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Once again... People's Park needs your support
The foliage in People's Park is thinner this year. Another tree is gone, and various bushes and shrubs have disappeared. UC Berkeley has further whittled away at the park, and a new press release from the UC states that development plans are to be revealed after this academic year ends.
The University of California is well aware that as the 49th anniversary of People's Park has passed, eligibility of Historical protection is right around the corner. If People's Park can survive to its 50th year of being a public park, it would be legally challenging to do any development there. A new press release from the university states that UCB chancellor Carol Christ will be revealing the housing plan for People's Park very soon.
Berkeley mayor Jesse Arreguin, and council member Kris Worthington, have stated they will support the development of People's Park. The two of them claim that the UC is planning on building an affordable, 100-unit apartment complex to house the homeless, next to a proposed dorm for students. The UC however, has stated that no such plans have been finalized or agreed to. There is nothing in writing that guarantees a housing project for non-students will be built. Generally speaking, the UC's business model doesn't including housing people who don't attend their universities. Arreguin and Worthington are prematurely celebrating, when there hasn't been a negotiated deal put in writing.
There are other options for housing other than People's Park. Anna Head Alumni Hall, across the street from People's Park, could be demolished and replaced with a mixed-use building, with a new conference hall on the ground floor and several floors of housing. Housing could be built on a blighted lot at Telegraph and Haste. There are lots near downtown that the UC and the city could collaborate on. Recently, protesters have advocated that the unoccupied chancellors house be replaced with dorms. (The current chancellor has a private residence, which could be made the new standard.)
The population of Berkeley is growing, but there is no growth in park space. If People's Park was developed into housing, the only real park in the south-east quadrant of Berkeley would be Willard. The UC and city government claims that some open land would be left after development, but any building would shadow over the garden section of People's Park. If the city does get an agreement on building a low-income housing project, then it and the dorm would likely take the entire footprint of People's Park.
Every time People's Park is mentioned in a press release, UC officials will claim that there have been community meetings, and that the UC is taking suggestions from the public. The truth is, there has not been a single publicly announced meeting since the UC dissolved the People's Park Community Board several years ago. There may have been private meetings with developers, city officials, and wealthy business interests, but there has not been any public forums.
Public safety has been raised again as an issue; it is a misleading argument. People's Park does not statistically have more crime that other areas of Berkeley. The city and the university police crime logs are available to the public. Cafe Strada has been the location of repeated robberies this year and last, and yet nobody is suggesting that it should be shut down and replaced with housing. People's Park is not the central source of crime in the city. Without the park, there will still be crime in Berkeley.
People's Park is often used as distraction from issues regarding the UC's governance. The UC has had labor disputes, including recent UC police violence against a picketing employee. The UC is decreasing funding to its libraries. The UC is again considering raising tuition even more. The top executives at the university are reaping financial rewards, while the employees, professors and students struggle with cuts. The governing structure of the UC would rather have the press focus on People's Park and a shiny new building.
People's Park needs support, yet again. This conflict has been ongoing, and repetitive, but this is the final year before People's Park reaches the big 50 year mark. This is the year in which the stakes are raised, and the UC is going to push it's hardest to prevent the park from gaining historical protection.
It is crucial that there be occupiers at People's Park, as the semester comes to an end. If the UC is going to act, it is going to do so when there are the fewest amount of people around, over the summer. It is also crucial that there be documentation of all police actions against protesters. There are those who cannot take action as a protester, but can take action as witnesses and citizen reporters. People's Park started in protest, and only protest can defend it. Even if this battle is somehow lost, People's Park shouldn't go down without a fight.
Berkeley mayor Jesse Arreguin, and council member Kris Worthington, have stated they will support the development of People's Park. The two of them claim that the UC is planning on building an affordable, 100-unit apartment complex to house the homeless, next to a proposed dorm for students. The UC however, has stated that no such plans have been finalized or agreed to. There is nothing in writing that guarantees a housing project for non-students will be built. Generally speaking, the UC's business model doesn't including housing people who don't attend their universities. Arreguin and Worthington are prematurely celebrating, when there hasn't been a negotiated deal put in writing.
There are other options for housing other than People's Park. Anna Head Alumni Hall, across the street from People's Park, could be demolished and replaced with a mixed-use building, with a new conference hall on the ground floor and several floors of housing. Housing could be built on a blighted lot at Telegraph and Haste. There are lots near downtown that the UC and the city could collaborate on. Recently, protesters have advocated that the unoccupied chancellors house be replaced with dorms. (The current chancellor has a private residence, which could be made the new standard.)
The population of Berkeley is growing, but there is no growth in park space. If People's Park was developed into housing, the only real park in the south-east quadrant of Berkeley would be Willard. The UC and city government claims that some open land would be left after development, but any building would shadow over the garden section of People's Park. If the city does get an agreement on building a low-income housing project, then it and the dorm would likely take the entire footprint of People's Park.
Every time People's Park is mentioned in a press release, UC officials will claim that there have been community meetings, and that the UC is taking suggestions from the public. The truth is, there has not been a single publicly announced meeting since the UC dissolved the People's Park Community Board several years ago. There may have been private meetings with developers, city officials, and wealthy business interests, but there has not been any public forums.
Public safety has been raised again as an issue; it is a misleading argument. People's Park does not statistically have more crime that other areas of Berkeley. The city and the university police crime logs are available to the public. Cafe Strada has been the location of repeated robberies this year and last, and yet nobody is suggesting that it should be shut down and replaced with housing. People's Park is not the central source of crime in the city. Without the park, there will still be crime in Berkeley.
People's Park is often used as distraction from issues regarding the UC's governance. The UC has had labor disputes, including recent UC police violence against a picketing employee. The UC is decreasing funding to its libraries. The UC is again considering raising tuition even more. The top executives at the university are reaping financial rewards, while the employees, professors and students struggle with cuts. The governing structure of the UC would rather have the press focus on People's Park and a shiny new building.
People's Park needs support, yet again. This conflict has been ongoing, and repetitive, but this is the final year before People's Park reaches the big 50 year mark. This is the year in which the stakes are raised, and the UC is going to push it's hardest to prevent the park from gaining historical protection.
It is crucial that there be occupiers at People's Park, as the semester comes to an end. If the UC is going to act, it is going to do so when there are the fewest amount of people around, over the summer. It is also crucial that there be documentation of all police actions against protesters. There are those who cannot take action as a protester, but can take action as witnesses and citizen reporters. People's Park started in protest, and only protest can defend it. Even if this battle is somehow lost, People's Park shouldn't go down without a fight.
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[ Poster for People’s Park 48th Anniversary Celebration in 2017 ]
Michael Delacour’s letter covering the history of the creation of People’s Park:
Letter from Michael Delacour
People’s Park 48th Anniversary
48 years ago US imperialism-colonialism was in an all-time crisis. Here in Berkeley there were 3rd world and worker strikes plus ongoing anti-Vietnam war mobilizations. 60% of the windows on UC campus were broken and replaced by plywood. Starting in the summer of 1969 the community was unable to have antiwar events at Provo Park (now Martin Luther King Jr. Park) which have taken place in the past years. The community decided to have antiwar events and make a park on a piece of land where the university has been destroying 53 red shingles homes to build dormitory’s for their students. The beat-niks lived there in the 50’s.
48 years ago was somewhat the same as it is now globally. In Vietnam the US military had a tremendous defeat in 1968. President Johnson had withdrawn from the presidential race and Nixon was elected with a program of slaughter by bombing in North Vietnam and Cambodia. There was tremendous violence by the police toward anti-Vietnam war mobilizations.
Then on April 20th, 1969 where community members came on the land which is now People’s Park and started a free speech park garden. It caught on. It was the big event of the bay area. Thousands of people showed up on the weekend. Loads and loads of sod (grass) were brought from the California Valley for instant grass. The problem was that Reagan was governor and he had presidential aspirations with the help of UC, FBI and CIA.
Reagan along with Sheriff Madigan, Oakland district attorney Edward Meese and Berkeley Mayor Johnson met and to pull off a covert action that got Reagan elected. After about four weeks of our holding anti-war events and growing plants and grass, UC decided to fenced the park. That happened on May 15th 1969 early in the morning. Around 12 noon 5000 students and community people gathered and rallied on Sproul steps. They marched down to confront the police and fence makers of the park.
At Telegraph and Haste young community members turned on the fire hydrant which was a normal action of the past. The Alameda Sheriffs were prepared with a wrench to turn the fire hydrant off. The sheriffs and the people around them on the corner at the fire hydrant were pelted by objects from some people in the crowd from across the street.
That confrontation gave the sheriffs an excuse to march down one block away to their vehicles and pick up there shotguns with bird shot and then they started firing on everyone they saw on the street and on top of the buildings. When they ran out of bird shot they turned to buck shots. Buck shots are big enough to kill. There were 150 people that were wounded. One was blinded and one died three days later; his name was James Rector.
Those shooting events gave Mayor Johnson an excuse to call an emergency marshal law and in turn Reagan activated the national guard. It was found out later that the national guard members from Sacramento had been notified in advance before the May 15th confrontation.
So Reagan activated the National Guard and 2,500 soldiers came in and occupied the park, downtown and the Berkeley 21 days. The Berkeley community fought the national guard in peaceful ways. On May 2nd, a mass of 421 of us were arrested and brutalized by the sheriffs out at Santa Rita Jail. Overall, over 3000 were arrested.
Finally after many days of struggle the business community saw there were no business at all in Berkeley because of the police and all of the community were downtown boycotting the businesses. The city stopped the state of emergency.
Reagan and the CIA brought in hard drugs into the south campus area. Starting with the China White and Persian dust. Young people thought it was cocaine and were easily hooked. They were called the Red Rockets and a book by the name of Rag Theater was published where hundreds of them hanged out on Telegraph avenue. They were the children or offspring of the academic antiwar movement. About half of them in the hundreds have died from that drug intervention by the CIA. It disabled the antiwar movement internationally. The closing of Caffé Mediterraneum here in November, 2016 is part of that CIA project.
Another very important condition that before 1969 or People’s Park young black males could not venture passed Grove street which is now MLK without being molested by the Berkeley police. Berkeley was a sun down town. The park stopped that “Jim Crow” repression.
People’s Park came months after Jackson State where four black-students were killed. Then after People’s Park shootings, killings and repression, six Kent State students were killed on May 1st 1970.
The fence stood up for two and a half years and was attacked hundreds of times by the community. One Christmas 1972 season Nixon and Kissinger ordered a bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong and about 500 Berkeley citizens marched around town boycotting GM cars dealers and found there were no police guarding the fence at People’s Park and in turn went down and tore down the fence — all 500 hundred of them. It’s amazing what you can do with numbers.
On the negative side Reagan used all of this repression against the students and antiwar activists and got elected and was responsible for millions of deaths. And Meese carried on his repression against my kids.
Thank you, Michael Delacour
Michael Delacour’s letter covering the history of the creation of People’s Park:
Letter from Michael Delacour
People’s Park 48th Anniversary
48 years ago US imperialism-colonialism was in an all-time crisis. Here in Berkeley there were 3rd world and worker strikes plus ongoing anti-Vietnam war mobilizations. 60% of the windows on UC campus were broken and replaced by plywood. Starting in the summer of 1969 the community was unable to have antiwar events at Provo Park (now Martin Luther King Jr. Park) which have taken place in the past years. The community decided to have antiwar events and make a park on a piece of land where the university has been destroying 53 red shingles homes to build dormitory’s for their students. The beat-niks lived there in the 50’s.
48 years ago was somewhat the same as it is now globally. In Vietnam the US military had a tremendous defeat in 1968. President Johnson had withdrawn from the presidential race and Nixon was elected with a program of slaughter by bombing in North Vietnam and Cambodia. There was tremendous violence by the police toward anti-Vietnam war mobilizations.
Then on April 20th, 1969 where community members came on the land which is now People’s Park and started a free speech park garden. It caught on. It was the big event of the bay area. Thousands of people showed up on the weekend. Loads and loads of sod (grass) were brought from the California Valley for instant grass. The problem was that Reagan was governor and he had presidential aspirations with the help of UC, FBI and CIA.
Reagan along with Sheriff Madigan, Oakland district attorney Edward Meese and Berkeley Mayor Johnson met and to pull off a covert action that got Reagan elected. After about four weeks of our holding anti-war events and growing plants and grass, UC decided to fenced the park. That happened on May 15th 1969 early in the morning. Around 12 noon 5000 students and community people gathered and rallied on Sproul steps. They marched down to confront the police and fence makers of the park.
At Telegraph and Haste young community members turned on the fire hydrant which was a normal action of the past. The Alameda Sheriffs were prepared with a wrench to turn the fire hydrant off. The sheriffs and the people around them on the corner at the fire hydrant were pelted by objects from some people in the crowd from across the street.
That confrontation gave the sheriffs an excuse to march down one block away to their vehicles and pick up there shotguns with bird shot and then they started firing on everyone they saw on the street and on top of the buildings. When they ran out of bird shot they turned to buck shots. Buck shots are big enough to kill. There were 150 people that were wounded. One was blinded and one died three days later; his name was James Rector.
Those shooting events gave Mayor Johnson an excuse to call an emergency marshal law and in turn Reagan activated the national guard. It was found out later that the national guard members from Sacramento had been notified in advance before the May 15th confrontation.
So Reagan activated the National Guard and 2,500 soldiers came in and occupied the park, downtown and the Berkeley 21 days. The Berkeley community fought the national guard in peaceful ways. On May 2nd, a mass of 421 of us were arrested and brutalized by the sheriffs out at Santa Rita Jail. Overall, over 3000 were arrested.
Finally after many days of struggle the business community saw there were no business at all in Berkeley because of the police and all of the community were downtown boycotting the businesses. The city stopped the state of emergency.
Reagan and the CIA brought in hard drugs into the south campus area. Starting with the China White and Persian dust. Young people thought it was cocaine and were easily hooked. They were called the Red Rockets and a book by the name of Rag Theater was published where hundreds of them hanged out on Telegraph avenue. They were the children or offspring of the academic antiwar movement. About half of them in the hundreds have died from that drug intervention by the CIA. It disabled the antiwar movement internationally. The closing of Caffé Mediterraneum here in November, 2016 is part of that CIA project.
Another very important condition that before 1969 or People’s Park young black males could not venture passed Grove street which is now MLK without being molested by the Berkeley police. Berkeley was a sun down town. The park stopped that “Jim Crow” repression.
People’s Park came months after Jackson State where four black-students were killed. Then after People’s Park shootings, killings and repression, six Kent State students were killed on May 1st 1970.
The fence stood up for two and a half years and was attacked hundreds of times by the community. One Christmas 1972 season Nixon and Kissinger ordered a bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong and about 500 Berkeley citizens marched around town boycotting GM cars dealers and found there were no police guarding the fence at People’s Park and in turn went down and tore down the fence — all 500 hundred of them. It’s amazing what you can do with numbers.
On the negative side Reagan used all of this repression against the students and antiwar activists and got elected and was responsible for millions of deaths. And Meese carried on his repression against my kids.
Thank you, Michael Delacour
For more information:
http://www.peoplespark.org/
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