Berkeley won’t welcome Guantanamo Bay detainees

February 16, 2011 8:10 am by Frances Dinkelspiel

Bradley Manning, Photo courtesey of The Telegraph

Berkeley won’t be offering a home any time soon to former Guantanamo Bay detainees. And it won’t be calling Private Bradley Manning a hero, either.

The City Council on Tuesday night rejected a proposal to invite two former Gitmo prisoners to come and live in Berkeley. However, the council did approve a resolution calling for an “immediate end to the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,” of Manning, who is in prison awaiting trial for allegedly leaking documents to the Wikileaks group.

The city council had so many items on the agenda that it did not start to discuss the two controversial matters until 11 pm, four hours after the meeting started. After a long line of people declared their support for offering a home to the former Guantanamo Bay detainees, the council rejected the motion put forward by the Peace and Justice Commission.

That resolution failed 4-1, with four council members abstaining.

On the Manning matter, the council had tabled a resolution in December that declared Manning a hero. A revised resolution that deplored his living conditions in jail passed unanimously.

Update The four councilmembers who voted yes on the main Guantanamo motion were Max Anderson, Jesse Arreguín, Darryl Moore and Kriss Worthington. Councilmember Linda Maio proposed a substitute motion that would have welcomed the detainees following confirmation of their innocence from various federal authorities and a change in federal law allowing for them to settle in the U.S. Only Maio and Mayor Tom Bates supported the substitute motion.

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  • Observer

    “After a long line of people declared their support for offering a home to the former Guantanamo Bay detainees…”

    It’s interesting how the council members’ online public comment forum ( http://www.OpenTownHall/for/Berkeley ) augmented and diversified the feedback on this Guantanamo resettlement proposal. In contrast to the public hearing, the online feedback (from people residing in Berkeley) was 2 to 1 against the resettlement proposal.

    I’m not claiming that the online public comment forum is a statistically accurate poll or definitively representative of the Berkeley community (in fact, the online forum explicitly states that it isn’t); but the public hearing certainly isn’t. Yet, in the absence of the online public comment forum, many people (including council members, the media, and the community) erroneously conclude that the feedback from the public hearing must be representative of the community.

    Apparently, there are many Berkeley residents that have an opinion on these city council agenda items, but don’t have the time or inclination to go to the public hearing.
    Accordingly, the online public comment forum complements the public hearing, by enabling these residents to make public comments. That additional feedback improves the insights of our government leaders — resulting in more credible deliberations that in turn build public trust in government…

  • Phoebe Sorgen

    Even if 1 more Councilmember had voted for the proposal, Berkeley wouldn’t be offering a home soon to 1 or 2 freed Guantanamo Bay detainees cleared of wrong-doing, because the feds won’t allow it. Public pressure can nudge public policy. America used to stand for due process. Remember “and justice for all?” Our reputation worldwide has been besmirched by torture. Presumed innocent until tortured into making a false “confession”? The Berkeley Peace & Justice Commission proposal was a symbolic, humane gesture towards those detainees who were innocent, never charged, sold by bounty-hunters and imprisoned for over 8 years. It was determined that they pose no danger. The US government cleared them of any wrong-doing, yet they’ll remain in the Guantanamo gulag as long as they have no where to go. The main point of the proposal was to help Obama get the Guantanamo gulag closed.

  • DC

    Even if it had passed it would have had exactly zippo effect on Federal policy. None. Nada. There’s no pressure here, no realpolitik of pressuring lawmakers and the president to change policy. It’s just a resolution to make us feel good about ourselves so that we can say we “did” something when in fact we did nothing. It’s political theatre regardless of the outcome of the vote.

  • Bruce Love

    @DC, a great deal of politics is theater and a great deal gets done that way.

    Take the case of the famous “Berkeley first” boycott of South Africa.

    Fiscally, that resolution might as well have said: “Hey, Apartheid South Africa! Yeah, you! We’re talking to you. You know all that money we were not going to send you? Well guess what! You ain’t gonna see a dime of it until you fix things over there!”

    Other cities followed suit, though, and the effort helped make it easier for corporate entities to join in. That helped to sustain international pressure. In aggregate it worked.

    Would it have happened without Berkeley’s largely theatrical gesture? As soon? Impossible to answer but we do know that Berkeley’s action back then brought a lot of national news attention to the issue.

  • DC

    I guess I don’t have a lot of patience for it. It seems to me that such theatrical events take the place of real action and serve mostly to make people feel good – the bread and circuses of political action. Divestment is action and has some direct and tangible effect – maybe less for Berkeley and more for New York, but some direct effect. The stuff above, not so much.

  • Eric Panzer

    A key difference between the South African divestment and the PJC’s more recent performances is that there was a concrete step Berkeley could take. In the case of both the detainees and Manning, there is nothing the city can do legally or materially.

    What was truly interesting about the council meeting was Kriss Worthington’s position on the Manning resolution. The resolution was expanded by council member Capitelli to refer “all individuals held by this country, including Manning.” Worthington responded “I think we’d need to research who else we’re referring to.” Bates clarified that it was “all inclusive” and council member Maio chimed in, “Anyone who’s subjected to this kind of treatment that’s inhumane.” But Worthington persisted: “We have no idea who we’re talking about.” In the end Worthington begrudgingly voted yes saying, “It’s stupid, but I’m not going to vote against Bradley Manning because have stupid language, so I’ll vote yes.”

    Worthington’s inconsistency is astounding. Assuming the city is going to take a symbolic stand against inhumane treatment, shouldn’t that be all-inclusive? Or does Worthington think he might support inhumane treatment for certain prisoners? More likely this points to what we could have known all along: for Worthington and probably for other supporters of the original PJC resolution, lionizing Manning was always the end goal.

  • Name Withheld

    @ Eric ––– I guess the question you have to ask yourself is whether you think rough blankets, a cell that is lit 24/7, and no access to news or the out-of-doors is “cruel and inhuman” or not. Boring, annoying, and uncomfortable, sure. But is it cruel & inhuman? I don’t really have an answer, but I could see it going either way.

  • Hannah Delich

    Here is a link to an article that illuminates some points missed by Phoebe and doesn’t romanticize the issue:

    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/02/13/BAR61HLNEJ.DTL&feed=rss.news

  • Bruce Love

    @Name, at least as it is described, it is well known to be torture and to be much more than just “boring, annoying, and uncomfortable”. It tends to drive people insane. It tends to depersonalize them and make them utterly dependent on captors. Here is a lay New Yorker article covering a variety of related techniques.

    http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande

    The technique (isolation, removal of stimulus, sleep disruption, physical stress — all for very long periods of time) is used around the world to break people for (bogus) “interrogation”, etc.

    Regardless: The man has not had a trial, has not been convicted of a thing. What excuse has the state for this extreme treatment? His communications and travels could be limited far less punishingly. By the published reports, at least, even the solitary confinement of the hikers in Iran was materially less extreme.

  • Eric Panzer

    @Name Withheld: It was not my intent to comment on what we regard as inhumane. Rather I was simply saying that any condemnation of inhumane treatment should be universally applicable; I found it curious that Worthington–given his politics–seemed eager to make the condemnation conditional. I suppose one could argue the merits of a resolution that deemed Manning’s current treatment disproportionately inhumane, but I feel this is even murkier and further from the council’s purview than what passed last night.

  • Name Withheld

    @ Eric ––– I wasn’t there so I don’t know the tone with which he said it, but I suppose he might have been thinking that certain treatment might be acceptable for convicted criminals that might not be appropriate treatment for people (like Manning) who have been accused of a crime but not yet convicted.

    @ Bruce ––– I don’t disagree. I’m just posing the question. None of us really know what Manning’s conditions are like.

  • Bruce Love

    Is this report credible? It is from one of Manning’s defense attorneys, I think.

    http://www.armycourtmartialdefense.info/2011/03/confinement-conditions-worsen.html

    “Last night, PFC Manning was inexplicably stripped of all clothing by the Quantico Brig. He remained in his cell, naked, for the next seven hours. At 5:00 a.m., the Brig sounded the wake-up call for the detainees. At this point, PFC Manning was forced to stand naked at the front of his cell.

    “The Duty Brig Supervisor (DBS) arrived shortly after 5:00 a.m. When he arrived, PFC Manning was called to attention. The DBS walked through the facility to conduct his detainee count. Afterwards, PFC Manning was told to sit on his bed. About ten minutes later, a guard came to his cell to return his clothing.

    “This type of degrading treatment is inexcusable and without justification. It is an embarrassment to our military justice system and should not be tolerated. PFC Manning has been told that the same thing will happen to him again tonight. No other detainee at the Brig is forced to endure this type of isolation and humiliation.

    “Posted by Army Court-Martial Defense Specialist “