Went to the Barak speech last night, tickets kindly provided by IAC Chair David Singer. Fifth row. I've said it a million times: writing nice things about Jews pays off.

I went straight to the Eshleman entrance, nicely decked out. Took some pictures of the 'checkpoint.'





Lower Sproul was a lonely forest of cops nervously eyeing everyone. I walked over to the Bearcade side of Lower Sproul and took some other pictures, which made a cop very nervous. I squeaked 'Press!', but because Daily Cal Columnists having press passes would destroy the paper, I didn't have any proof. So I was semi-guided over to the coat check and dropped that off. So no more pictures for you.

Protest numbers were fairly impressive outside. Large numbers out there. I didn't actually get to see the walkout, but it seemed designed to walk the fine line between getting coverage of local protest and being blatantly anti-free speech. So kudos to Mr. Cantor for pulling that one off successfully and getting sympathetic coverage.

From there I was invited to the post-speech reception at the Alumni House. I was honestly most interested in the guest list: what exactly constituted a 'student leader?' Most of the crowd was exultant IAC/Hillel folks, including Ms. Puddle. Also there were the heads of AAA, BCR, Cal Dems, the ASUC Execs and some Senators, IFC, Panhellenic, and probably a few others that I didn't recognize. I left right after Barak did, after a lengthy Q-A session. Impressively, word of the after-speech thing either was never leaked to the Protestors or they didn't care. Either way, very quiet.

Strangely enough, I actually saw the camera incident written up here.

At that point the young man who was later identified as Omar Chaikhouni grabbed the camera out of my hands using physical force, and thereby committed an act of felony robbery as well as interfered with my right (as a freelance journalist, no less) to take photographs (of a newsworthy subject) on public property. I then started shouting Police! Police! of which there were several a few dozen yards away. The group of five or six student protesters got all agitated. Some of them started walking toward me with menacing expressions. Others told me that I was breaking the law by taking their pictures without permission, which of course was nonsense. Moments later the alleged robber hurled my camera against the ground, shattering it into pieces and trashing the film.

Sharkansky gives more credit to the cops then is due. Despite his yelling 'Police! Police!' pretty darn loudly, it took a passing audience member to get some cops near the parking entrance to take note.

Nothing special to report on the actual speech, although it doesn't appear that the many empty seats made it into the Daily Cal's account. Although there was a great slip when Berdahl accidentally referred to Cal as the 'Berlin Campus.' Telling.Email This Post!