Left and right let guard down, meet in middle
If the two sides in Berkeley’s free speech war ever put down their shields and talk to each other instead of yelling at each other, they might find they have more in common than they thought.
Many of the protesters — on both sides — are parents, construction workers, artists, teachers, students. Everyday people. The stereotypes get flipped on their ends — hard-hats can be antifa, massage therapists can call themselves “altright.”
To some people, two violent rallies since the beginning of March in Martin Luther King Jr.
Civic Center Park near Berkeley City Hall were symbolic of a national dysfunction, an extreme illustration of the inability of the left and right even to coexist, let alone get along.
But in interviews, many people who came to a third rally in the park Thursday said they wanted the same things — a better economy for jobs, less racism, a reduction of violence. They just have radically different approaches.
“We’re not looking for a fight — it’s OK to disagree with other people, but I think we actually do agree on quite a bit if we just talk,” said ultraconservative commentator Tim “Baked Alaska” Treadstone of Los Angeles, who was banned from the right-wing “DeploraBall” in January for controversial comments about Jews. He was one of hundreds of right-wing protesters who came to the park — some from out of state — to voice their anger that conservative provocateur Ann Coulter wouldn’t be speaking at UC Berkeley.
Treadstone was standing in the middle of a group of leftwing counterprotesters at the end of what turned out to be a peaceful rally, and he added, “Part of being American is finding some common ground. We can agree.”
Onynex Johnson listened calmly as Treadstone fervently advocated an end to racism and legal inroads for immigration, and said he was glad to hear him. “This should be in our day-to-day talk,” said the 17-year-old, who is African American. “I may disagree, but we can both agree you are a human being — and that is a start.”
That kind of dialogue resonated whether the conversations were long or brief.
“There were antifa (left-wing activists) in our crowd who actually intermingled with us, and maybe it was wishful thinking on my part, but I thought we made progress,” said Carrie Fleming, 46, who drove up in a van with 10 other conservatives from Orange County to attend the rally. “They don’t usually come to our gatherings in regular clothes and stand with us . ... I was impressed.”
Fleming grew up middleclass in Orange County and said she never voted or paid attention to politics until the 2016 campaign was in full swing. By then, she had four children, felt the cost of living was out of control and was losing hope for a better job climate. She started looking at Facebook feeds and conservative websites.
Her mother-in-law, a U.S. citizen who was born in Mexico, exhorted her to vote Republican to save jobs from unauthorized immigrants — and in short order, she was marking a ballot for Donald Trump.
“I’m a stay-at-home mom and my husband is a project manager in construction, and we live paycheck to paycheck,” Fleming said. “We’re not bad people. We’re nice. We don’t come to rallies to incite anything. We just want change.”
Also living paycheck to paycheck is Garett Andersson — but he came to the rally from the opposite side of the ideological spectrum. He said he was ready if right-wing protesters decided to mix it up.
Hoisting a “Europeans are immigrants too” sign, the 32year-old Andersson stood at the edge of the park, keeping his distance from the crowd. He’s a manual laborer living in the unincorporated community of Pacheco in Contra Costa County, and this wasn’t his first go-round with vociferous fans of Trump.
At the second pro-Trump rally in the Berkeley park, on April 15, Andersson suffered two broken ribs brawling with far-right attendees. Since then, he said, he’s been poring over YouTube videos to learn how to block punches instead of throwing them.
He said Trump’s support for such things as closed borders and deep cuts in social spending are contrary to everything he believes. He’s an anomaly in the construction industry, he said — most of his bosses lean right, and even his best friend voted for Trump.
Andersson said he respected Coulter’s right to speak, but he
wasn’t going to let it happen quietly — though he was intent on letting it happen peacefully.
“I’m for free speech, against hate speech — and against letting what happened last time happen again,” he said, referring to the April 15 fighting. But he ended up heartened that he didn’t have to use his newfound self-defense skills and said seeing people on both sides talking to one another was a small, hopeful sign.
The park rally was alive with contrasts all day. Leftist filmmaker Gabriel Diamond, a 44-year-old Berkeley resident, strolled with a sign reading “Free Hugs” and doled them out to conservatives and progressives alike. Massage therapist Johnny Benitez, 28, of Orange County wore a red helmet, denied that his Proud Boys fringe-right group is racist and preached the benefits of nonviolence.
“There’s been a lot of screaming and not enough listening going on,” Benitez said. “Do you really want to go into a cycle of violence as these events move forward? I don’t think so.”
Under a tree in the park for a full half hour, construction worker James Russell, 24, debated
the true nature of fascism and free speech with Danny Robinson, 31, who called himself “a queer small-business owner.” Both are from Berkeley.
“If you were to catch me here four years ago, I’d be on the other side of the street with anarchists, but now I’m into free speech,” Russell said.
“The idea of free speech feels like a phantom to me, not really saying what it means — like the terms pro-choice and pro-life, just misnomers,” said Robinson. Russell nodded wordlessly.
“I don’t support homosexuality, but I would never prevent anyone from being homosexual,” Russell said. He told Robinson it took guts “to do what you did to come over here to talk on this side. I appreciate it.” Robinson started to speak — then nodded wordlessly.
The two agreed that open dialogue — even widely differing dialogue — was better than riots. “Let’s keep reading on all this,” Russell said as they parted. “Hopefully we’ll meet next time in different circumstances.”
There was one big difference in the circumstances Thursday compared with the pro-Trump rallies that ended in violence and arrests: This time the most
militant leftists — who call themselves antifas, for antifascists, and come eager for battle — were missing.
To Lauren Southern, a farright Canadian talk show host wearing a skateboarding helmet with a red “MAGA” sticker (for “Make America Great Again”), it proved her argument that the other side had been responsible for “98, 99 percent” of the trouble.
Her side was dressed for a fight — toting rubberized shields and the occasional baseball bat, wearing helmets and shoulder pads. Most, like Southern, said they were glad they didn’t have to use the gear.
“It’s a show of force,” Southern said. “It’s a show of power. ... We showed that our rights will not be taken away from us.”
Berkeley police ended the day with five arrests, none of them for violent crimes. At UC Berkeley, where Coulter was supposed to speak and where liberal counterdemonstrators gathered, campus police made two arrests.
“It’s been real peaceful,” said city police Officer Byron White.
The question is whether it will be that peaceful next time — and the Trump supporters say there will be a next time, though they haven’t set a date.
“We’ll keep coming back every single week, every single weekend, until it’s a place where you're openly allowed to have right-wing opinions without people throwing bricks at you,” Southern said.
One of the avowedly radical left counterprotesters, Reiko Redmond — manager at Revolution Books in Berkeley — wasn’t convinced of the good intentions on the other side of the street as she joined a couple of dozen demonstrators chanting, “Trump must go!”
“I don’t believe anything they say about trying to reach out,” said Redmond, who did not cross the road to speak to the conservatives. “I think they want to beat people down. They came to Berkeley to do that, and they feel empowered because they have a fascist in the White House.
“Don’t get confused by all this talk of, ‘Oh, the right and the left are just as bad as each other,’ ” Reiko said. “This is fascism in its early stages. People have to keep coming out and opposing this.”