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BERKELEY -- A longtime Berkeley tree sitter has been convicted of illegal lodging and pointing a laser at a police officer. Fifty-five-year-old Matthew Dodt received a 60-day suspended sentence and three years of probation . . .

BERKELEY — Six months after Tristan Anderson, a former UC Berkeley tree sitter and Bay Area activist, nearly died after being struck in the head with a tear-gas canister fired by Israeli troops, friends are holding a benefit Sunday to raise money for his recovery costs. Anderson, 38, remains at a rehabilitation hospital near Tel Aviv and continues to have setbacks and infections after skull surgery last month, supporters said. The operation came after doctors learned Anderson was suffering from post-traumatic hydrocephalus, a blockage of the ventricles — open spaces in the brain — that causes poor circulation of cerebral...

Morgantown, W.Va. (AP) -- A tree-sitting protest designed to halt blasting at a Massey Energy mountaintop removal mine in southern West Virginia ended Monday when the activists descended from the trees and were arrested. State Police confirmed that Laura Steepleton and Nick Stocks were taken into custody after spending six days in a poplar at the Edwight mine in Raleigh County. Stocks, 25, was charged with trespassing, obstructing and littering, and State Police Sgt. M.A. Smith warned of other possible charges. Steepleton, 24, was expected to face the same charges. Both were to be arraigned later Monday. The protesters are...

When Tristan Anderson, now 38, was living illegally in the trees at UC Berkeley to protest the administration's ultimately successful bid to cut down the trees to build a sports training center, life was good. For 21 months, Berkeley's tree sitters happily fouled their nests with little interference from the authorities. Their biggest fear was falling. When Berkeley finally erected barbed-wire fences and began to shine spotlights on the canopy campers, the tree huggers complained that UC had turned their grove into "Guantanamo." UC retaliated by giving the tree sitters energy bars. In June 2008, Anderson, who went by the...

Friends of a Bay Area activist who was critically injured while demonstrating in a village on Palestine's West Bank have organized their own demonstration in downtown San Francisco today as a show of solidarity. Friends of Tristan Anderson, a former tree-sitter at the UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium oak grove, and supporters of Palestine will gather at 4 p.m. Monday outside the Israeli Consulate at 456 Montgomery St. in San Francisco, said Kate Raphael, a fellow activist and friend of Anderson's. "Our intent is to give people a chance to talk about Tristan, to focus on the people who have been...

A Bay Area man and former tree-sitter at the University of California at Berkeley was critically wounded Friday in a clash between protesters and Israeli troops over Israel's West Bank separation barrier.

JERUSALEM (Map, News) - An American demonstrator was critically wounded Friday in a clash between protesters and Israeli troops over Israel's West Bank separation barrier. Peace activists with the International Solidarity Movement said Tristan Anderson, of the Oakland, Calif., area, was struck in the head with a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops. The military and the Tel Aviv hospital where Anderson was taken had no details on how he was hurt. "He's in critical condition, anesthetized and on a ventilator and undergoing imaging tests," said Orly Levi, a spokeswoman at the Tel Hashomer hospital. She described Anderson's condition...

Berkeley's tree-sitters may have thought their nearly two-year protest was an act of civil disobedience, but to UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau it was actually "racism against our underrepresented minority student athletes." The chancellor's blunt assessment came in a letter he sent to alums Janice and Thomas Boyce at the height of the tree standoff in June. The Boyces had written to Birgeneau to complain about the university's "unscrupulous and perhaps illegal action" of rehiring campus Police Chief Victoria Harrison with a hefty contract - and about what the couple saw as the heavy-handed tactics that the university was using...

BERKELEY —UC Berkeley will voluntarily delay construction of a $125 million athletic training center at Memorial Stadium until a state appeals court considers a lawsuit opposing the project, university officials said Monday. The project, which is increasing in cost by $750,000 a month due to delays from the lawsuit, is now stalled until at least the end of September, said Cal spokesman Dan Mogulof. The $125 million project has been held up in court since December of 2006. In July, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara Miller ruled in favor of the school and against three groups who sued the...

BERKELEY -- One of the activists who have perched in a grove outside UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium for the past year and a half was hauled out of her tree Tuesday, as the university began removing tree-sitters' gear in advance of a judge's ruling that could lead to a climax in the long-running protest. The tree-sitter was taken down by two arborists who were part of a crew hired by the university to remove wooden platforms, pulley systems and other infrastructure that the protesters have built high above the ground as part of their effort to keep the university from...

BERKELEY _ He called himself Fresh, but a group called Students Against Hippies in Trees said his routine for protesting various university policies was getting stale. Seventeen days after protester Michael Schuck _ aka Fresh _ climbed into an oak just north of Sather Gate on the University of California, Berkeley campus, tree-sit opponents mobbed the tree Friday calling for Schuck to follow the rules for public discourse and get out of the tree. The 23-year-old Schuck finally did come down and was cited by police for illegally lodging and trespassing and released, a university spokesman said Friday. He said...

BERKELEY, Calif. Nov. 15, 2007 (KGO) - A clash between tree-sitting protesters and UC Berkeley police overnight leaves one officer injured and three people arrested. Police say just before midnight demonstrators cut through fences surrounding the oak grove that has been occupied by protesters. The demonstrators say they were just trying to deliver medical supplies to the tree sitters. But police say when they confronted the group the tree sitters threw objects at police and doused them with an unknown liquid. One officer went to a local hospital after complaining of burning eyes. One tree sitter and two supporters were...

Man given injunction carrying fine, jail time or both if he goes to grove — OAKLAND — As fallen tree sitter Nathaniel Hall was recovering from a broken arm and a broken leg he sustained in a three-story fall from an oak earlier this week, University of California, Berkeley police served him a seven-day stay-away order at his hospital bed. Hill was also served with an injunction that carries a $1,000 fine, five days in jail or both if he goes back to the grove, a university spokesman said Tuesday. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Richard Keller ruled in late...

* Berkeley man is dealing with fines, drug charges, while collecting signatures in effort to oust mayor BERKELEY -- There's so much going on in Zachary Runningwolf's life, it's hard to know where to begin. First, he's trying to recall Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates -- a man who trounced Runningwolf in last year's election. Bates collected 62.9 percent of the vote and was elected to a second term with the largest margin of any mayor in Berkeley in 40 years. Bates previously served more than 20 years in the state Legislature. Runningwolf, who in 1999 served a stint on the...

Despite a judge's order Monday that the Berkeley tree-sitters are living in trees illegally and posing a health and safety risk, UC Berkeley has no plans to forcibly remove the group. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Richard Keller issued a preliminary injunction evicting one tree-sitter -- David Galloway, who has been served by the university, said spokesman Dan Mogulof. If Galloway is, in fact, in a tree, he has to come down or face a $1,000 fine and up to five days in jail. The judge's order opens the door for the university to serve others by name, forcing them...

Berkeley -- UC Berkeley will ask a judge Tuesday for a court-order to remove about a half-dozen tree-sitting protesters from Memorial Stadium's oak grove, an attorney for the tree-sitters said Monday. The protesters have been residing in seven tree houses in the grove since December, protesting the University's plan to remove bout two-thirds of the grove to build a state-of-the-art athletic training center for football and 13 other varsity sports. The California Oak Foundation, city of Berkeley and a neighborhood group have sued to stop the project

UC Berkeley does not have to tear down a fence it erected around tree-sitters protesting plans to cut down an oak grove outside Memorial Stadium, an Alameda County judge ruled in advance of Saturday's nationally televised Cal football game. Siding with attorneys for the university, Judge Barbara Miller of Alameda County Superior Court said late Thursday that the fence was a safety measure and did not constitute development at the site. The tree-sitters had been marooned for hours without food or water until UC police allowed supporters to give them supplies beginning Wednesday evening. Earlier that day, the university erected...

BERKELEY -- After weeks of relative quiet among the tree-sitters next to Memorial Stadium, UC Berkeley police arrested a protester early this morning for trespassing. Athena Osborn, 25, also known as "Tree Otter," was arrested for trespassing and resisting arrest at about 2 a.m. at the oak grove, where about five protesters have been living in tree houses since Dec. 2 in an effort to stop UC from cutting down the trees to build an athletic training center. Osborn was booked at the Berkeley city jail and banned from campus for seven days,

TRE ARROW SPEAKS OUT & INFO ON DEFENSE FUND Reply to: frontline@rocketmail.com Frontline Information Service   - TRE ARROW SPEAKS OUT & INFO ON DEFENSE FUND -  03/22/04 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Tre Arrow Speaks Out TRE ARROW URGES EVERYONE TO FOCUS ON THE REAL ISSUES 19 March 2004 VICTORIA, BC -- Tre Arrow, well known forest and animal rights activist, ledge sitter, and congressional candidate, urges the media to...

Environmental activists who had camped 80 feet up a pair of red oaks for more than a month climbed down early Tuesday as workers began removing trees to make way for a ski area. "They have vacated their nests," said David Crowley, an owner of the Wachusett Mountain Ski Area. The two had been in the trees since Aug. 1 to try to block development of the ski area. Jason Kotoch, a spokesman for the environmental activist group EarthFirst!, said they abandoned their platforms when workers began tree removal. "We said we would be there until our presence was effective...