Getting up at the crack of dawn to drive to Berkeley on Saturday isn’t Daniel Mayfield’s idea of fun. But that’s what the San Jose criminal defense lawyer plans to do tomorrow, to be in front of the Greek Theater in time for “a dignified and lawyer-like protest with pointed questions” addressed to John Yoo (left), Dean Chris Edley, and the Boalt Hall faculty, students and alumni about why there isn’t an investigation of Professor Yoo.
The Boalt professor is widely known now for writing controversial memos on interrogation while he was a lawyer at the Justice Department; he has agreed to testify next month before a congressional subcommittee that’s investigating the Bush administration's interrogation policies.
Mayfield will be one of an undetermined number of protesters, some in costume, who plan to bring up the matter of torture as Berkeley students file into the Greek Theater tomorrow to celebrate their new JDs.
Henry Norr of Act Against Torture said he expects a number of lawyers to participate, but wouldn’t venture a guess about how big the crowd might be. Members of Act Against Torture will put on orange Guantanamo jump suits and black hoods, he said. The guards will carry cardboard rifles. Aside from the visuals, the activists will be handing out orange ribbons for graduation guests to attach to their clothes and students to wear on their robes to demonstrate their opposition to torture. “Our main goal is not to disrupt anything,” Norr said. “The main goal is to have enough people so that everyone going into the event has to think for a moment.”
The National Lawyers Guild, which issued a call for Yoo’s dismissal in April, will send a handful of legal observers, a representative said.
Berkeley law students seem split in their opinion about having protesters at their graduation ceremony.
Second-year Jessica Stender said that some students think the timing and venue for the protest isn’t the most effective way to bring attention to the matter, and would serve only to turn some people off. “Others feel that this is so important that whatever statement is made is good just to get it out in the public discussion,” she said.
Graduating third-year Erin Darling said he plans to give out three-color arm bands: red representing local issues, such as access to education, orange for civil liberties and matters of torture, and green for general anti-war sentiment. “People don’t like to see pictures of orange jumpsuits at their graduation,” Darling said. “I’m more mad that hundreds if not thousands of people have been tortured in part because of John Yoo’s legal work.”
San Jose lawyer Mayfield told The Shark that he’s hoping to set the record straight. He said Dean Edley, who wrote a memo last month to the Boalt community, had “mischaracterized” the call from the National Lawyers Guild to prosecute, disbar and dismiss Yoo, by focusing on an immediate dismissal. “That has never been the goal.”
Mayfield said he’s not calling for Yoo’s immediate dismissal, but thinks the University should start an investigation through the academic senate.
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