Posted on 12/28/2011 7:33:12 PM PST by SmithL
Bulldozers ploughed through the west end of People’s Park today turning decades of community garden into rubble. Dozens of police watched as crews tossed mountains of healthy plants and a community-built arbor into dumpsters, leaving behind stripped earth.
A young student who claimed to be volunteering as a police assistant handed out university fliers which stated, “In response to park users and neighbor concerns, we are doing maintenance work to address the rat infestation and safety issues in People’s Park.”
A UC press release described the activity as "an effort to provide students and the broader community with safer, more sanitary conditions."
KTVU Channel Two News reported that the trees in the west end were being removed to improve the views for the university students who will someday inhabit the unfinished dormitory building currently being built in the Anna Head parking lot.
Park historians note that the bulldozers destroyed decades-old trees and shrubs planted by community volunteers in the seventies in response to the university’s effort to transform the west end into an asphalt university fee lot. The asphalt parking lot, installed without community input, lasted only a few weeks before community volunteers tore it out and replaced it with a garden.
Those who have gardened for years in the park called the university’s move an obscenity. None of the People's Park Community Advisory Board members were informed about the project, a board which was convened years ago specifically to make certain the community was kept informed about park issues.
Arthur Fonseca commented that the bulldozing was “worse than the volleyball courts”, another ill-fated project the university tried to build in 1991, because the west end represented decades of dedicated community work on various gardens, fruit trees, pergolas, grape arbors, and benches.
The university’s destruction in the west end included the Council Grove, a small circle of trees which were the setting for many of the early People's Park council meetings, which traditionally could only take place in the park itself.
Oh, The horror!! /s/
After all the "Occupy" stories this summer of filth and sickness in their encampments and now this, maybe these hippies will start to learn, "back to nature" means dirt, feces, odors, and disease. Modern capitalist civilization means few rats, clean living and modern conveniences that send poop far away. It's really not difficult to understand.
How many square feet in a decade, again? I forget.
That would be 10 dodecamonths.
Paging Rachel Corrie!
To bad they didn’t bring in this dozer when all the two legged vermin were infesting the park?
Thanks. I was gonna write down 20 pentateuchs.
Oh come on! Why go halfway? Get the armored version the military uses. I live near Peoria and there was one of those beasts at the Cat plant when I went by one day. That's about as malevolent looking a machine as I've ever seen.
What irony.
Although as concerns the vermin, why not a few colonies of cats? That’s about as green a solution to rats as you can get. (Green eyed that is.)
Fonzie?
So a bunch of water melons in the 70’s, took over land from the University and pronounced it the “people’s park.” At the end of 2011, the University finally reclaims the land from the commies.
Biserkly.
Mack Brown could have RUTS (first and goal) at the end but he took pity on the Tedfords.
They’ll have to bulldoze the entire campus if they really want to get rid of the rat infestation.
... But that wouldn’t really be fair to the rodents.
HOOK’EM \m/
They won't sell me one. And they really aren't much good in the timber industry. Unless you think about the EPA...
Cats are not the most efficient eradicators of rodents.
Terriers are.
A small pack of JRTs let loose for a few days would’ve ended it.
The feral cats slinking around here do nothing but drive outdoor mice into the house, seeking safety.
My Portuguese Podengo Medio then dispatches them with extreme prejudice [and horribly disturbing “joy”] and often presents them to me as a gory little “gifts”.
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