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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsProgressive Incoherence in “Radical” Berkeley
from Dissent magazine:
Progressive Incoherence in Radical Berkeley
By Zelda Bronstein - August 1, 2013
In the fall of 2011 Occupy caught the world by surprise, as tens of thousands of Americans, led by youth no less, took to the streets demanding economic justice. In Berkeley, California, Occupy upset expectations of a different sort. That city, my home for thirty-three of the past forty-six years, is widely regarded as a prime redoubt of the American left. But in the East Bay and, for a few weeks, the entire country, the epicenter of Occupy materialized in front of Oaklands, not Berkeleys, city hall.
To hear the media tell it, Berkeleys default came out of the blue. The Occupy movement, wrote Carolyn Jones in the San Francisco Chronicle, has been surprisingly quiet in Berkeley, which prides itself on a long history of rabble-rousing. The quiescence surprised the alternative press as well. Why, wondered Zaineb Mohammed in a piece posted on the New America Media website, is (sic) the city and college that ignited the mass protests of the 60s barely a blip on the radar now?
Media puzzlement at Berkeleys truancy was predictable. For decades the press has disseminated the myth of radicalor leftist or liberal or progressiveBerkeley; take your pick, the terms are used interchangeably. With few exceptions, reporters cite sporadic rabble-rousing as evidence of a tenacious civic activism while disregarding numerous signs of a rightward turn within city hall, political disengagement outside it, and ideological disarray all around.
But Berkeleys enduring radical image is not simply the creation of an unobservant media. Its also the work of the citys political class and its constituents. Not that twenty-first-century Berkeley politicos call themselves radical or leftist or even liberal; their label of choice is progressive, a contested term embraced by political actors with diametrically opposed views. ........................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/progressive-incoherence-in-radical-berkeley
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Progressive Incoherence in “Radical” Berkeley (Original Post)
marmar
Aug 2013
OP
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)1. There are a lot of sell-outs in the city of Berkeley. The place has lost it's way.
"Incoherence" is a compliment compared to the reality of the politics there, at the city level and among those in power in the UC system.
It's a shame, really.
Arctic Dave
(13,812 posts)2. Berkely is nothing more then nostalgia for 60's radicals.
Todays Berkeley is nothing but the shell of that time used as a prop for repugs to bash liberals.
It is about as liberal/radical as a kid dressing up as the caricature of a hippie on Halloween.