100 Protesting Cartoon Stage Sit-In at Student Newspaper

More than 100 protesters occupied the offices of the student-run newspaper at UC Berkeley through the night on Tuesday, demanding an apology for an editorial cartoon they said was racist and encouraged violence against Arab Americans.

Campus police cited 18 demonstrators for trespassing during the nearly 10-hour standoff at the Daily Californian’s office in the cradle of the Free Speech Movement. Banging on walls and chanting, the protesters said they would not leave until the paper printed an apology, among other demands.

The cartoon--which critics called offensive to Arab Americans after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon--was printed in the paper’s Tuesday edition. The Daily Californian is not affiliated with the university but has offices on campus.

Angry students and others began filing into the newspaper’s offices in small groups about 2 p.m. Tuesday, said Editor in Chief Janny Hu, who tried to explain the paper’s policies to them. When the business day ended at 5:30, the students refused to leave.

They were there when the staff was putting out the paper, and they were still there after the Wednesday edition had been printed. Through the evening various administrators came to speak with them; the lone holdouts were cited and released at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Early in the standoff, the paper’s senior editorial board met for 30 minutes and decided not to issue an apology, although it ran a front-page story on the sit-in.

“We appreciate the concerns, but our opinion page exists as an open forum,” Hu said Wednesday afternoon. “I don’t believe [the cartoon] condoned violence. We felt this cartoon fell within the realm of fair comment.”

The cartoon depicted two bearded men in turbans and long robes, standing in the devil’s hand with a flight manual at their feet. They are in hell, though they believe they are in heaven.

“We made it to paradise!” one exclaims to the other. “Now we will meet Allah, and be fed grapes, and be serviced by 70 virgin women, and . . . “

Some Islamic fundamentalists believe that martyrs who die in the service of their religion will be rewarded with an entre to paradise. They will be able to see the face of Allah and be served by young virgins in heaven.

Protesters argued that the cartoon cast all people of Arab extraction as terrorists. In interviews and during a noon rally Wednesday, they said that making such an editorial statement after last week’s attacks encourages violence against Arab Americans and is tantamount to hate speech.

Rachel Odes, a 19-year-old sociology major, was one of the 18 cited by campus police. On Wednesday during the rally, she was handing out green armbands and the “Green Arm Band Pledge”: “I oppose scapegoating--I stand in solidarity with Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern people.”

The cartoon “exemplified all the racist stereotypes of Muslims and Arab Americans,” Odes said. “The most important thing is it contributes to an atmosphere that allows hate crimes and violence to happen.”

‘We’ve Been Dehumanized’

In the plaza in front of Sproul Hall, young women in head scarves held a long, handwritten cardboard placard charging that “Free Speech Demands Responsibility.” Other demonstrators carried picket signs demanding that the “Daily Cal Must Apologize.”

Will Youmans, a 23-year-old law student and one of the protest organizers, derided the cartoon over a small sound system. “We’ve been dehumanized,” he said. “Now we’ve got to stand forward and say we will not tolerate hatred.”

Describing himself as “one of the biggest promoters of the 1st Amendment and free speech,” Ravi Balu, a 21-year-old political science student, said that such rights must “come with common sense. I don’t see that happening with the Daily Cal.”

University Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl issued a brief statement on the cartoon and the demonstrations Wednesday, noting that “this is a time of heightened sensitivity and emotion” but supporting free speech in all forms.

“We can expect that people with divergent opinions may speak and publish viewpoints that others will find offensive,” Berdahl said. “But throughout this debate we must respect the rights of all to freely speak and publish their points of view.”

The cartoon was drawn by Darrin Bell, a 1999 UC Berkeley graduate who has been drawing for the Daily Californian since 1993. Ball said that he was not surprised by the uproar, but that he was shocked by the depth of it.

He said he thought readers would realize that he was skewering Islamic fundamentalists, the terrorists themselves and Osama bin Laden, who U.S. officials suspect as being behind last week’s attacks.

“I do understand why they can be upset about this and how some people might see it as racist,” Bell said. But “in Berkeley, it’s always been like this since the Free Speech Movement ended in the ‘60s. People professing to defend liberalism cry out against free speech. People steal newspapers if there’s an article that upsets them.”

The furor over Bell’s cartoon is the second time this year that the Daily Californian has been under attack over free speech issues. In late February, the paper ran a paid advertisement by conservative columnist David Horowitz titled “Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea--and Racist, Too.”

The paper ran a front page “formal apology” for the ad and a longer explanation about how the ad had been published.