BERKELEY, CALIF. - While the City Council here has little -- read, no -- sway over foreign policy and distant wars, local parking is a different matter. And so it was that a parking space directly in front of the recruiting station for the Marine Corps was awarded Tuesday night to an antiwar group in the hope of running the Marines out of town.
The City Council approved a resolution that encourages people to nonviolently "impede, passively or actively," the work of the recruiters. To that end, the council awarded the group, Code Pink, exclusive use of the parking spot for four hours one afternoon each week, for the next six months, to stage its protests.
The council also directed the city attorney to investigate legal means of ousting the recruiting station, calling the Marines "uninvited and unwelcome intruders" in this bastion of liberal politics, the 1960s free speech movement and high-minded nonbinding resolutions.
Tom Bates, the city's mayor and a former Army man himself, said the vote represented his constituents' longstanding -- and frequently vocal -- distaste for current military activity.
"Berkeley has been opposed to the Iraq war since the beginning; it's overwhelmingly unpopular in this community," he said. "And people feel this is an opportunity to express their discontent."
NEW YORK TIMES
