Spring Break
CodePink April Fools' hoax backfires
Apr. 2, 2008
Kristin Bender - The Oakland TribuneIssue date: 3/27/08 Section: MCT News
BERKELEY, Calif. _ CodePink should be turning red.
That seems to be the consensus of many who were on the receiving end of a bogus announcement Tuesday by the radical anti-war group that the embattled U.S. Marine Corps recruiting center in Berkeley was caving to the pressure of weekly protests and leaving town.
"If you want to be taken seriously as an organization of serious protest, then you don't play jokes _ even on April Fools' Day," said Robin Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, who has written about the politics of language.
CodePink and other anti-war groups have been protesting the U.S. Marine recruiting center in downtown Berkeley for months, hoping to force the recruiters to leave town.
A CodePink official defended the hoax Tuesday.
"In CodePink we tend to have a sense of humor," said CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin. "We tend to joke about a lot of things. It keeps us going where other anti-war groups have gone by the wayside."
Gunnery Sgt. Pauline Franklin with the Marine Corps Recruiting Command in Washington, D.C., verified Tuesday that there are no plans to relocate the Berkeley office, which is conducting business as usual.
The April Fools' hoax _ certainly not the first from CodePink _ started Monday evening when the group posted a news release on its Web site, at www.codepink4peace.org, boldly announcing "Marine Recruiting Center Leaving Berkeley: Agreement Reached with Landlord, City, and Protesters."
The release said Sasha Shamszad, the owner and landlord of the Marine recruiting center, "has reached an amicable agreement with the Marines to redeploy from Berkeley" and that further details would be given at a noon news conference Tuesday.
The release included false quotes attributed to Shamszad.
"The situation was becoming untenable," the false quote said. "The presence of the Marines sparking daily protests have had a negative impact on local businesses. The city has been forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in police overtime. And some groups have been calling for a national boycott of our city. So I sat down with representatives of the Marines and we worked out a solution."
That seems to be the consensus of many who were on the receiving end of a bogus announcement Tuesday by the radical anti-war group that the embattled U.S. Marine Corps recruiting center in Berkeley was caving to the pressure of weekly protests and leaving town.
"If you want to be taken seriously as an organization of serious protest, then you don't play jokes _ even on April Fools' Day," said Robin Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, who has written about the politics of language.
CodePink and other anti-war groups have been protesting the U.S. Marine recruiting center in downtown Berkeley for months, hoping to force the recruiters to leave town.
A CodePink official defended the hoax Tuesday.
"In CodePink we tend to have a sense of humor," said CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin. "We tend to joke about a lot of things. It keeps us going where other anti-war groups have gone by the wayside."
Gunnery Sgt. Pauline Franklin with the Marine Corps Recruiting Command in Washington, D.C., verified Tuesday that there are no plans to relocate the Berkeley office, which is conducting business as usual.
The April Fools' hoax _ certainly not the first from CodePink _ started Monday evening when the group posted a news release on its Web site, at www.codepink4peace.org, boldly announcing "Marine Recruiting Center Leaving Berkeley: Agreement Reached with Landlord, City, and Protesters."
The release said Sasha Shamszad, the owner and landlord of the Marine recruiting center, "has reached an amicable agreement with the Marines to redeploy from Berkeley" and that further details would be given at a noon news conference Tuesday.
The release included false quotes attributed to Shamszad.
"The situation was becoming untenable," the false quote said. "The presence of the Marines sparking daily protests have had a negative impact on local businesses. The city has been forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in police overtime. And some groups have been calling for a national boycott of our city. So I sat down with representatives of the Marines and we worked out a solution."
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