By San Francisco World Cant Wait

REPORT from SF Bay World Can’t Wait: Protest at Boalt Hall Graduation       5/16/11 ST
To be accompanied  by the YouTube (already sent) and photos (already sent)

The world knows torture is a war crime, and silence is complicity – and judging by the 500 orange ribbons worn during commencement at UC Berkeley Law (Boalt Hall) last week, a lot of the Class of 2011  and their community know this too!
John Yoo was a key legal architect of the torture system built by the Bush Regime and continuing now under Obama.  A tenured UC law professor, Yoo took two years’ sabbatical to join the Bush/Cheney Torture Team.  Their ghastly program (think Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo) was maded possible by the legal work of Yoo and other attorneys.  After Yoo’s return to Boalt, he’s been a focus of protest ever since with frequent, sometimes intense demonstrations on campus and off demanding : FIRE, DISBAR AND PROSECUTE JOHN YOO.  Last fall’s Berkeley Says “No To Torture” Week was endorsed by the city council, and brought outspoken anti-torture experts from many fields together for protests, forums, panels and performances.
Since 2008, lively protests have greeted every Boalt graduation.  This time World Can't Wait was joined by Code Pink, Vets for Peace, Progressive Democrats of America and others. About 30 people gave out flyers (see http://www.worldcantwait.net) and orange ribbons, until over 500 grads and guests had the orange ribbons on.
This definitely surpasses the reception to our message from any previous year.  At times we had to just hold out handfuls of ribbons because we couldn’t pass them out singly fast enough.  Families took ribbons together.  Grads and families were posing near our silent jumpsuit/hooded “prisoner” to have their photos taken.  Over and over, especially from parents, grandparents, all nationalities, we heard “THANK you for being here!”  And compared to other years, we met very little hostility or anger – of course, some people did not like our presence, but mostly they’d just look away. (We got some “John Yoo ROCKS!” jeers from graduates, but Boalt does have a Federalist Society chapter, so no surprise.)
Once again, Boalt's dean (and Obama’s former law professor) Christopher Edley refused to accept an orange ribbon.  As Edley led the processional past, people called out to him: “Dean Edley, did you forget your orange ribbon AGAIN?  Aren’t you against torture?  How will people know you oppose torture if you don’t wear the orange ribbon?  And why is your student Obama carrying out torture?  Aren’t you ashamed of him?”  But still the dean refused to take his ribbon.  (Some other faculty members wore them, however.)
There is still far too deep a silence at Boalt and at UC itself, when a war criminal like John Yoo is still harbored on the campus.  But the larger-than-ever number of people welcoming and wearing the orange ribbons this year at graduation signifies something’s changing, over time.  People are far more aware of the ugly facts about Yoo and his UC protectors than ever before; the persistent protesters may take some credit for that.  Then too, John Yoo has been hot in the news of late, pronouncing torture legitimate “because it worked (in leading to the death of bin Laden)” so perhaps people who have been following the story and abhorring torture although in relative silence,  were just glad to have this chance to “speak.”
World Can’t Wait shares the determination with all the other protesters that we won’t stop.  We will keep working to see John Yoo and all the other torture lawyers and war criminals brought to justice.  They have to be fired, disbarred, impeached if they’re judges – and prosecuted for war crimes, just as their historical counterparts, the lawyers and judges of Hitler’s Third Reich, were after World War II.   We will not forget the victims of the illegal rendition and torture, we will not be silenced, and we will bring more and more people to break the silence and take this stand with us.

Coverage from The Berkeley Daily Planet | Original Article

By Steven Finacom

Protests against John Yoo at Berkeley Law Commencement

Steven Finacom

Cecile Pineda offers an orange ribbon to a guest at the Law School Commencement as part of the protest against John Yoo and torture policies.

Steven Finacom

One group of protestors gathered south of the Greek Theatre.

“May I offer you one of these to protest torture in your own country?” said writer Cecile Pineda, as she proffered orange ribbons to each visitor walking up the ramp from Gayley Road towards the Greek Theatre.
The orange clad Pineda was part of a small protest organized by the group World Can’t Wait! outside the May 13, 2011 Commencement ceremonies for Berkeley Law ( formerly Boalt School of Law) at UC Berkeley.

Some protestors offered ribbons, others carried signs or banners, and one dressed in an orange jumpsuit, chains, and a hood to symbolize prisoners tortured at Guantanamo Bay, in Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere in the far flung network of United States outposts and interventions in the world over the past decade.

The focus of this protest was Professor John Yoo, a member of the faculty at the School of Law who is regarded as a prime architect of legal policies created under the Bush Administration to justify torture.

Some took the ribbons from Pineda with thanks; a few rushed by then turned back to get one. “Sure, we do agree”, said one man. Others looked confused or ignored her. “It’s a sunny day and we don’t think much on sunny days”, she said.

She said she had picketed with both World Can’t Wait and Code Pink. “Protestors have come more and more unsmiling. I think that’s a barometer of what’s happening in a culture and a society.”

“People really need to have suffered to understand what torture is.”

The response to the protest was “really good”, said David Sylvester, another protester who studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. “We’ve had a much better response this year than last year.”

“The main issue is to get the torture into people’s psyche”, Sylvester said. In addition to focusing on John Yoo, “we also protest (former Secretary of State) Condi Rice, because she’s another torture traitor.”

“This year many more people are protesting torture.” There’s “much more receptivity to the message”, Sylvester said.

This was the fourth protest at a Boalt graduation said Stephanie Tang, one of the lead organizers. “Every year a lot of the graduates understand the issue”, and many take orange ribbons, she said.

The protest focused on both entryways to the Greek Theatre and along the sidewalks approaching it. UC police watched the demonstrators.

“A lot of people are more aware. People are taking the ribbon this year as a sign they don’t support torture,” Tang said. “What is really needed to stop the torture is a massive refusal and resistance from the people of this country.”

“Dean Edley has never worn an orange ribbon”, she said “He refused it again this year.”

In 2009 the Dean of the law school, Christopher Edley, Jr. wrote a perspective on the Yoo controversy which can still be found on the Law School website.

The School of Law faculty shouldn’t support Yoo, Tang argued. But Rice and Yoo were “allowed back into academia as if they don’t have blood on their hands.”

“John Yoo is no role model, he’s a war criminal.”

The group has “confronted him in public at lectures and classes”, Tang said. “It’s horrendous that the faculty and administration treat this as lightly as they do.”

“There are no issues of academic freedom here”, she argued.

“The University and Boalt are complicit in torture by failing to maintain academic freedom as the pursuit of truth, not as a means to justify political goals”, one of the pieces of literature distributed by the group read.

“Who in any leadership position at Boalt is asking questions, and demanding a debate on Yoo, his theories and his suitability as a professional, ethical, or moral role model for students? Without this, claims of academic ‘freedom’ are a sham. Repressive regimes always look ‘free’—until you ask real questions.”

“What a bizarre situation we face: UC is paying an advocate/designer of illegal government action (rendition, aggressive war, torture) teaching constitutional law and ethics to the next generation of lawyers and judges,” the flyer continued.