After six days of violent clashes with police in Berkeley, California, more than 5,000 student demonstrators peacefully assembled July 4 to take possession of Telegraph Avenue, the territory they had defended with barricades only a few days before,
The confrontation began June 29 when police moved in with clubs and tear gas against a demonstration of more than a thousand persons called by the Young Socialist Alliance to protest against de Gaulle's ban on revolutionary youth and working class organisations in France, In accordance with legal requirements, a permit had been secured for sound equipment to be used in a sidewalk rally. The cops declared the rally illegal, using the excuse that a few people had sat down in the street,
Peter Camejo, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate for California and a leader of the demonstration, was addressing the crowd when the police made their move. In an interview that appeared in the July 12 issue of the socialist THE MILITANT*, Camejo described what follows:
ELIZABETH BARNES: How did the struggle in Berkeley begin?
PETER CAMEJO: The six-day battle that just took place in Berkeley began with a police attack on a demonstration organised by the Young Socialist Alliance in solidarity with the French students and workers. The demonstration was called for Haste and Telegraph Avenue because this is the best location for a political rally in the campus community, When we called it, we took all the legal steps needed. We got a sound permit, the only permit you need for a sidewalk rally,
Various organisations were supporting this rally in addition to the YSA. Among them were the Peace and Freedom Party, Black Panther Party, the Movement, the Independent Socialist Club, the Tricontinental Student Association, the Iranian students and other groups.
Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton sent a letter from prison to the rally.
It had been decided at two open meetings held to plan the demonstration that we would try to keep the street clear, So the monitors moved quickly to get people out of the street.
At one point, though, there were a few people who ran out in the street and sat down,
It was a small incident, but the police used it as a pretext to claim that they had to disperse the crowd and 20 or so cops moved down the street toward the demonstration. The police then announced that the gathering was an "unlawful assembly" and ordered everyone to leave. I then asked that Mayor Johnson and Police Chief Beale, who were in the crowd to step forward so that we could discuss and work out the situation without a police attack. The mayor refused to come forward but the chief of police did.
By that time the monitors were lined up, linked arm in arm, along the street and everyone was on the sidewalk, I pointed this out to the chief of police and asked him on what basis he could attack our demonstration, and to please reconsider, He agreed to that, and asked for two minutes to think it over. He and several other policemen walked off to discuss it, but when they came back they repeated their stand that the rally was "illegal",
DO NOT DISPERSE
Of course, nobody left. And a line of ministers lined up in front of the police and pleaded with them not to attack. Then the police started to move against the crowd, the monitors told people to withdraw rather than engage the police directly, but not to disperse or leave the area,
The police then did something which was new for Berkeley - they opened up with tear gas. That's when the fighting began. As the crowd began to run, the police ran after them. The demonstrators in some cases began to build barricades to defend themselves, with wood from construction sites or whatever they could get their hands on,
Then the police used a new tactic we've never seen here before. They would enter an area where people were gathered, and from speeding cars, sometimes going as fast as 50 or 40 miles an hour they would launch grenades, It was dangerous at this time to be young and to be walking in the streets in any sizable group, because these carloads of police could attack at any time,
E.B.: How did you get organised to fight this attack by the police?
During the evening the banks and other large businesses had their windows broken. There was sporadic fighting throughout the town. People went down to the business district.
From the beginning of the police raid, the cops were indiscriminate in whom they attacked, They continued this policy when they fanned out through the town. In the south campus area, for example, police would suddenly pull up next to people who were standing outside their homes - many of them who were just curious and had come out to see what was going on, The cops would speed over jump out and start beating them up, They would even chase people inside their houses and start beating them up.
These endless attacks and police harassment of people began to turn the tide of public opinion in favour of the demonstrators.
CURFEW
The next day a curfew was declared, The curfew was based on a law which was originally conceived during the Second World War for the purpose of protecting the area during air raids, With the curfew beginning, we knew we were at a new stage of the fight,
We marched down the street to city hall and held a meeting there. Then we decided to try to enter the curfew area as a protest against the curfew,
P.C.: It was clear that the police had violated our constitutional right to free assembly. The very presence of the police, the fact that they were massing two blocks up from the rally, intimidated people from coming. [illegible] increased number of arrests. The rally soon disintegrated when the mayor appeared, and many small groups who left ended up fighting the cops,
The fact that we did demonstrate on this day was crucial, because if we had decided not to come out that day, it would have given the impression that the curfew would break the movement. At the same time, we were in the difficult situation of knowing that the relationship of forces was very unfavourable to us. We only had about 500 people in the streets at the time we acted,
The next day a mass meeting was called to chart Plans for protesting the police attack. Five hundred people came,
At this rally I took the position that we had to fight for our rights, that rights are never given and that you have to win them by fighting for them, and that in order to win we would have to take direct action, [illegible]
Sunday was a stalemate, in my opinion, and then Monday we opened up a whole new strategy, which brought us to victory.
We then decided to go into the Telegraph and Haste area to begin another rally. We had a sound permit that covered that area. We marched down Telegraph and filled the street around Haste and Telegraph. As a result, that whole section of Telegraph became blocked off, and pretty soon a rock band brought by the Resistance came and started playing.
Then it became evident that police were beginning to mass in the area. At the same time the crowd grew much larger, Hundreds and hundreds of people, primarily students, began to pour into the area to back up those already there. We estimate there were around 2,000 people,
BARRICADES
Barricades began to go up as people began to seek ways to slow up any police advance, They used sawhorses, trash cans, beams from construction sites, news stands, whatever was around,
The police came by surprise - they charged down the street at us with no advance warning, and this began the second night of fighting, which was shorter but much more intensive than the night before. The students and young people fought much harder,
We called off all demonstrations for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and simply declared we would go through all the procedures needed to get Telegraph closed for Thursday, July 4. The mass meeting where all this was decided was held on campus - outside - because no one had given us a place to meet. This meeting showed the movement's rapid growth, the sympathy that we were getting [illegible]. The curfew had continued to turn the tide somewhat in our favour - more than we had realised. [illegible] were [more than] 1,500 [who] turned up for this meeting. [illegible] was clear was that the [illegible] was now beginning to enter the struggle in greater numbers. There are only 9,000 students on campus during the summer, and we estimated that about 900 of the people at that meeting were students.
[It] was agreed at this meeting that the next action would be to gather at the city council meeting the next day to hear the debate on the demands we were making. The mayor, under pressure from the movement, had agreed to hold an open meeting of the council.
B.B.: What were the other groups involved?
P.C.: [illegible] groups which took part [included the] [Young Socialist] Alliance and Socialist Workers Party, [Peace] and Freedom Party [and] the Independent [Socialist] Club, many of whose members [were in] the Peace and Freedom Party [illegible] were the main political [forces on the] issue involved [illegible] movement to have the right to struggle against the oppression of the black community. [illegible] a meeting on this specific question [illegible] did not in any [way illegible] other struggles, but on the [contrary would stre]ngthen those struggles and the [number] of people participating in them, [illegible]
COUNCIL MEETING
So many people turned out for the council meeting that they had to change meeting places at the last minute. We presented three main proposals to the council. The first was that the curfew be lifted completely. The second was that the Peace and Freedom Party proposal to hold a referendum for a police control-board be placed on the ballot, and the third was, of course, the closing of [illegible] for the July 4 rally.
During the council meeting, which lasted eight hours, between 50 and 100 people got up and expressed their views on what was happening, with [illegible] per cent of them being completely favourable [to] our proposals,
When the question finally came to a vote, the result was a five-to-four vote against us, denying us Telegraph Avenue for a rally on the 4th. (They offered us a different site for the rally.) Of course, there was an immediate outcry against this by everyone present. However, the council also had voted to lift the curfew. We called a mass meeting that evening in the same hall where the city council had held its meeting. Close to 2,000 people came, making it the largest decision-making movement meeting in the history of Berkeley. The meeting was almost unanimous in favour of our proposal, which was a simple one: that the city council's rejection of allowing us Telegraph Avenue had become a symbol - the block on Telegraph and the date of July 4 has become a symbol - for our right of assembly and our right to have a say over what happened to us, and for the right to organise to fight for the things we believe in.
In arguing for the proposal, I made the point strongly that if we stood tough and showed we were ready to fight for our rights, we would win to our side all the people who were wavering - and we would bring to bear such pressure on the city council that it couldn't be ruled out that members of the city council would capitulate before Thursday. This was especially true if we made it clear that we were ready to fight. But if we had begun to capitulate, they would have intensified their attack on us, instead of the other way around, The next morning, when the city council met and reconsidered the question, they did switch and voted five to three to give us the Avenue. Thus ended the six days of fighting in the street and with the city council.
E.B.: What was the role of the YSA in all of this?
P.C.: Much of the press and TV and the newspapers played up this whole thing as a purely YSA action. This is inaccurate, and it reflects a tendency on the part of the press to redbait [every]thing. The YSA, in [actual] numbers [was a] small fraction of the people involved in the actions. But, throughout the six days, YSAers were [illegible] active and in many [places] played [a] key role in doing the work to build [the movement]. After the original rally [we did] everything possible to [make the rally] as big as possible, to broaden its base of support, to work to bring in every group and every individual that could be gotten to participate in every aspect of the work. By doing this, we wanted to keep any group from completely dominating the action. We saw everything as a movement thing, and tried to organise every action as a movement thing.
* We have published extracts only from this interview. Readers interested in further information should get the July 12 and July 19 issues of THE MILITANT, the latter has an excellent picture supplement on the question. THE MILITANT can be got from Pioneer Book Service, 8, Toynbee St., London E.1., costing 1/-, plus 3d postage.