Recently, there was a protest at UC Berkeley, which led the loathsome Breitbart journalist Milo Yiannopoulos to cancel his talk. Some of you may have figured out by now, this is a local story to me. I saw the protest myself.
Well, I only really walked by the protest on my way home. There were maybe a hundred people at 5 pm, but UC Berkeley says it later grew to 1,500. Protestors were chanting “No Milo! No Trump!” There was someone holding a giant dove. I took a flyer, which was produced by refusefascism.org–and then being anti-social I went home and played video games.
Somebody managed to capture the dove. This photo is on the edge of the crowd so it doesn’t tell you how big it was. From Chicago Suntimes, who credits it to Ben Margot/Associated Press.
It was later I heard from Facebook that the protest had turned violent, and the university cancelled the talk. I heard that protestors attacked police, set a portable generator on fire, and then broke a bunch of windows nearby. There were few minor injuries.
Among my friends, many expressed sympathy for the protest, or were at the protest, but they condemned the violence. They were keen to highlight this particular part of the UC Berkeley statement:
The violence was instigated by a group of about 150 masked agitators who came onto campus and interrupted an otherwise non-violent protest.
