Make UC Berkeley a Sanctuary Campus —
Defend Immigrant Students!
SHUT DOWN MILO YIANNOPOULOS
No Platform for White Supremacists at UC Berkeley!
We are winning, and now it’s time to seal our victory! The racist UC-Berkeley student group was forced to cancel its Alt-Right Terror Week. But Milo Yiannopoulos still plans to rally and march at UC-Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza Sunday, Sept. 24, at 12 noon.
GATHER SUNDAY 9/24 at 10:00AM AT SPROUL PLAZA TO SHUT HIM DOWN. Berkeley is a sanctuary campus!
* Wear a white t-shirt, blue or black jeans, and a plain blue/black baseball cap to show solidarity and ensure safety for protesters on our side. Bring a bandanna to cover your face in case the police try to use teargas. Be on the lookout for Yiannopoulos to come out and assault the protest early, before he’s scheduled to speak, as he’s been known to do. If we are determined and united in the course of defending ourselves, we can shut him down. Yiannopoulos’ appearance at UC Berkeley poses a direct threat to students and the campus community. He wants to build a proto-fascist youth organization at UC Berkeley that will, if he’s allowed to speak, feel emboldened to openly attack and terrorize immigrant, black, Latina/o, Muslim, women, and trans students. We need to send him a loud message that he is NOT welcome. We shut him down at Berkeley last February. If he is stupid enough to try to come, we will shut him down again.
Full BAMN flyer below
BAMN is calling for mass protest of every speaker during “alt-right terror week.” Racist hate-speech will not be tolerated! Arrive early at the locations below. For the main Yiannopoulos event on Wednesday 9/27 gather at Upper Sproul at 3pm and for Horowitz on Tuesday 9/26 gather at Lower Sproul at 3pm.
Confirmed speakers are in ALL CAPS. Speakers the student organization
indicates are expected but unconfirmed are in italics. We will be updating as often as possible.
1. Sunday 9/24, 12 p.m. to 1 p.m., Savio Steps, Upper Sproul Plaza, Miss
Elaine ? Gather at 11am at Upper Sproul Plaza
2. Sunday 9/24, 5:00 p.m. to 6:45 p.m., Savio Steps, Upper Sproul Plaza,
speaker LISA DE PASQUALE, LUCIAN WINTRICH, Chadwick Moore ? Gather at 4pm at Upper Sproul Plaza
3. Monday, 9/25, 12 p.m. to 1 p.m., Savio Steps, Upper Sproul Plaza,
speaker ARIANA ROWLANDS ? Gather at 11am at Upper Sproul Plaza
4. Monday, 9/25, 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., Savio Steps, Upper Sproul Plaza,
speaker Monica Crowley ? Gather at 4pm at Upper Sproul Plaza
5. Tuesday, 9/26, 12 p.m. to 1 p.m., Lower Sproul Plaza, speaker Ryan
Girdusky ? Gather at 11am at Lower Sproul Plaza
6. Tuesday, 9/26, 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., Lower Sproul Plaza, speakers DAVID HOROWITZ, Pamela Gellar ? Gather at 3pm at Lower Sproul Plaza
7. Wednesday, 9/27, 12 p.m. to 1 p.m., Savio Steps, Upper Sproul Plaza,
speakers Stelion Onufrei, SARGOH, Mike Cernovich ? Gather at 11am at Upper Sproul Plaza
8. Wednesday, 9/27, 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., Savio Steps, Upper Sproul Plaza,
speakers MILO YIANNOPOULOS, Steve Bannon, Ann Coulter, Alex Marlow ? Gather at 3pm at Upper Sproul Plaza
Defend DACA! Pass the Federal DREAM Act! Full citizenship rights now for all immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers! Trump Must Resign or Be Removed!
Former Breitbart News editor and immigrant-bashing demagogue Milo Yiannopoulos is attempting to hold a week of alt-right terror at UC Berkeley campus from Sept. 24-27, potentially including Anne Coulter, who has been credited with some of Trump’s most anti-immigrant policies, and Steve Bannon, former Breitbart News founder and white supremacist leader. Last February when Yiannopoulos tried to speak at UC Berkeley, he was planning on launching a campaign to attack sanctuary cities, including reports that he was going to release the names and pictures of undocumented students with the number of Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), so that racist students could call and turn over immigrant students to be arrested and deported. Mass militant protest action shut down him and his heinous plans.
Milo Yiannopoulos and Anne Coulter’s week of events for September 24-27 represents an imminent, physical threat to the students and faculty of UC Berkeley, especially immigrants, other minority, Muslim, trans, and women students who are the ones most consistently targeted by Yiannopoulos. Especially after the horrific murder of Heather Heyer by a white supremacist in Charlottesville, the danger of alt-right, white supremacist, and fascist organizing is clear to anyone who wants to see the truth. The alt-right and fascists are emboldened by Trump’s explicit backing and by the central tenet of his program—racist anti-immigrant demagogy and attacks—including his repeal of DACA.
We have already seen what UCB administration and Chancellor Christ’s policy of giving a platform to racist and sexist demagogues leads to with Ben Shapiro. Giving Shapiro the prime venue on campus, the UC-Berkeley Administration spent a fortune to transform central campus into a police state. They brought in an army of police to surround and militarize the campus and deny access to virtually all students. The real right to public education was abrogated on Thursday night. Shapiro and the massive police presence gave violent alt-righter and white supremacist Kyle Chapman and a small group of alt-right and neo-fascists the green light to march to campus as soon as Shapiro ended. But they were met by a crowd of 200, mostly Berkeley students, who made clear the racist threats of Chapman and company were not going to be tolerated at Berkeley and escorted them away from campus. Under cover of a police line, the racists ultimately had to flee.
Other campuses such as UCLA have refused to give Yiannopoulos a platform, given the racist and violence that accompany his speeches by his bigoted supporters. By giving a platform to Yiannopoulos, the UCB administration would be giving direct license to the incitement of bigotry and terror across the campus. The primary aim of demagogues like Yiannopoulos is to repress and silence the speech of people of color and women, to eradicate from all social life everything that Yiannopoulos labels as “political correctness.” His aim is to create a hostile climate in which free speech becomes impossible, in which the rights and obligations of civil discourse can no longer be upheld because civil discourse itself will cease to exist.
As a result of the mass protests that shut down Yiannopoulos last February, Yiannopoulos was forced to resign as an editor of Breitbart News and he lost his book deal. Now he is trying to resurrect his career. Yiannopoulos notoriously riles up a lynch-mob mentality in his audiences, promoting violence, rape, harassment, and repression against Muslims, immigrants, trans students, and women. His “speeches” are a bombast of racial and sexual slurs, provocations, and curse-laden threats. His various YouTube videos are a catalogue of hate and bigotry. Yiannopoulos is a pathological misogynist and defender of rape who calls Donald Trump “Daddy.” His goal is not to add his racist ideas to the mix of Berkeley’s ideas, but to repress and terrorize immigrant students.
At a time when the movement is gaining in strength, forcing even a number of leading Republicans to distance themselves from Trump, the UC Berkeley Republicans are supporting not only Trump’s attacks, but attempting to strengthen the most violent and racist and reactionary forces of the Trump movement. If Yiannopoulos is given a platform by UC Berkeley, the new Chancellor Carole Christ and her administration will be directly responsible for aiding and allowing a bigoted and racist attacker to endanger students at UC Berkeley.
This is not an event that any college campus should condone—it threatens the safety and well-being of the students and faculty, and threatens the academic mission to promote learning and leadership. The confrontations will not be confined to the time and place of the event; hate crimes will escalate, and innocent people will suffer verbal and physical abuses. This is result of a Milo Yiannopoulos tour—that hateful pattern must be broken at UC Berkeley. The hundreds of UC Berkeley faculty have already rightly demanded that Milo be kept off the campus, calling for a boycott of classes if the plans for his week of alt-right terror go forward. We must defend Berkeley’s progressive tradition against the threat of Yiannopoulos or other neo-fascists and fascists to trying to seize upon the reactionary Trump presidency to build a fascist youth movement in America. The threat is real. Our stand must be clear: no white supremacists at UC Berkeley.
As long as Donald Trump is President, the alt-right and fascists will be emboldened and continue to organize and make attacks. The Resistance movement against Trump can force Trump to resign or be removed, if we continue to organize independently and fight in the streets, our schools, and workplaces. Taking matters into our own hands, mobilizing our own community defense, we have the power to stop racist and fascist attacks now. Join BAMN to organize, fight, and win.
* Stop racist, immigrant bashing, misogynistic, and transphobic attacks! * Defend sanctuary cities! * Stop ICE raids and deportations! * Open borders! * Stop anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim scapegoating! * No ban, no wall! * Latina/o, Black, Native American, Arab, Asian, and White, Immigrants With and Without Papers—We are ALL Californians! * Abolish the Electoral College! * To defeat Trump’s attack on healthcare in America, California must adopt universal healthcare now!
BAMN Op-Ed in USA TODAY from May 1, 2017:
Free speech issue is a diversion
America today is engaged in a historic struggle, testing whether the nation’s principles of freedom and unalienable rights can exist for millions of immigrants. Their freedom, their rights, are under attack.
The Trump administration is conducting a racial purge, a campaign of mass deportations against America’s Latino and Muslim immigrant communities. Immigrants who have lived peacefully in America for many years are being driven from their homes and families. This unfolding human catastrophe is the single greatest threat to all freedom and all rights in our nation.
But some of Trump’s supporters — anti-immigrant demagogues and even fringe fascist elements — are seeking to change the subject of discourse to a different sort of freedom, one that shows no signs of being in peril: the “free speech” of the anti-immigrant demagogues. It is a dishonest, hypocritical diversion.
The anti-immigrant demagogues organize followers all over the country, and speak incessantly. Their right to speak is effusively defended by every branch of government, by the politicians of both political parties, by every police department and by every major news outlet, including USA TODAY. The entire issue is a straw man.
There is no government plot to abridge or abolish the free speech rights of the anti-immigrant bigots; the real question is whether there will be anyone left to speak against them.
The objective of these anti-immigrant demagogues is to repress and ultimately silence the free speech of the growing Resistance: the mass movement for immigrant rights.
Today, the only true defense of freedom and equality rests on the shoulders of America’s “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” To the growing movement for immigrant rights that has mobilized in the streets and is braving the storms of persecution, and to the millions of immigrants who are fighting for their rights against a vicious campaign of scapegoating, the following declaration must be made: Your very presence makes America the home of the brave — fighting together, we will make it the land of the free.
Shanta Driver is National Chair of BAMN
