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Free Speech: It Ain't Always Free

University of California lawyer Michael Goldstein just clobbered the tree sitters in (perhaps) the only way a University lawyer knows how: by attempting to extract from the protestors what this SF Gate article dubbed a 'pound of flesh' for the cost they incurred. Specifically, Mr. Goldstein is after something to the tune of $10,000 per sitter to compesate the $800,000+ UC Berkeley estimates it spent on police and security measures during the twenty-two month string of shenanigans.

Rhetorical question: Absent Mr. Goldstein, does the University magically absorb the cost? Or pass it on?

"It's really vindictive," said an attorney for some of the sitters, Dennis Cunningham. "They don't have this kind of money."

To which I say, "'Vindictive?' Denny, Denny, Denny. This isn't venom, this is retribution. What was the University and its students (like me) supposed to do with the tree sitters? Thank them? Encourage them to keep spending my money? Feed them, for crying out loud? The bottom line is that I certainly don't have ten grand to spare, either -- the difference is I didn't glibly inflict the cost."

Seriously, I am so happy to hear this I don't know where to begin. Maybe with a disclaimer: I love trees, worry about the 'hand of progress,' generally believe that folks in suits should be handled with extreme caution, etc. But come on. Berkeley, California, is NOT the place to stage a progressive protest. It's like going to your grandmother with an owie and demanding a sympathy kiss; people in Berkeley are going to approve of activists -- it's their nature. To relish in that is to accept a gimmie. It's returning to the mother-ship. It's crawling back into the womb.

The truth is that if the delinquent idiots who have been populating our hillside for the last twenty-two months had any nerve -- if they had any stones -- they would never have crawled up our trees in the first place. They would have taken their youth and energy and passion somewhere it could do a shred of good, like Mississippi, or Idaho, or the Congo. Or even Oakland, if distance isn't their bag.

So, to the tree sitters: Thanks for absolutely nothing. Thanks for wasting your well-motivated yet impotent political energies. Thanks for the continuing low-level helicopter flights over Boalt Hall, and for taxing our already weary law enforcement and court systems. Thanks for making liberals like me look bad. Thanks, finally, for getting your worthless cause kicked to the curb.

But thank you, most of all, for being citizens of this fine country. With any luck you will be made to reckon with your bill -- so I won't have to. Perhaps Mr. Goldstein accepts installments.

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on September 22, 2008 (boomark / email).