Posted on 09/06/2008 8:20:40 PM PDT by SmithL
Berkeley's latest political battle may be coming to an end: the UC has won a series of decisions in cases brought by local activist groups seeking to prevent the destruction of grove of trees right next to the law school. UC wants to build a sports facility there for our athletes.
The battle over this grove of trees has created a real circus on campus. At one point, perhaps two dozen people were living in the trees. Some came down voluntarily, and when the UC started plucking them from the trees, one protester known as Dumpster Muffin climbed to the highest tree and shook the platform. She was fearless! That platform is 9 or 10 stories high.
Despite these individuals sacrifices and the underlying cause, I've found myself cheering the UC on this issue. Why? It all started when I visited the grove, and found a huge sign hanging from the trees that read "end global capitalism." Ah. Okay. So, is this about the environment, or it is some larger, hugely naive proxy battle against all development? As this event has unfolded over the past almost two years, it appears to be to be the latter.
Their PR machine quickly started spinning. A tree sitter fell from a tree, and as if it were scripted in advance, they promptly blamed it on the UC! Any action that UC takes to remove the protesters results in invocations of the term "hate crime." I visited the tree grove a few weeks ago and people were shouting "Guantanamo Berkeley." There are videos of the police trying to stop food supplies to the tree sitters, and protesters are yelling "fuck you" to the officers' faces. It's all a little unreasonable.
Berkeley is different than most campuses, in that we leave large areas of the property unmanicured. We have very limited space at here, and if you look at a map, it becomes clear that the only place we can expand campus is along our eastern border, most of which is covered in trees. In light of the protest, UC has promised to plant three trees (one mature and two saplings) for each of the 45 removed. After that concession was made, I thought it would be reasonable to end the protest. UC is under incredible political pressure to serve more students in more ways, and we need to expand. Planting new trees is an excellent compromise.
But the protest continues, at the cost of $40,000 a day of taxpayers' money. A huge amount of police resources are diverted to keeping new sitters out of the trees. Earlier this year, the UC's chief of police wrote an email to Berkeley students (many of whom oppose "hippies in trees") about the conflict. It's a thoughtful letter, and I wish all police chiefs were capable of writing such a thing. I was particularly swayed by this passage:
At this point we are all waiting for the court's ruling on the lawsuits filed against the plans to build a new Student Athlete High Performance Center, a decision that is now expected no later than June. Until then the trees, by court order, cannot be touched. It's also worth mentioning that if, at the end of the legal process, we are not cleared to begin construction, the University will have to live with the final ruling. Meanwhile, the tree-sitters vow to abide by only those court decisions they agree with.
These people will not compromise. While they invoke "rule of law" when it suits them, they themselves have lost all their lawsuits. This is exactly the type of "mob rule" that critics of democracy warns us of. It's the same mentality that drives attacks on UC scientists. Once removed from the trees, I wonder what they'll do next.
Chris Hoofnagle is a recovering Washington, DC lawyer and information privacy law expert at UC-Berkeley Law School. Denialism became apparent to him while working on consumer protection laws in Washington. The Denialists' Deck of Cards is essentially a how-to guide for being an industry lobbyist.
So Julie Butterfly whatsherface won’t have a place to sit now.
Good.
Casualties? Eco-freaks don't seem to worry about that sort of thing.
But they hate us and say that we're evil.
God protects drunks and the mentally ill.
Give them a few boxes of toothpicks as a consolation prize.
I can’t believe this gutless idiocy! All Berkeley had to do was to throw up a quick temporary fence around the grove, guard it day-and-night, and prevent any resupply and reinforcement. The whole silly drama wouldn’t have lasted a week.
After that title, I had to read the whole article to learn that Berkeley wasn’t going to have them all shot. /s
I agree, and I would have ordered a few shotgun guards to watch the trees too.
I would have cut the tree down with those idiots in it. TIMBER
“I would have cut the tree down with those idiots in it. TIMBER”
Pardon me, but in this case, wouldn’t it “HIPPY!” be more accurate than “TIMBER”?
Just wondering.
;-)
You know this would have all been over in a couple of minutes if about 10 of us would have gone up on a sunny day with mirrors and all focused the sunlight on the people in the trees. Would have gotten my toasty up there.
What an ignoble smelly people.
Hey Let us look at the upside.
The tree sitting communes are not procreating and visiting Planned Parenthood Vacuume centers.
Let them stay up in the trees
God does not bring home the mentally ill and as you stated drunks until he chooses to make you perfect in his love.
IOW Don't count your blessings.
Do you feel that way about the severely disabled and others who suffer?
IOW are you a perfect human or just a hypocrite?
LOL I think they may pick out those green toothpicks out of there arse on the way down.
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