Jew World Order

“Madeline Albright was just announced as the commencement speaker.” 

I heard an editor across the newsroom.  It was not out of the ordinary for journalists to randomly read aloud and make statements, but in this instance, my ears perked up. I was in the middle of trying to meet a tight article deadline and pounding away at the prehistoric Mac computer on the 6th floor of Eschelman Hall. I looked across to the person sitting next to me and said, “Do you know what that means?”

“Yes, she is the Secretary of State,” he replied.

“Yes, but the University Medalist is Palestinian,” I insisted. 

The other student reporter didn’t appear to care. Maybe there was protest fatigue on campus. I thought to myself the less they care, the better. 

During my time at Berkeley from 1998 to 2000, I was at the epicenter of the next wave of student activism led by people of color, international students, and children of immigrants.  I worked for the Daily Californian covering protests of the resurrected Third World Liberation Front related to funding cuts in Ethnic Studies and hunger strikes as well as litigation involving early affirmative action cases and Proposition 209. My classmates had occupied buildings and interrupted board meetings. I was going to make sure that the last story that took place during my time at Cal would be memorable. 

Over 59 protestors were dragged/escorted out of the amphitheater at my commencement protesting US sanctions and militarism from Iraq to Serbia and Colombia. Our commencement protest made the news at CNN in May 2000. It was the front page of major newspapers in the Bay Area the next day and ran in all the TV news outlets. My dad even called to tell me about it from Florida. 

This was how it all went down.

I opened up the May 5, 2000 press release as soon as it was sent out. I had barely a week to plan, I thought to myself. I started emailing everyone right away. I looked up how to get tickets to the university commencement. I found two international students, who were also graduating and whose families would also not be there at the college commencement either. I told them we can get 20 tickets each if we just show our university ID. That was 60 tickets between the three of us. 

A protest open to the public was held at the Mario Savio steps of Sproul Hall. The Savio Steps are dedicated to the student protester who led the free speech movement. 

Savio is famous for his remarks: “There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels … upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

ANSWER Coalition’s West Coast coordinator Richard Becker has been central to almost every mobilization against U.S. war, occupation and sanctions in the Bay Area for the past three decades. He worked to organize the protest more broadly through his networks. 

The Sproul protestors were just planning to protest before the commencement. Local antiwar groups placed an announcement in the Berkeley Daily Planet. As most of the crowd of onlookers left, and the diehard protestors remained, Becker handed out the 60 tickets that we had secured and said, “We are only giving tickets to those willing to get arrested.” They all shook their heads in agreement. 

We raced from the south side of campus to the steep north side. We were supposed to be marching up there, but were behind schedule and didn’t want to tip anyone off as to what was in store. 

We had spent the morning making banners and posters to unfurl at the commencement. We folded them multiple times and put them in our boots to avoid detection. If we put the banners in our purses or backpacks, the chance of being discovered by security was high. 

We had also raised money for an airplane banner to fly overhead during the ceremony which read something to the effect: “500,000 Iraqi Children Dead. The Price Was Worth It?” This was a reference to Albright’s infamous 1996 60 Minutes interview where she justified the U.S. government’s murderous Iraq sanctions policy. The cheapest airplane banner company we could find flew out of a small airport in Concord, California. The Secret Service had shut down overhead airspace for Oakland and San Francisco International Airports, but neglected to contact the small, private airport. The airplane banner rode over the Greek Theatre as the ceremonies began. 

I also spent the two days before drafting a press statement about the protest and faxing it from a local copy shop on Telegraph Avenue. Email was not as reliable then. I was not taking any chances. I wanted a spectacle and major news outlets there to cover it. We would not disappoint. 

As Secretary of State Albright started speaking, protestors began shouting “genocide” and “war criminal.” When the university police and Secret Service identified a protester, who stood up and shouted, another would stand up and repeat in another part of the auditorium. Muslim and Arab students were not the only ones who were protesting. The armed police  escorted each person who disrupted out of the Greek Theatre. The veteran anti-war protestors from the afternoon rally were part of the action and were joined by agitators against US actions against Colombia and military strikes in Serbia. The security could not keep up with the protestors, because we would quickly sit down after we shouted, and there were so many of us. 

After each protestor jeered, Secretary of State Albright would repeat, “It’s great to be in Berkeley.”

I didn’t get escorted out, because even if I tried I was too soft-spoken. I also wanted to be there when Fadia spoke. Many people around me were removed. 

The university moved the University Medalist to the end of the program, so Secretary Albright would not hear her. The university administration had carefully vetted the speech for the student speaker in no advance. By the time she came to the podium, Fadia Rafeedie, had tossed her speech aside and spoke from the heart. 

As we left, other students yelled at us that we ruined their commencement. Maybe they should have cared about US militarism more than a picture perfect graduation. The University Medalist gave a voice to the protestors.  The university later wrote “the 22-year-old daughter of Palestinian immigrants criticized Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, but also the role of the US in building up ‘this brutal dictator’ and imposing sanctions against Iraq that she said had led to the death of 2.5 million people.”

Rafeedie’s speech in 2000 is to this day the best I have heard. She was a clear voice of consciousness: 

But I think what the protesters did was not embarrass our university. I think they dignified it…

Now, I don’t want to make the mood somber here because this is our commencement, but commencement means beginning, and I think it’s important for us to begin where civilization itself began, and where it’s now being destroyed. [Applause]…

And I think, that if I achieve nothing else, if this makes you think a little bit about Iraq, think a little bit about U.S. foreign policy, I’ve succeeded.

I don’t want to take too much of your time, but I want to end my speech with a slogan that hangs over my bed in Arabic. It says, “La tastawhishu tariq al-haqq min qillat al-sa’ireen fihi” and that translates into, “Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it.” 

I think our future is going to be the future of truth, and we’re going to walk on that path, and we’re going to fill it with travelers.

Scholars, historians, and activists recall Rafeedie’s words and her bravery. May they inspire the next generation of hecklers and truth-tellers. 

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