Posted on 10/22/2001 10:48:21 AM PDT by ccmay
Here's the letter I wrote to the Mayor about the actions of their city council:
Mayor Dean,
I was in Berkeley last June, on my way from the Oakland airport to a vacation in Napa. My wife and I enjoyed a nice restaurant meal, and bought some fine wine and a few other souvenirs in local shops. We spent over $300 in your city in one afternoon.
I always thought of Berkeley as a pleasant city with more than its share of crackpots. That was part of its charm. But had I known to what degree it has become a festering shithole of treason, even within its city government, I would have spit on your sidewalks as we drove past, and nothing more. You can be certain I will never set foot in your town again, nor spend a nickel that will in any way benefit any business or group headquartered there. I have plenty of friends who also like to stop in Berkeley on their way to the wine country, and I will personally make sure they all know what kind of traitor scum now infest it.
The world would be a better place if Berkeley had burned to the ground in 1991. But because of noble firemen like those hundreds who died in New York, many lives and much property were saved. You cockroaches don't deserve to have them protecting you. Your city is a disgusting, ungrateful rabble who are not fit to wipe the ash from their helmets.
With contempt and robust hatred for everything Berkeley represents,
Christopher C. May
The email addresses are all public.
The language is a little rough, but in context it fits.
Cuppa Joe
Saturday, November 10, 2001
Roanoker's outrage heard in Berkeley
By JOE KENNEDY
THE ROANOKE TIMES
With one touch of his mouse, a Roanoke man inadvertently played a much-quoted role in the controversy surrounding a recent vote by the city council of Berkeley, Calif.
In October, council members in the notoriously political town of about 100,000 passed a resolution that condemns the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and asks ongress to quell the cycle of violence and "bring the bombing [in Afghanistan] to a conclusion as soon as possible."
The resolution, and an earlier draft version, turned Berkeley into an easy target for those who oppose its peaceful sentiments. Hundreds of people protested by phone, letter and e-mail. Somehow, the Roanoker's brief complaint turned into a rallying point.
"'Until you get rid of the traitors who refuse to support the war on Terror, I will NEVER again come [to Berkeley],' a former visitor from Roanoke, Va., wrote in a widely circulated e-mail," said a story in the Contra Costa Calif.) Times.
Tracing an e-mail in California back to its sender in Roanoke may seem a tall order, but in this electronic age, anything is possible.
Many threatened boycotts
Before I knew it, reporter Tom Lochner of the Contra Costa paper was sending me the original e-mail and faxing me a copy of the resolution and draft that preceded it. Talking to Mickey Mixon, the author, about his e-mail was the next step.
"I'm surprised that it should make such a big impact," he said by phone from his job at a Roanoke computer business. He sent it after reading a story about the Berkeley resolution. The story also listed e-mail addresses for Berkeley's mayor and other officials from it.
Mixon follows the situation on freerepublic.com, a conservative Web site.
News reports said the city council had received more than 900 mostly negative e-mails within days of the resolution's passage.
Many threaten boycotts, such as the writer who vowed to "never, I repeat never, buy so much as a bottle of water from your city again."
Lost in the furor over the resolution is that essential component of liberty known as free speech. The Berkeley council goofed in taking on a global issue at a bad time - especially one that so many citizens disagree with. But the most dedicated defender of democracy has to admit that they had the right to do it, just as others have the right to criticize it.
You should see the first draft
Why, though, are people taking their rage out on Berkeley business owners - who, after all, did not suggest the resolution, vote on it or pass it? To withdraw money from Berkeley's economy, reduce the city's tax revenues and pressure the council to rescind the resolution.
A hotel manager said his company lost $8,000 when a ROTC banquet was canceled.
"My livelihood has been threatened by your irresponsible and foolish action," wrote Lee Jester, who owns a furniture store, in an e-mail to the council.
The business people are caught in the middle, and it's not fair.
If you think the resolution sounds incendiary, you should have seen the first draft. Among other things, it condemned the expropriation of land from Native Americans and Palestinians and "the global AIDS cataclysm" - hardly the usual municipal concerns. But that's Berkeley, longtime bastion of out-there political views.
I called Shirley Dean, the mayor, to ask for a damage assessment, but she was tied up with a reporter from Tokyo.
Berkeley. Roanoke. Tokyo.
Watch what you say. It's a small world.
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