Ben Shapiro speech: UC Berkeley police brace for unrest

Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, CA)

Sept. 14--BERKELEY -- UC Berkeley police say they have learned from the violence that rocked campus in February when conservative showman Milo Yiannopoulos attempted to speak and are prepared for tonight's speech by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro.

"Certainly we have lessons learned," said the school's police chief Margo Bennett at a noon news conference ahead of the 7 p.m. event. "We're thinking outside the box."

Bennett declined to say how many officers would be on campus or discuss tactics, but she said police from all 10 University of California campuses will be on hand for the event. Officers will be confronting anyone in a mask and the school has brought in sturdier barricades than in the past.

By 9 a.m., there were signs -- and barricades -- around campus that the school is preparing for protests and possible unrest.

Barriers funneled the usually wide southern entrance to campus at Sather Road to a narrow opening. A sign posted at a campus shuttle stop along Bancroft Way notified students the stop had been relocated several blocks away. (The road will be closed in case protests spill into the street.) And a line of bright orange plastic barriers could be seen snaking in front of Sather Gate.

"To me it is outrageous," said Rafael Kadaris, organizer of a planned Refuse Fascism protest, in reaction to the perimeter. His group had planned to protest on Sproul Plaza but, as of Thursday midday, said it will move to Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue.

UC Berkeley is expecting to spend in the range of $600,000 on security for today's speech, said spokesman Dan Mogulof.

"Obviously, in many ways it's regrettable that the center of campus had to be closed off," he said. "But we can't turn a blind eye."

"It's kind of intrusive," said a junior named Savannah who declined to give her last name, as she locked her bike in front of Sproul Plaza.

Sometimes Savannah drives to school because she has to drop off her son before class, she said, but on Thursday, she woke up early and biked to campus. In February, when the planned talk by Yiannopoulos sparked violent demonstrations and was ultimately canceled, she and her son were caught in the melee and she doesn't want it to happen again.

By 10 a.m. the sidewalk in front of Zellerbach Hall, where Shapiro will speak, was covered with chalk art with phrases like "Your 'free speech' kills" and "Power to the people." Groups of police officers patrolled the area in packs, planning for the evening.

Jay Wilson, a 71-year-old who graduated from the University of San Francisco in 1968 and remembers visiting Cal as a student during the Free Speech Movement of the '60s, scanned the chalk work in front of Zellerbach, snapping pictures with his camera.

"It was pretty wild," he said of his student years. "The feeling then was like this." Wilson formed two fists with his hands and punched them together. Shapiro should be allowed to speak, he continued, even if what he says is abhorrent.

Student Calli Duran also thinks it's important Shapiro be allowed to talk. "I don't agree with him, but I think he should be allowed to speak," she said.

A number of school officials, including new chancellor Carol Christ, agree.

After it canceled the Yiannopoulos talk in February and halted a planned speech by conservative firebrand Ann Coulter in April for what it said were safety concerns, the school was hit with accusations that it limited conservative free speech. Christ has made it one of her primary missions to reclaim the school's legacy as the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement.

She has said Shapiro is welcome on campus but also tried to reassure students that the school will keep them safe. The university will close a number of buildings around Zellerbach Hall in the afternoon and create a security perimeter that only students with tickets to the event will be able to pass.

"We're going to have to cancel our meeting," said Jessica Solis, a member of Hermanas Unidas, a Latina/Chicana student organization that had planned to host a gathering in one of the buildings on campus that will be shuttered at 4 p.m. for security reasons. The closure, she said, means "we don't have the spaces where we usually go to feel safe."

Dozens of students gathered at MLK Student Union at 4 p.m., when it was slated to close, for a sit-in.

"It just doesn't make sense to have them close when we feel most unsafe," said Juniper Angelica, a student who helped organize what she dubbed a "study session." Police briefly gathered nearby, but as of several minutes after 4 p.m., were allowing the students to stay. A man who had been heckling several students was escorted from the building 10 minutes later. School staffers remaining in the building declined to comment.

The campus, some students said, felt militarized, and the city of Berkeley's vote this week to allow the use of pepper spray to control violent protests has added to the tension. "It is not a crowd control tool for us," Bennett said of UC police, but acknowledged that she couldn't promise her officers would not use it in certain circumstances.

The approximately 1,000 tickets to Shapiro's speech sold out in around 45 minutes, Mogulof said, far faster than expected. "We have no idea who purchased those tickets," he said.

Shapiro, a 33-year-old orthodox Jew who graduated from UCLA and dislikes President Donald Trump, is far less polarizing than Yiannopoulos, who is slated to return to campus later this month as part of a "Free Speech Week" hosted by conservative student organization, Berkeley Patriot.

Thursday's event will be a test run for the campus as it prepares for Yiannopoulos and other conservative speakers, including former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, to speak that week.

The Berkeley College Republicans are hosting Shapiro Thursday. The group has support from the Young America's Foundation, a national conservative organization that, as the New York Times reported this spring, has received funding from the Koch brothers and Amway's Richard and Helen DeVos, in-laws of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. The group aims to bring conservative ideas to college campuses and counts Shapiro, an opponent of transgender rights and abortion rights who has pushed back at the notion of white privilege, among its most popular speakers.

"I am expecting a riot," Bradley Devlin, secretary of the Berkeley College Republicans said during a YouTube livestream in late August of Shapiro's appearance on campus. "I am expecting violence."

Campus officials are hoping that won't happen. But, as the barriers and bolstered security evident around campus suggest, they recognize it's a real possibility.

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