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People’s Park Gift, a huge collaborative art project in the park, Saturday, September 3, 2022

Photo: Evelyn Sinclair. (more photos below)

UC used a backhoe as a weapon of destruction in the recent massacre at People’s Park. We wrapped it up as a gift to give back to UC. Art seminar 10 am, art workshop 11 am – 3 pm, and permanent exhibit opening at 4 pm.

Video of the UCpocrisy art collaboration with the People’s Park community in Berkeley
UCpocrisy – art project in collaboration with artist 233 – before and after

In the artist’s own words:

Saturday, September 3, 2022, exactly a month after the terrible events occurred at People’s Park, the community of People’s Park is going to wrap up a special gift back to the UC Berkeley administration. We don’t want it! Spaniard artist 233 (2amon 3lanco-3arrera) is leading an art project fruit of collective thought, sharing and work, promoted by People’s Park Council and supported by the whole community of People’s Park. The idea is to contribute through contemporary art with People’s Park’s struggle against the powerful unfair capitalist establishment in which every human being coexist.

233 is the artist name of Ramon Blanco-Barrera, a Ph.D. with a specialization in large-scale installations to raise awareness on human rights concepts and values. He is also a Faculty Member at the University of Seville, Spain. He teaches new media-based courses and his art practice and research explore social and political issues all over the world. More specifically, his work tries to send inspiring messages in order to engage and make people reflect about their lives and communities, both local and universal, trans-creating with people and using the number ‘233’ in reference to the ‘identity game’ of our current overpopulated world system.

From Lloyd Roble-Nebres, Filipino-American writer:

There are gifts... and then there are Gifts.

One is transcendent, in its simple and elemental purity: I give this to you, with no
strings or ribbons attached. Take it: for I love and cherish you.

The other is transgressive: I give it to you, wrapped in these blue and gold colors
of history and hypocrisy. Take it: for I question and challenge you.

It's this latter type that is Ramon Blanco-Barrera’s vision of the Gift
that the People's Park community is giving back to the
university.

Wrapped in fields of blue tarp, be-ribboned in the colors of the University, it
immediately draws the eye to the center of the park, where the now-cloaked giant
backhoe sits — something of a Trojan horse. But it's a horse containing not hidden,
marauding, Greeks... but instead provocative ideas and simmering sentiments.

It's an almost alien construct, something clearly not belonging to the park — but
the now-enwrapped object of which was moved there by the institution, to start
its decades-planned divestiture. One to erase an open, green space into a
residential campus — itself already surrounded by blocks and blocks of housing,
office buildings, retail establishments.

So there this gift-wrapped object sits, presented by the active spirits and People of the park to the University, in a gesture saying: we give this right back to you... it is not wanted.

Drawing the eye with its sharply-imagined visual and graphic contradictions
posed in a stark and startling way, the People’s Park Gift announces its brazen
defiance: it is the anti-gift, a vivid blue and gold manifesto of resistance, a
statement that cannot be missed.

~ an observer

Photos: Evelyn Sinclair

WEEKEND EVENTS:

DISORIENTATION WEEKEND at People’s Park!
Discover the park – get involved – meet students and community members!

SATURDAY September 3
10 am: Huge art project in the park.
Come help wrap a massive gift for UC!! And help place our own National Register plaque.
5–8 pm: FREE CONCERT!!!
A night of Vibes, Hip-Hop and Neo-Soul!
Featuring Cas’ti, Oddity, Kahj & Versa‚m

SUNDAY September 4
Non-Violent Direct Action Training 10:30 am – 6 pm
A day long prep session for taking action to defend the park
Contact: weddress777@gmail.com

Save People’s Park!!! defendthepark.org IG @peoplesparkberkeley

Text SAVETHEPARK to 74121 to join the bulldozer alarm text alert

Let 1000 Parks Bloom!

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Court Support for People’s Park Arrestees being arraigned, Friday, September 2, 2022, 2 PM

Friday, September 2, 2022, 2 PM: Court Support for People’s Park Arrestees being arraigned.
Wiley W. Manuel Courthouse, 661 Washington Street in Oakland

If possible please meet at 1:30 PM outside the courthouse to go inside together, and allow for getting through security. The goal is to show the judge that arrestees have community support, which in some cases has been helpful in influencing judges positively. This is not a protest. Please recognize a protest that is not requested by arrestees can have negative effects.

If you want help from the National Lawyers Guild, they request that you fill out this form: https://arrestee-form.nlgsf.org/
Note from the NLG: This form is end-to-end encrypted and goes only to the NLG legal team. We can provide lawyers to advise and represent most people in misdemeanor cases for free, but only if the arrestees get in touch with us by filling out the form, emailing demonstrations@nlgsf.org or if needed, by calling the legal hotline 415-909-4NLG (4654).

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Memorial Tree Planting in the Park for our friend & comrade Dickie Haskell, Sunday, August 28, 2022

Memorial Tree Planting in the Park for our friend and comrade Dickie Haskill Sunday:

Aug 28th on the Dwight Street side. 

10 AM: meet up and preparations

11 AM: Circle up and planting

Bring a photo, a story, art, food, a song to share, and/or just your lovely self ready to create a little area where folx can be and remember our dear friend. We have a peach tree donated. Other seeds, plants, art, etc most welcome to bring!

We can send notes, art, pics to his mother.  We can record stories for his brother which can be e-mailed. There will be a Memorial in around a week in Virginia. We can have a lil’ gathering of local friends.

We “Lovin You” Dickie!!!

💜Elisa

PS: This is improv, no structure to it. Maybe just go around the circle, anyone sharing what they wish. Holla if U wanna collab, have ideas, visions. Thank U!

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Response to Chancellor Carol T. Christ’s August 15 message to students about People’s Park

In the dead of night, UC moved on the park — barricading city streets, blocking access to sidewalks, and fencing the park. Protected by riot police, heavy equipment was brought in. Peaceful protesters sat in front of that equipment to keep the park open and prevent further deforestation of the trees, which UC last did in 2018. People peacefully demonstrated against the heavy machinery and destruction of the trees. They had already witnessed the changing climate in the park after much of the east side forest was demolished by UC just a few years before. Students — of UC Berkeley, local colleges, and high schools — and other community members, including Berkeley neighbors and former residents of the park were outraged by the violent closure and destruction of this community resource.

The university has presented the project as an all-or-nothing: either people will sleep in squalid conditions on the street, or they will build housing on the park. This is a false dichotomy. The park is a vibrant community center, park and recreation space — one of the few accessible and open to everybody, including the poor who suffer within a rapidly gentrifying East Bay. Hundreds of people use the park daily, gathering to play basketball or music, to share food, and community. None of these resources are preserved in the university’s plans, which would turn our park into a sterile dorm lawn. Maximo Martinez Commons is a courtyard just one block north and similar to the one proposed for People’s Park. When was the last time you or your friends used that space?

We need People’s Park to remain a community-run, user-developed and user-defined park. That is why dozens of community groups — such as the Berkeley Student Cooperative, the largest non-profit provider of affordable student housing in the city — stand with People’s Park in opposition to the university’s plans. Homeless advocacy groups such as Consider The Homeless, Berkeley Outreach Coalition, Suitcase Clinic, Berkeley Free Clinic, Berkeley Copwatch, and others stand in solidarity with the park defense.

The UC Regents actually refused Capital Strategies’ attempt to have a $53 million contingency fund available for crowd control, and unforeseen relocations of new residents, and other circumstances in the demolition of People’s Park. Those millions could instead be spent acquiring land for supportive housing sites right in Berkeley, or adding additional housing on a site recommended by the Chancellor’s Housing Commission. And what about the Ellsworth garage, equally close to campus, which has to be demolished due to earthquake danger? In their survey not long ago, 92% of undergraduates did not rank People’s Park as their top site for housing development. If building housing was the university’s top priority, they could have already begun construction on a different site equally close to campus.

Over decades, the UC has approached the park with malice and destructive intent. In spite of this, people have stewarded the land and grown more gardens, community, and lifelong relationships. For 53 years, every time the fences have gone up, they’ve come down! People’s Park is not just some empty real estate lot. People’s Park remains a user-developed park, open for everyone to gather, host events, or hang out and have lunch. Nothing has changed. Come out and see for yourself. We will rebuild once again. Help repair the park according to your own desires. Re-connect with the land!

— People’s Park Council (PeoplesPark.org)

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People’s Park destruction by mobsters UC Berkeley and cohorts, in photos

Many types of businesses are involved in the sociopathic mobster destruction of People’s Park in their quest for profits off of students and their families at UC Berkeley : construction, automobile, architecture, parking, restaurants, clothing stores, UC Berkeley staff, faculty, grounds services, and administration, energy, cell phone, and more. Predatory capitalism creates dystopia. Beloved People’s Park, the trees, the beautiful outdoors, the user developed community and cultural gathering place, the community gardens, the performance stage, the grassy field, the urban forest, the basketball court, the picnic tables, a family gathering place, a National Historic Landmark of the free speech movement and anti-war movement, is an open green space, an oasis in the crushing din of automobiles, motorcycles, incessant consumerism, the stupidity of asphalt suffocation, the oversized houses and parking lots.

Photos taken August 16, 2022.

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Opinion: Demand the impossible, defend People’s Park

By Osha Neumann, in Berkeleyside
August 12, 2022, 10:46 am

I thought it was hopeless to try to defend People’s Park. But then, on Aug. 3, in the early morning hours, park defenders tore down fences UC Berkeley erected to begin construction on student housing, reoccupied the space and sat in front of the big yellow front loaders and excavators. That evening, they held a rally and as I listened to them speak I realized: They are the ones who will determine what is hopeless and what is not.

Each person who spoke expressed the need to protect open and unpatrolled space, a place for trees to grow large, and for housed and homeless people to gather and share what they have in common. They mourned that they had not been able to prevent the university, in its first act that morning, from cutting down a grove of redwoods, some with trunks 3 feet in diameter. Homeless people, who had sheltered in their shade, spoke of them as friends they had lost.

In the 60s, we had a slogan: “Be realistic, demand the impossible.” Today’s People’s Park defenders are demanding the impossible: That the park’s 2.8 acres be recognized as “commons,” a space that no one owns or controls. That was the vision in ’69. That’s their vision now.

Read the full article in Berkeleyside

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For “Black” Berkeley’s Culture, The Fight For People’s Park Has A Special Meaning

by Paul Lee, historian

Those who are fighting to save People’s Park should know that it has a special meaning for “black” people, and not just those who find there a place to live safely amid nature wonders; eat free, healthy food; find clothing; get substance abuse and psychological counseling referrals; develop or rediscover the bonds of community that have always been a central part of “black” Berkeley’s culture; and help to heal their souls.

That’s because the origin of the park was memorialized in one of Marvin Gaye’s greatest hits.

As is well known, in 1967 Buffalo Springfield recorded the classic “For What It’s Worth” to make sure that the country would never forget the infamous November 1966 Sunset Strip curfew “riot,” where the Los Angeles police brutally cracked down on counterculture revelers:

‘For What It’s Worth’: Inside Buffalo Springfield’s Classic Protest Song – David Browne, Rolling Stone

Sadly, well less known is the fact that the even more infamous May 1969 National Guard-police crackdown on the young radicals who had erected and begun to develop People’s Park as a freed/free space was memorialized by Obie Benson, a member of the popular Four Tops group of Detroit’s Motown, who later gave it to his superstar colleague Marvin Gaye. This story is told here at the bottom of the page:

Detroit 67: The Year That Changed Soul, by Stuart Cosgrove, Casemate Publishers

So, the next time that you hear or sing “What’s Going On?” remember that Gaye is singing about People’s Park. Indeed, if he were alive today, he could well pose the same question to UC Berkeley and the city’s administration, and particularly to its “black” city manager!

Related link:

What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye – a YouTube video interpretation of the Marvin Gaye’s song

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Restoration of the Peace Pole in People’s Park in August 2022

In August 2022, the Peace Pole has been restored to People’s Park, thanks to the efforts of Berkeley community member Aurora and local Earth Church members and members of the Berkeley People’s Park community. The Peace Pole movement was started by Masahisa Goi, who made her first Peace Pole in response to the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and now has thousands of Peace Poles placed worldwide. See the Wikipedia article for a quick overview of the Peace Pole movement.

Local Earth church members have felt called to contribute to People’s Park at this crucial juncture, and have created a new Peace Pole to replace the one that was placed in the park many years ago by early park community members.

Below are photos of the new Peace Pole, placed amongst the piles of wood chips and logs that were recently dumped by UC Berkeley over large areas of the park, an act of disturbing violence, deeply insulting Berkeley’s park users and destroying the large areas of the park used for recreation by UC Berkeley students and the Berkeley community. This war-like destructive ‘bombing’ is met by the non-violent action of Berkeley community members restoring the Peace Pole, inscribed with the message “May Peace Prevail On Earth” in several languages.

Also included are several historical photos of the original Peace Pole, including it’s wonderful circular flower garden created by generous Berkeley volunteer gardeners, and a hand-carved totem pole that was under the large Redwood trees on the Northwest side of the park, and one of Nature’s own ‘Peace Poles’, a majestic flower stalk of the ‘Century Plant’ (Agave americana), a type of agave plant from arid climates.

— Greg Jalbert

Aurora with the new Peace Pole for People’s Park, 2022
Joe Liesner and Lisa Teague at the new Peace Pole in People’s Park, August 2022
Sunset at the new Peace Pole in People’s Park, August 2022
Peace Pole in People’s Park, July 2006
Hand-carved totem pole that was under the large Redwood trees on the Northwest side of the People’s Park in Berkeley, 2006
Nature’s ‘Peace Pole’, a majestic Century Plant (Agave americana) flower stalk, over twenty feet tall in Peoples Park, 2006

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Letter from Dieter Müller-Greven, a People’s Park supporter from 1972

Dear friends of the Berkeley People’s Park,

Coming from Germany in 1972, hitch-hiking across the USA to SF, I heard about Berkeley People’s park, about the history from 1969, which was still fresh in 1972 and helped to defend the People’s Park in May 1972. I still remember vividly the demonstration on Telegraph Ave and helped tear down the fence at People’s Park.

Now I hear the UCB is still trying to occupy this historic place. Let me know if I can help in any way, may just tell you about the memories of Johnny’s Soup Kitchen on Telegraph Ave or when we blocked the streets to Oakland harbor with cars from junk yards to prevent the aircraft carrier from getting supplies so it couldn’t go to Viet Nam to bomb dikes to drown people, or about hiring a helicopter to coordinate the demonstration by FM radio from the air, or just from the all night drum players in front of the student union building, etc.

Maybe there is a historic archive about this half century lasting fight for the park.

I wish you all good luck to keep this place in the hands of the people and turn it into a historic monument, with just grass and trees, benches and playgrounds. No concrete, no houses.

Take care,
Dieter Müller-Greven

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A Statement on Behalf of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation

Greetings Relatives,

On behalf of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation, I have asked for this statement to be read tonight as tribal members and leadership are all at a ceremony and cannot be with you.

Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation have made this land, currently called Berkeley, our home for thousands of years before colonization. Before the thought of private land ownership was a concept in this land, this land was taken care of by our ancestors. There was an abundance here. Imagine a few hundred years ago, there was no concept of hunger or homelessness, and you could drink fresh water out of “strawberry creek”. Our way of life was disrupted because people came to this land with the thought of “lording” over the land, rather than being in relationship to it. The foreign ideology of private land ownership has caused great harm to the land, waters, animals, plants, and people. Greed of making money and covering everything in concrete and asphalt, takes away the sacredness of the land to people living in the confines of urban areas. The ability to have a small group of humans displace others in a time of worldwide pandemic, with the ever-increasing cost of living, food shortages on the brink and the continuous desensitized ability to look at homelessness goes against everything that we have been traditionally taught about being human beings.

Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation stands with Defend Peoples Park, the People’s Park Council and all who dream and seek to create a new way of life, one in which we remember what our responsibilities are to the earth, water, air and each other.

Corrina Gould
Spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of the Lisjan Nation
July 27, 2022