked away.

Next, I stopped by the big table and big posters set up on the Northside entrance to Sproul Plaza. I certainly did not want to get in any sort of conversation with them. But then I walked around the other side and started to listen in to a conversation that an older man and woman, most likely UC profs, were having with the Resistance table-minders.

They kept asking the resistance folks to clarify what exactly was a fascist and why they thought all conservatives were fascists. One young man started to spout something nonsensical that was so convoluted I can’t recall anything other than it was not a definition of the word. They only thing that did come across is that the likes of Ben Shapiro, Steve Bannon, and Anne Coulter did not have the right to speak at CAL.

Bancroft Ave

Once more, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I said that I had grown up in Berkeley, that I had protested in the 60’s, and that back then we respected the right to have differing views. I said I was sad seeing what had happened to my city, that tolerance for differing views was no longer acceptable.

The woman explained that she followed Shapiro, and that he was not all the ugly names the resistance people called him. To which she got the response, “You’re wrong so I’m not even going to talk to you.” To which I added, “She is not wrong, she just has a different opinion.” The guy walked away.

Zellerbach Hall

I turned to the man and woman – both had accents so I assume they had grown up in another country. I said, “These kids have no idea what it is to live in a country where you do not have rights. They do not realize how lucky they are and do not understand the freedom of speech.”

I said a few other things to the resistence-ers regarding the error in labeling people with different opinions as white supremacists, and left after one of them was getting into why Antifa had a right to bash heads. …They all really have drunk the Kool-Aid.

While walking through the area, I made sure to thank every police officer I saw for protecting the people and the city. They were truly appreciative of my words, especially when there were anti-police sentiments chalked into the ground where they stood.