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Council did duty by standing up, speaking out

John M. Hartenstein, Esq.
Wednesday November 14, 2001

Following is a copy of a letter originally sent to Councilmember Dona Spring: 

I did not get a chance to attend last month’s council meeting. I am very happy that you introduced the resolution and even more so that it passed. I have seen the City Council go back and forth over the years as to whether Berkeley should take a stand on foreign policy issues or focus solely on sewers and roads. Perhaps other cities have the luxury of basking in their parochialism; Berkeley is not so free, and to some extent it is the duty of this city – among all cities – to stand up and speak out on issues of great concern to the world and the nation.  

Moreover, all of us living in the city pay taxes to the federal government, have a stake in the world condition, (may wish to be free from retaliation for our national government’s acts), and many here will even be called to war or have their sons or brothers called to war. It is most definitely a local concern of Berkeley’s, and if Berkeley, of all places, does not speak out, does not refute the virtually 100 percent support the media polls say are in favor of bombing sovereign nations, then who will? Berkeley is also one of the few places in the country with such diversity, such a mixed population which includes Indians, Pakistanis, Afghans, Iranians, etc., muslims and arabs of every description, not to mention all of the people from the other 87-or-so nationalities, that we should (and generally do) have a better understanding of what it means to live around people unlike ourselves, and how alike we all really are, ultimately. It is amazing how quickly most (now proven by polls) Americans are willing to suspend other people’s civil rights, to bomb and kill innocent people who happen to live behind the wrong borders; most Americans seem to really and truly place a lesser value on the lives of foreigners or nonChristians or dark-skinned people than the value they place on lives of American citizens.  

We cannot allow Berkeley to sit silently while this kind of hatred and insanity goes on. Therefore, I applaud your efforts to bring this before the city’s agenda and to ask Berkeley to take the only acceptable position. You succeeded in even gaining only abstentions from your opponents, I understand – which really demonstrates that there is only one right, just answer in the debate. 

There is much more one could say, much more we will all have to keep saying, for as long as it takes, in as many venues as we can be heard in. 

John M. Hartenstein, Esq. 

Berkeley