VIDEO WITH NEWS CLIPS AND CLIPS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEETING
DETAILED ACCOUNT OF NIGHTS EVENTS WRITTEN BY MAF BLOGGER DANNY
Excerpt from the loooooong blog post
"After I sat down, the Council members resumed discussion amongst themselves. Everyone in the crowd seemed pretty confident that they had a consensus. Then it was councilmember Linda Miao who offered a substitute resolution that would effectively put off final judgment until the administration changes their policy about resettlement of GITMO detainees.
Thanks to the Republicans taking over the house, it’s currently illegal for US dollars to be spent for the transportation of any GITMO detainees to US soil, either for incarceration or to be released. So Linda Miao’s substitution would have put off the resolution until that changes (which will probably be never) unfortunately, when the council took a vote on this measure, it failed.
Right after that, Councilman Darryl Moore moved to previous question – meaning vote on whether or not to invited GITMO detainees to come to Berkeley.
Four voted yes. Four abstained, and one voted no. That’s one vote shy of what they needed, so the resolution failed.
Now, when the clerk said the resolution failed, I started clapping wildly, and I think most of the people in the room were not paying much attention and just assuming that the council would naturally pass the resolution, so when I started clapping, I think everyone thought the resolution had passed, because everyone else started clapping and cheering too!
This was really funny, there you have this room full of liberals all clapping for a resolution that just failed the floor vote ;) someone else in the audience realized this and corrected everyone and when they realized that their precious GITMO resolution had just gone down in flames, they were pissed!
People were groaning out loud, shouting about war crimes and torture or whatever, mostly they were just pissed, and some wanted to take their frustration out on me, which was actually a lot of fun because it gave me even more of a sense of “yes, I did this to you people. Be mad at me, because I just beat you.”