2 Berkeley tree-sitters end protest, arrested

[struggle4progress]

Source: SF Chronicle

Carolyn Jones, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, June 26, 2008

Two protesters sitting in trees near Cal's Memorial Stadium surrendered their roosts on Wednesday, officials said, leaving seven tree-sitters remaining in the 18-month-long standoff against UC's plans to build an athletic training center ...

Costello was charged with trespassing and violating a judge's order last year that outlawed the protest. Marks was booked for trespassing, violating the court order and an order to stay away from campus.

The development came hours after the Berkeley City Council interrupted its meeting early Wednesday to dispatch two staff members to the embattled oak grove to investigate whether the protesters needed food and water ...

The tree-sitters also told the City Council they need a pound of marijuana ...

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/25/BA8E11F6S0.DTL

[NM Independent]

1. HA!! They asked for weed.

:rofl:

Sheesh.

[awoke_in_2003]

2. "judge's order last year that outlawed the protest"

This is why I say that the 1st amendment has been dead for a long time. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say you have to ask permission to assemble. If you have to ask permission, it isn't a right- it becomes a privilege.

[winter999]

3. Huh? They were tresspassing. Not their property.

[bean fidhleir]

10. Why should property rights trump Constitutional rights?

What's the generally accepted principle behind that? Is there one, or is it just an idea that people who own property think should be true?

[fascisthunter]

12. good point

[Dreamer Tatum]

78. So you can squat on my lawn, so long as you're speaking your mind?

Does that make sense?

[bean fidhleir]

88. No, you're a human being, not a legal fiction (I hope) and so your lawn is part

of your *personal* property that is, for human beings, a "natural right" according to the Enlightenment thinkers whose work informed the Declaration of Independence and, eventually, the Bill Of Rights.

The university is a legal fiction and cannot have rights.

[Hosnon]

79. Which constitutional right is being trumped in this instance?

Freedom of speech is not absolute, nor is freedom of assembly.

[Mz Pip]

81. You might feel differently

if it were your property. Would you be so accomodating it some idiots decided to move onto you roof?

[bean fidhleir]

89. Please note the difference between humans and legal fictions

A human has "natural rights", according to the Enlightenment thinkers whose work underpinned the Declaration of Independence and the Bill Of Rights.

A legal fiction, such as a university, does not exist in nature and therefore does not have rights.

[AP]

4. OK, (1) Nobody is arresting the protesters on the sidewalk, and (2) their civil disobience in the

trees has gone on for months, and they're probably going to be very lightly punished.

They've gotten a lot of mileage out of a very low-stakes political protest (they're protesting trees getting cut down which were planted by the university in the early 1900s).

[snooper2]

5. Instead of wasting time sitting in a tree smoke a joint...

They could have planted a 1000 trees :rofl:


This protest accomplishes as much as praying :rofl: Oh, and I have sat in a tree and smoked :smoke: weed, kind of fun :)




GOBAMA!

[AP]

19. The University has spent over 100K dealing with the protesters. It could have gone to financial aid

for poor kids from Richmond and Oakland.

[bean fidhleir]

24. Tells you where the university's priorties are, doesn't it.

Why do you suppose they chose to spend the money the way they did?

[AP]

28. Because it's liberal Berkeley and they're not about to crack protesters' heads

and that's why the protesters feel so comfortable with this protest. It's low hanging fruit. This is no salt march to the sea, much less a protest of, say, horrible social injustice in Oakland.

They should head down to the Port of Oakland and chain themselves to a fence at the shipyard in protest of the fact that the port doesn't pay any taxes on the billions of dollars of commerce that goes through there because it has been separated from the rest of the city as a separate tax paying entity (and that's why the schools in Oakland are so crappy).

Of course going up against the Port of Oakland police and angry shipyard workers would be a lot riskier than provoking the UC Berkeley administration.

[Mz Pip]

82. The City of Berkeley

and the University of CA are two separate entities. The university would have loved to have had these folks gone from day one. The City caters to this kind of nonsense at the expense of the university.

[awoke_in_2003]

6. Okay, no one is being arrested

on the public sidewalk, but my point remains- if you have to get permission (in the form of permit) then it is no longer a right. In just about every city in the US, you have to apply for a permit to stage a protest. They can say yes or no. I see nothing of permits mentioned in the constitution.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

7. No, your point doesn't remain.

There's a difference between staging a protest and squatting on private land, which is effectively what they're doing.

I see nothing of permits mentioned in the constitution.

This isn't a constitutional issue. This is a bunch of people who have trespassed on private property for months with relative impunity, who have been asked repeatedly to leave, and who are now being made to leave. You don't have a constitutional right to stage a months-long protest on private property without the landowner's permission. You just don't.

They are engaging in civil disobedience. (Well, I'm not sure I'd call throwing human feces at people civil, but anyway...) Civil disobedience gets you arrested. That's why it's called civil disobedience. And if it were civil disobedience in pursuit of some kind of noble or worthy cause, these folks would have a lot of support. Unfortunately for them, they're idiots.

[bean fidhleir]

11. Why should property rights trump Constitutional rights? What makes property rights superior?

What's the underlying principle? *Is* there an underlying principle?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

15. Does this really require an explanation?

For the same reason I'm not allowed to come and take a shit on your lawn or stand on your front porch with a bullhorn screaming obscenities twenty-four hours a day as an "exercise in free speech." Have you ever taken a civics class?!?

[bean fidhleir]

25. You really don't see the difference between corporations and humans?

Why should corporations have *any* of the rights humans have? What would be the principle behind such a thing?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

34. You've utterly changed your story now.

At no point in this subthread have you mentioned anything to do with corporations. Your free speech argument is patent nonsense, so you've now switched to this.

Let me explain something to you: The concept of corporate personhood and the concept of corporate land ownership are separate legal issues. One has nothing to do with the other. The idea of corporate land ownership was established in English common law for HUNDREDS OF YEARS before the concept of corporate personhood was introduced. You're clearly just making shit up.

[bean fidhleir]

41. Would you have preferred that I used the term "organization"?

Or "non-human fictional entity" perhaps?

And I asked what *principle* underlies NHFEs having property rights superior to human rights?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

85. Nobody's rights are being violated.

You don't have a right to squat on land that is being used or intended to be used, even if it is public land. Freedom of speech is not an unlimited right. Any reasonable person can see that. Your interpretation of the first amendment is wrong.

[bean fidhleir]

90. What *P*R*I*N*C*I*P*L*E* supports the primacy of "property rights"?

Why don't you answer that question?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

92. Hundreds of years of common law.

And unless you're interested in allowing collective ownership of the computer you're using to type this absolute gibberish, you'd do well to research and understand the issue.

[bean fidhleir]

93. Perhaps I should hammer on you more, so that everyone understands that you can't name the principle

because there is no principle. But I won't bother.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

94. Fine, since none of my examples seem to have sunk in.

The principle or principles governing restrictions on speech such as limiting it on private property, or in situations like the aforementioned bullhorn outside your house, are collectively referred to as "Time, Place, and Manner" restrictions.

This is a reasonably good introduction to the topic:

http://www.answers.com/topic/time-place-and-manner-restrictions?cat=biz-fin

Here are several excerpts which cover the Berkeley situation (emphasis mine)

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech. This guarantee generally safeguards the right of individuals to express themselves without governmental restraint. Nevertheless, the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment is not absolute. It has never been interpreted to guarantee all forms of speech without any restraint whatsoever. Instead, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that state and federal governments may place reasonable restrictions on the time, place, and manner of individual expression. Time, place, and manner (TPM) restrictions accommodate public convenience and promote order by regulating traffic flow, preserving property interests, conserving the environment, and protecting the administration of justice.

<snip>

Place restrictions regulate where individuals may express themselves. The Supreme Court has recognized three forums of public expression: traditional public forums, limited public forums, and nonpublic forums. Traditional public forums are those places historically reserved for the dissemination of information and the communication of ideas. Consisting of parks, sidewalks, and streets, traditional public forums are an especially important medium for the least powerful members of society who lack access to other channels of expression, such as radio and television. Under the First Amendment, the government may not close traditional public forums but may place reasonable restrictions on their use.

<snip>

The government is allowed to regulate nonpublic forums with even greater latitude. Nonpublic forums include privately owned property and publicly owned property devoted almost exclusively to purposes other than individual expression. Airports, jailhouses, military bases, and private residential property have all been deemed to be nonpublic forums under the First Amendment. Public sidewalks and streets that abut private property normally retain their status as traditional public forums, however (Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474, 108 S. Ct. 2495, 101 L. Ed. 2d 420 <1988>).



In nonpublic forums the government may impose speech restrictions that are reasonably related to the forum's function, including restrictions that discriminate against particular viewpoints. For example, in Perry Educ. Ass'n v. Perry Local Educators' Ass'n, 460 U.S. 37, 103 S. Ct. 948, 74 L. Ed. 2d 794 (1983), the Supreme Court ruled that a rival teachers' union could be denied access to public school mailboxes, even though the elected union representative had been given access by the educational association. This restriction was reasonable, the Court said, in light of the elected representative's responsibilities to negotiate labor agreements on behalf of the union.

You can read the article if you would like a better understanding of what criteria such restrictions must meet in order to avoid violating the first amendment.

[Dr. Strange]

17. Property rights aren't trumping Constitutional rights.

There is no conflict here. You don't have to trespass to speak your mind.

[bean fidhleir]

26. Your idea is at bottom the same one that led to "free speech zones"

Speech away from the "scene of battle" is NOT the same as speech within it.

[Dr. Strange]

73. What speech?

This may have started out as speech, but it looks like most of the past year simply consisted of trespassing.

[bean fidhleir]

91. Is anyone in any doubt about what they want? I'd say they're communicating

and thus what they're doing is political speech within the meaning of the BOR.

[michreject]

18. I scratched my head when you asked this question

The second time you asked it is totally baffling. You don't really believe that that's a valid argument, do you?:shrug:

[bean fidhleir]

32. Can you suggest any principle that would support the primacy of

property rights over Constitutional rights?

Today's conception of "property" is totally at odds with that of the Enlightenment. Today's conception is the same as the putrid idea that underpinned the Enclosure Acts among other atrocities - that legitimacy comes from a "triumph of the will". Any act becomes legitimate if the actor succeeds. It's the psychopath's credo.

[michreject]

40. Whole lot a mumbo jumbo

Let me be real clear. I bought it. It's mine. Anyone who tries to claim it as public or tries to damage it, runs the risk of grave danger.

That's how I feel about property rights.

[bean fidhleir]

42. I wasn't aware that you're a non-human.

I was inexact in my phrasing, so let me try again:

what principle would support a non-human fictional entity having property rights that receive preferential treatment in law compared to the constitutional rights humans have?

I hope that was exact enough.

[michreject]

46. I was explaining my feelings toward property rights

I'm against corp. person hood, but no one has the right to trespass on any property if the owner/legal charge doesn't want them there.

That's the way it works in this country. We have a system of laws. If you don't like the law, work to get it changed.

[bean fidhleir]

48. Okay, so you agree there's no principle that would support the primacy of

NHFE property rights above human Constitutional rights. That's all I was asking.

[michreject]

49. What constitutional rights?

You don't have a right to trespass on private property against the owners will.

[bean fidhleir]

51. *sigh* I'll let you figure it out

The law used to say that freeing slaves was a crime.

And it used to say that working people acting together was a crime, though wealthy people acting together was not.

Do I need to go on?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

86. Look, hippies sitting in trees smoking dope and flinging poo is no basis for a system of government.

Even in Berkeley.

[AP]

50. I don't see how the issue of trespass gets any more or less weight because of the number of people

who have an interest in the property increases, or how they decide to hold the property (as 1000s of individuals, or as "the regents of the University of California") in the context of an assembly on private property.

If two people own a piece of property, do they have more rights against protesters who trespass than one person but fewer rights than, say, seven people who have a limited liability company that holds the property?

[bean fidhleir]

55. Well, what's the principle underlying the idea that *anyone* can have

a permanent, heritable, transferable, non-cancellable right to a piece of land?

[LanternWaste]

56. The 4th Amendment?

The 4th Amendment?

[bean fidhleir]

58. Nice one! And, of course, the "property" envisioned in the 4A is the "property"

of the Enlightenment thinkers like Adam Smith and John Locke, not the "property" of the Corporatocracy. It's the land needed to live and grow food on - the family farm, the shop-under house and its kitchen garden, the villager's interest in the Commons. The "property" that in Britain was stolen by the gentry via the Enclosures. Not the millions of acres claimed on no basis at all by the Crown and "granted" to the wealthy owners of the Virginia Company corporation, or, as it might be, the wealthy owners of the Hudson's Bay Company corporation or the wealthy owners of the East India Company corporation.

[LanternWaste]

61. I can't presume to have absolute knowledge

I can't presume to have absolute knowledge of what the Smith, et. al. were specifically referring to. I'm sure though, that many people do believe they can interpret it with absolute presicion...

My years in study and research of English Common Law and its acculturation into America mn law gave very few absolute answers-- many hypotheses and interpretations of course, but very few absolute answers as you appear to posses.

It merely seemed both relevant and appropriate as the answer to the above question.

[LanternWaste]

69. You can point me in

You can point me in the precise and relevant direction in which Smith made the distinction as you've interpreted, yes...?

[bean fidhleir]

74. Yes, I could if I were prepared to take the time (it's not something I've memorized)

It's implicit in his vision of how a healthy society would work, his criticism of how the "masters of mankind" run the current system, regularly using their money power to manipulate the law to further their own interests while suppressing working people, and so forth.

There's even a classic quote that pre-dates (and, who knows, perhaps inspired) Prudhon's "{excess} property is theft": "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor."

The denial of human rights through the abuse of the concept of property was seen as a massive problem by all Enlightenment thinkers, afaiaa. The Enlightenment might be said to have been the ethical part of the Renaissance.

[LanternWaste]

76. I think that's merely an inference on your part..

"It's implicit in his vision of how a healthy society would work, "

Actually, I think that's merely an inference on your part rather than an implication of his-- at least as seen through the writings of Knud Haakonssen (The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith).

Also, one could easily argue against your fundamental premise simply By reading the forward in his 'Theory of Moral Sentiments'

Therfore, I still maintain that the 4th Amendment is both relevant and applicable to the question of yours I Originally answerd...

[bean fidhleir]

87. I've read ATOMS online, but that copy had no foreword.

And I can't find one that doesn't begin with Ch 1. Do you know of an online copy with the foreword?

I agree that it's fair to say that my understanding of Smith's position is inferential, but I'm 100% certain that I could defend my inference better by citation than anyone else could attack it, if we use the ground rule that what he wrote was intended to be read as plain, uncoded English, the words meaning what they meant to a reader of the second half of the 18th century.

In my experience, the people who want to see Smith as the avatar of Enclosurist inequality either completely handwave their claims about his politics, or, if they cite him at all, they take his descriptive statements as implying his approval of what he's describing while they ignore those statements in which he openly, clearly, and bluntly expresses an ethical judgement (e.g., his famous "vile maxim" statement).

[AP]

20. Even if you accept that, these people are engaged in civil disobedience. They chose the private

property over the sidewalk in an act of defiance that is key to their protest -- the same way that Gandhi and MLK were willing to break the law, and the reason they're doing this is partly because they know that liberal Berkeley is not going to crack down on them (as has proven to be the case).

This has got to be one of the lamest protests ever. They picked a soft target over a lame issue (this isn't civil rights, and it isn't even an old growth forest -- the trees were planted by the university less than 100 years ago) and they're too meek to get out of those trees and put their asses on the line for a REAL and SERIOUS political issue.

[bean fidhleir]

27. The campus is NOT "private property", except in the minds of corporatists

The university is a PUBLIC institution, owned body and soul (supposedly) by the People of California.

[AP]

30. Are you contradicting yourself. Here, you want to say the university belongs to the people

and isn't private property and below you say that when it comes to wasting university (the people's) resources, the university isn't the people.

Incidentally, anyone with a California ID can use the libraries at UC, Berkeley. However, if you build a home in the stacks and throw your poo at the police when they ask you to leave, and you don't leave, you could be arrested for trespass. If you go into a dorm and have no reason to be there, the students can call police and you could be arrested for trespass.

[bean fidhleir]

33. No, no contradiction. It's the same problem that de-legitimized state socialism

When de-facto control is exercized by a few (the UCB administration) although ownership is nominally vested in the People, we have an almost classic conflict.

It's the same problem, though different in the details of its expression, that allows cops to treat us as "Them": there's a massive disconnect between what we're constantly told is true and how the people holding power -*our* power, supposedly- actually behave.

[AP]

38. I really feel like the police are treating the university as 'us.'

And I can't say that I'm happy with the job they're doing since the protesters are still in those trees using up resources that could be better spent on the students.

I'm on the side of the administration who are trying to make a better university for the students, and these protesters are using up valuable resources for a non-sensical protest (again, these are trees THE UNIVERSITY PLANTED less than 100 years ago. This is not an old growth forest. This protest at about the lowest level of personal risk to the protesters and of significance to society, and they picked one of the softest targets in the world -- the University that is now proud of the Free Speech Movement and Mario Savio.

[bean fidhleir]

44. The police *always* treat the powerful as "us" - it's only we who get treated as "them"

Kill 44 healthy, hundred-year-old trees to put up another building for the already-overfunded sports program? At a time when mature trees are *KNOWN* to be "the lungs of the planet"? To me, there's something seriously wrong with that kind of thinking.

[AP]

54. So a great public educational institution can no longer build facilities to lure title VII athletes

to their school because of 44 trees that are less than 100 years old and which the university has offered to replace 2 or 3 to 1 somewhere else?

Those tree climbers should have gone out to the subdivisions of Vallejo a couple years ago, and should have gone toe-to-toe with the (burly) private developers who cut down thousands of trees for 100s of soon-to-be vacant houses in a soon-to-be bankrupted town as part of a huge resource-wasting criminal enterprise to shift wealth to bank CEOs and real estate people. Now that would have been a risky protest that could have had a positive impact on the environment and on people whose lives ended up being ruined!

[bean fidhleir]

57. The trees are important to us all. How important to us is UCB being able to "lure"

more athletes? Not at all, zero, is my guess.

Sure, it would have been good to have stopped or to stop any number of other boondoggle projects. But people do what they can do. Where is it written that the only birds who should sing are those that sing best?

[AP]

59. It's not just about luring them. It's about letting them change into their clothes somewhere besides

their cars once they get here. And it's a good thing that women get to compete in sports, that they get to go to a great university like Cal to do that, and that they get a better chance at being middle class at the end of all that.

And why are these protesters picking Cal as their target, when they're not even part of the problem these people are trying to address?

[bean fidhleir]

62. That doesn't seem to be what it's about. Regardless of what men might believe, women

do not need 150Ksqft of changing rooms costing $140M :)

[AP]

63. Low hanging fruit. Soft protest. Much better things to protest than to nit pick over how good the

facilities have to be at a great public university which is committed to educating working and middle class students and to complying with title VII. Personally, I think it's worth 44 trees to give students the facilities they need to make UC, B a better place for them.

Why do the prostesters do it? Because it is much much easier than protesting somewhere that makes a difference -- somewhere where it makes sense.

[bean fidhleir]

65. Differences in value systems, I guess. (nt)

[AP]

67. But, to be clear, what are the values these protesters are expressing?

They are balancing 44 trees' existence against a university's attempt to make ANY changes to a truly crappy sports facility that serves a lot of students, men and women, at a great public university

because

they care about the environment

however

there are many many other ways to support that same goal and do it much more effectively

in situations where there are NO good reasons to cut down the trees

however

they all probably would cause much more trouble and risk for the protesters.

[bean fidhleir]

70. No, not "ANY" changes - specifically the change that result in the death of 44 mature trees

cost $140M and spread over 150Ksqft. That's a huge change - an area 300x500 ft - and expensive too - nearly $1000 per sq ft!

[AP]

71. They're not protesting the design.

Do you think they're going to come down if the budget is cut to 40M and the center for population studies is housed on the grove instead?

[bean fidhleir]

72. They're protesting the design insofar as it requires the death of the trees

So yeah, they'd still be agin it no matter what were going into the space - and rightly so (imo).

[AP]

75. Reminds me of a Clash lyric. "Please save us and not the whales."

And it doesn't mean the whales aren't worth saving. It means you need perspective if you're going to save society. Some protests make much more sense than others, and if you're looking for a big change that saves the whales, maybe you really need to focusing on something that doesn't seem to have much to do with whales at first.

Making life difficult for the best public university in the world (which is a key role in replicating a stable middle class and therefore democracy) over 44 trees probably isn't the best way to create an environmentally stable future.

[tidy_bowl]

9. So I guess you would be fine...

....with me and my friends camping in your living room, after all we should be free to do that according to you? Just make sure you have plenty of beer and chips on hand and the cable bill is paid up.

[bean fidhleir]

14. There's a big difference between property owned by a human and

property owned by a corporation. If you can't see why corporations shouldn't have anything resembling the rights humans have, then I venture to say there's something wrong with your politics.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

16. What about property owned by a university?

Where does that fall within your hierarchy of property ownership rights?

[bean fidhleir]

22. Is a university a human being? No. That should tell you where it falls. (nt)

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

36. Right.

So the University should sell the land to John Doe for $1, thus it will have individual ownership, this new and exciting legal construct you've invented. Then John Doe can kick the hippies out of the trees and sell it back to the University for $1. Fair?

[bean fidhleir]

39. I'm not interested in playing point-scoring games with you, so I'll just suggest you read about

the Enlightenment conception of "property".

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

84. Property and ownership have nothing to do with it.

It would be legitimate to get them out of there even if it were public land. Again, I'm not allowed to stand in front of your house on a public road and harass you with demented gibberish for months on end. Why? Because your right to live free of my idiocy trumps my right to free speech. Even though there's no constitutional guarantee of freedom from my idiocy.

[AP]

21. This is a PUBLIC university that has more students from pell-eligible families than any other

university in America, I believe (and a larger percentage of its students are pell-eligible than any other college) and they're wasting their money dealing with this idiotic protest.

[bean fidhleir]

23. So what. The university isn't those students. I don't notice the students

attacking the protesters, so maybe that should tell you something.

[AP]

29. There's a chain link fence around the protesters protecting them from the students.

If that fence weren't there, I wonder what the students would do?

Say some of the students did try to bring an end to this, I doubt it would convince you that "the university {is} the students" anyway.

[bean fidhleir]

37. I was incautious in my phrasing. I should have said "the university as represented by the

administration".

[AP]

43. Does that change the fact that the police put up the fence not only to keep

more protesters from entering the trees, but to keep students from harassing the protesters?

The "university as represented by the students" might be less happy with this protest than the "university as represented by the administration" which has been dealing with them more ore less with a silly putty fist in a velvet glove.

[bean fidhleir]

47. I'd be interested in knowing how the students would divide on the issue

I'm sure there'd be a certain number - the Young Republicans and Campus Conservatives, for example - who'd love to harass the people trying to save the trees. But how would it sort out overall? Do you really think there are that many students at UCB who are so unconscious of the looming climate disaster that they'd support killing 44 healthy, mature trees to provide more space for the *sports program*?

[AP]

53. I think the majority of the student body recognize how lame this protest is.

Did you know that the sports facilities are so crappy at Berkeley that the women's sports teams don't have changing rooms at Memorial Stadium? They have to change into their clothes in their cars in the parking lot. These are Title VII athletes, many of whom wouldn't have a chance at a great Berkeley education if not for their scholarships, and I think it's a good thing that the university wants to give them decent facilities.

[bean fidhleir]

60. A $140M 150Ksqft "athletic training center" doesn't sound to me like it has much

to do with women getting their rights in Memorial Stadium, does it you?

I find it interesting that the city doesn't want UCB building it, either. It's not just a few "eco-nut" students. It's also interesting that UCB is scrambling to turn the design into a separate facility rather than, as originally planned, an extension of the existing stadium - which by law can no longer be extensively modified because of its position on a fault line.

It sounds to me as though this proposed construction is just another poorly-conceived ego trip on the part of the people running UCB.

[AP]

64. These protesters aren't protesting the design. They're protesting any change that requires the trees

to come down. And I'm not supporting the design. I'm supporting the university's attempt to upgrade the facilities at memorial stadium because they really do suck, and the womens sports teams do change in their cars, and any improvement will certainly include changing rooms for women. And it's not just the women students. I don't have a problem with sports being part of academic life. I think it's a great way to give students a chance to go to great universities. Cal is building a lot of buildings right now for students. Unfortunately, it was memorial stadium next to this grove. However, I guess even these protesters realize that protesting a couple trees coming down next to a cancer research institute might not come off so well. They're lucky they got a chance to come down hard on sports, I guess. It saves them the trouble of having to find a real, risky issue to protest that could actually make a difference in the world, other than to decrease the chance that a smart athlete who wants to achieve to his or her maximum potential would attend the best public university in the world.

[bean fidhleir]

66. Forty-four mature trees isn't "a few". And I'm not at all sold on the idea

that changing rooms for women justifies the whole project and the death of the trees.

But I accept that your values are different to mine.

[John Kerry VonErich]

8. Another free speech zone arguement nt

[1Hippiechick]

13. In the 60s, the appetizer was a billystick....

LOL, things have changed!

[AP]

31. In Berkeley, the city and the university are so reluctant to offend protesters that they put up with

the crime-infested blight of People's Park, and they coddle tree sitters for 18 months.

Protest in Berkeley is one of the easiest things in the world, no matter how little merit your cause has...

[tidy_bowl]

35. Protests in Berkeley was edgy in the 60's.....

....now its just moronic tantrums of the terminally childish.

[Robb]

45. Or maybe

...Maybe we're just getting older. :D

[AP]

52. Yeah. Did your parents tell you, "when you're older, you'll be a Republican"? Well, in Berkeley

parents who grew up in the '60s and '70s probably tell their kids, "when you're older, your protests will be over lamer, less risky issues."

[Mz Pip]

83. LOL

As someone who grew up and protested in the 60s and 70s I told my kids to choose their battles wisely.

Like wars, and civil rights. Not because the university wants to change out it's landscaping.

[1Hippiechick]

77. Then these protest pix from March might bring a smile to your face!

I had my camera at work in March to make pix of some of the beautiful tributes to Eve Carson, former student body president who had been murdered. Little did I know that the SDS had organized a march on South Building on March 19th. I heard the drums first, followed by the chants, so I grabbed my camera and ran to the front steps, only to see the students appearing to be leaving campus and headed to Franklin St, and this was the shot I got. I was extremely disappointed. I didn't realize that they were going to encircle!





My favorite pix! See the students flashing the peace sign to me! I felt that I must have looked like Richard Nixon with both arms stretched upward in a "V", flashing the peace sign. You can see from the expressions on some of the students' faces that they weren't expecting to see anyone from administration cheering them on! I absolutely LOVED it!



Different shot - these kids really took a lot of time and were creative! Three figures (one lsightly hidden) representing see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil translated to not seeing, not hearing, and not speaking out against. But, peace junkie that I am the peace dove was my absolute favorite.





Since this march, the SDS has successfully staged a 24/7 sit-in in South Building, demanding that administration not renew contracts with sweatshop entities who produce many of UNC-logo items. I didn't make any pix of the sit-in, and now I regret it. We had to step over sleeping bodies in the rotunda each morning. These kids really had it organized, though. Food was brought in, and they rotated shifts. Campus police were there 24/7 also. I guess they were afraid of vandalism, but the kids weren't about that. On the 7th day of the sit-in, some of the protesters stormed the Chancellor's office, so were ultimately arrested. I don't know what transpired, but they were out of the building by that afternoon with no trace that they had ever been there.

Our outgoing Chancellor is leaving this sweatshop-contract task for our Chancellor Elect who begins work on Tuesday.

3 size pix because I am tired and not paying attention to re-sizing in photobucket. Apologies.

[LisaL]

68. How do you sit on the tree for more than a year?

What about using the restroom or shower?
Do they take shifts or do they really sit on the tree all this time?

[Mz Pip]

80. They have no other life.

Seriously, they sit in the trees, pee and shit in a bucket and then throw the crap at people who try to interfer.

Why the university put up wih this as long as it did is beyond me.

It must have cost UC millions in legal fees and security to get these idiots out.

My tax dollars at work. :eyes: