Pro-life speakers who dare set foot on the University of California, Berkeley’s campus will now be greeted by a new form of protest: coat-hanger hecklers.
Pro-abortion students protested pro-life campaigner Kristan Hawkins’ most recent speech at the university by silently standing beside her with coat hangers this past Thursday, April 4.
Campus police were slow to respond: The coat-hanger hecklers disrupted the event for a period of 75 minutes until campus police showed up and interposed themselves between the two groups.
“It is frustrating that they circumvented our prohibited items list and bag check by hiding the coat hangers as they entered the venue,” Tamika Bassman, co-president of Students for Life at Berkeley, the group that invited Hawkins, told me. “We were more uncomfortable having them so close to our speaker, but thankfully UCPD was able to keep the situation under control.”
Earlier in the day, pro-abortion students also stole and threw a display banner set up by Students for Life at Berkeley into Strawberry Creek, which runs through the campus.
Gisselle Godinez, a member of Students for Life at Berkeley, posted a video of the banner being recovered from the creek to Facebook, where various users expressed their desire to have thrown the banner in the creek themselves.
When Guillermo Bustamante, a member of Students for Life at Berkeley, attempted to confront the student who stole the banner on film, the student waved a skateboard at his phone, nearly hitting him.
Other students also kicked, poured coffee on, and tried to tear down the group’s Cemetery of the Innocents display, which Students for Life groups often set up in remembrance of lives lost to abortion.
“I understand that the pro-life position is unpopular among most students at UC Berkeley and other liberal universities,” Daniel Frise, the other co-president of Students for Life at Berkeley, told me. “While we hold a controversial viewpoint on campus, this does not justify censorship, violence, or destruction of property. There should be tolerance of our viewpoint just as we have for our opposition.”
At least one student threatened to shut down Hawkins’ talk on the Facebook page for the event on April 1, writing, “Shut her down! Shut her down! We will not let you speak!”
So apparently some students want to shut down my speech at Cal-Berkeley tomorrow. Lol good luck.
— Kristan Hawkins (@KristanHawkins) April 3, 2019
Another Facebook user alleged that Hawkins is a “white supremacist.”
“We were unsure if protesters would actually show up to shut down the event,” Frise said. “However, for the sake of the safety of our speaker, members, and guests, we informed UCPD of the threats and had a UCPD officer present for security.”
Despite the threats and disruptions, Bassman said Hawkins’ “Lies Feminists Tell” speech, a part of Students for Life of America’s Planned Parenthood Truth tour, was well attended, with some 80 to 90 people in the audience and 250 people watching live online.
“We invited Kristan Hawkins because we wanted our UC Berkeley campus to be able to hear some of her ideas directly,” Bassman said. “We wanted to also empower our own members of Students for Life at Berkeley through the chance to meet and talk with our national organization’s leader.”
Students for Life of America is a pro-life organization established by Hawkins that describes itself as dedicated to ending “abortion by educating students about the issues of abortion, euthanasia, and infanticide.” It currently boasts a “national team serving more than 1,200 Students for Life chapters in all fifty states.”
Hawkins herself has served on the Republican National Committee and as a presidential appointee in the George W. Bush administration at the Department of Health and Human Services. She also served on then-candidate Donald Trump’s Pro-Life Advisory Council.
Hawkins spoke at Berkeley last year and is slated to speak at Miami University-Oxford and Western Washington University for her spring tour this year, according to SFLA.
Troy Worden is a recent graduate in English and philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was president of the Berkeley College Republicans in 2017.
