Category: Letters

You can read UC’s NOP here: https://capitalstrategies.berkeley.edu/resources-notices/public-notices

April 27th Scoping session can be heard here: https://lrdp.berkeley.edu/scoping-meeting

People’s Park Committee’s submitted comments are here:
PEOPLE’S PARK COMMITTEE SCOPING COMMENTS REGARDING ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT REPORT FOR UC BERKELEY LONG RANGE DEVELOPMENT PLAN UPDATE AND HOUSING PROJECTS AT PEOPLE’S PARK AND HILL CAMPUS 4/27/20

1. LRDP Update must not be a programmatic EIR that automatically gives the green light to future projects not explicitly listed in the EIR. All future projects must continue to be subject to public input under CEQA.

2. The NOP claims 200 meetings and events with stakeholder groups and the public, but not all stakeholders were contacted. Houseless residents of the park weren’t included. There was a 1/24/20 invitation-only meeting, at the Christian Science church by the park. Little effort was made to invite community groups like the People’s Park Committee, Food Not Bombs, Suitcase Clinic, or others who provide resources at the park so few of the park community were able to participate. Except one town hall on the LRDP in April 2019, no public meetings about this process were held. Two public meetings in February and March 2020, were limited to Project #2 at People’s Park, and didn’t include other plans to be discussed in this EIR. Which stakeholders were invited to the other 196 meetings, and what parts of the LRDP Update did they cover?

3. The NOP insists on necessity of expansion of facilities and university population, even though Berkeley has sued UC for exceeding the agreed-upon number of students to be admitted. The number of beds planned for students and non-university affiliated people are vague, talking about construction ‘up to’ a certain number, without any minimum commitment. No mention of students who are homeless now, in need of housing, let alone non-university park residents. And no specifics about nonprofits who are supposed to develop and manage the housing projects proposed at People’s Park. Who are these nonprofits, what is their proposed role, and what financial and other benefits would they derive from this project?

4. UC used the excuse of ‘deferred maintenance’, a concept mentioned in the NOP, to destroy the forested area of People’s Park as well as trees all over campus, and the excuse of ‘wildfire management’ to deforest other areas in the East Bay hills, and use pesticides, long targeting the Hill Campus area. Even mature, tall redwoods are planned for demolition by UC in the Hill Campus. UC repeatedly has been taken to court by community members seeking to defend the Hill Campus forest. UC insists that since these forested areas are not state or federal forest, it’s not necessary to discuss the impact of converting that forest to non-forest use, and because there may not be a formal habitat conservation plan, no habitat conservation activities are necessary in the project areas covered in the EIR, even though many animals, including falcons and hawks, utilize them as habitat.

5. The EIR is supposed to cover historic resources, and preserve historic legacy, and as such People’s Park, a City of Berkeley Historic Landmark, must be preserved as a park, not replaced with buildings. The NOP refers to creating multi-purpose spaces, but People’s Park already has multiple purposes and uses for humans and wildlife, which these plans would eliminate.

** THESE COMMENTS ARE SUBMITTED BY THE PEOPLE’S PARK COMMITTEE,
including Russell Bates, Lisa Teague, Jessie Mcginley, Michael Delacour, Max Ventura, Erick Morales, Andrea Prichett, Aidan Hill, Paul Prosseda, Ivar Diehl, Siobhan Lettow, Dawn Goldwasser, Tom Luce, Hali Hammer, Sheila Mitra-Sarkar, Charles Gary

Office of the Chancellor University of California, Berkeley
200 California Hall #1500 Berkeley, CA 94702

Dear Chancellor Christ,

Since sheltering in place is currently the best way to limit spread of the Covid-19 virus, we are asking that you adopt the CDC recommendations and suspend enforcement of anti-camping type laws for now. Since you already have unhoused students and community members camping in the park, it would be in the public interest for you to work to help them to be safe or at least as safe as can be under the current circumstances. We believe that extra vigilance regarding conditions in the park is required at this time. It is NOT acceptable to ignore conditions or simply use the current crisis as a pretense for closing the park.

Everyday, this very fragile population struggles to survive, but now they have seen their access to businesses, social services, food, public restrooms and even spare change evaporate. Of course, they are spending more time in People’s Park. However, the dangerous, unsanitary conditions that U.C. has imposed on the park by lack of maintenance endanger everybody. Fortunately, a few local Mutual Aid volunteers provided some toilet paper and supplies over the weekend; supplies which UC is more than capable of providing.

The UC is not doing enough to help park users reduce their exposure to the virus. The highly used bathrooms are rarely cleaned or disinfected and toilet paper is often scarce. Simple hand washing is extremely difficult to do because of the ridiculously small (less than 2 inch long) “faucets” that do not allow users even to place their hands under a flow of water. Soap is not provided and paper towels are non-existent. The risk of spreading the virus throughout this community is huge and it is the responsibility of the university to direct the resources needed to be at least a responsible property owner if not a responsible, moral resident of our community.

Evictions have been suspended in California for the time being so we do not expect that the numbers of actual campers will increase. All we are asking is for the University of California to do its part in a time of crisis for those currently camped. The fact is that for years, the People’s Park community has been tragically underserved by the University. While we acknowledge and are glad that there is now a social worker assigned to support people in the park, we believe that more must be done.

We demand the following:

1. Utilize People’s Park as an emergency outdoor shelter for the duration of the shelter in place order. As CDC recommends, DO NOT remove encampments or threaten park users with citations for lodging. Facilitate healthy conditions for unhoused people in the park during this crisis.
2. Provide 24 hour access to the restrooms.
3. Provide regular cleanings of the restrooms. With such high usage, bathrooms need to be cleaned and disinfected SEVERAL times each day.
4. Supply the restrooms with soap, toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
5. Repair the faucets in the restrooms so that people can actually wash their hands. The current “faucets” are approximately 2 inches long and do not protrude enough from the wall to enable CDC recommended hand washing practices.
6. Provide access to water for drinking. There are already spigots and hoses. Ensure that water is accessible and turned on.
7. Allow Food Not Bombs to serve food to residents of the park who have extremely limited access to food and are already reporting hunger and scarcity in the Telegraph Avenue area. Order police not to interfere with these efforts and do what you can to support the orderly delivery of food and efforts by the community to feed people in a low risk manner.

Sincerely,

Jackie Barshak (DSA San Francisco chapter*)

Russell Bates (People’s Park Committee, member*)

Barbara Brust (Consider the Homeless*)

boona cheema (Berkeley Mental Health Commissioner*)

Isis Feral (Coalition to Defend East Bay Forests, member*)

Arthur Fonseca (Picuris Pueblo Senior Center Service Provider)

Charles Gary (Community Services United Board member*)

Judith Gips (People’s Park Committee, member*)

Hali D. Hammer (People’s Park Committee, member*)

Aidan Hill (Vice-Chair City of Berkeley Homeless Commission*)

Greg Jalbert (friend of People’s Park for 20 years*)

Joe Liesner (Food Not Bombs*)

Thomas Lord
Dr. James McFadden (UC Berkeley Research Physicist)

National Lawyers Guild- San Francisco

Peyton Provenzano (Berkeley Copwatch and PhD student at Berkeley Law*)

Erick Morales (People’s Park Committee, member*)

Andrea Prichett (Berkeley Copwatch*)

Paul Prosseda (People’s Park Committee*)

Lisa Teague (People’s Park Committee, member*)

Max Ventura (People’s Park Committee, member*)

dress wedding (Food Not Bombs, member*, Harborside Cannabis Dispensary co-founder)

* Organizations listed for identification only

Cc: Mayor Jesse Arreguin and Berkeley City Council

Paul Buddenhagen, Deputy City Manager

For reasons I can’t fathom, the Daily Cal deleted my comment on that op-ed.
– Thomas Lord, February 13, 2019

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: response Feb 12 op-ed (re People’s Park)
Date: 2019-02-13 15:48
From: Thomas Lord lord@basiscraft.com
To: editor@dailycal.org

I wrote this in response to the February 12 op-ed “UC Berkeley must prioritize community voices in People’s Park housing plans”. It got positive responses from Park supporters including members of the People’s Park Committee. I’ve appended it below.

I am writing to ask that you please explain to me why you deleted my comment from the op-ed. To me it seems response, informative, and civil – especially in contrast to many comments on the Daily Cal that you don’t censor.

Thanks,
Thomas Lord (Berkeley, CA)

My comment:

There is no just way to raze the Park. The Park can not be reduced to just the most controversial users (i.e. poor people). The community can not be reduced to a set of “services” to be replaced.

Nor is there any practical reason to raze the Park. For that matter, there is no practical reason to build on the research field on Oxford. When the Chancellor’s office embarked on this farce they turned a blind eye to alternative sites such as the SW and NW parking lots on Clark Kerr. They ignored the part of the Oxford parcels with the older (run down) buildings. Those are just two examples – there are more. And to add insult to injury, they are proposing to build privately profitable housing that will gouge students and taxpayers. It’s an enormous wealth transfer from public education to already rich people. These facts alone should make students skeptical that UC is speaking with them in good faith. You’re being ripped off. Again. In yet another way. When do you stop trusting this institution?

The history of the Park matters. It was, once upon a time, housing. The housing was largely occupied by counter-culture households, many not-affiliated with the University but influential on student life. This context is vital to understand the past 50 years of struggle:

The University had taken some bruises, from their perspective, in that very conservative time. They had taken bruises from student involvement in the Civil Rights movement, from the Free Speech movement, from the anti-war movement, and from the growth of revolutionary politics and radical environmentalism. Students today can check out some deep (and academically very serious) history in Seth Rosenfeld’s “Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power”. Students today can find source materials about Park history in the on-line archives of the Berkeley Barb (content warning: no shortage of sexist and race-insensitive content in those old issues – but you’ll also find plenty of evidence of the positive good that was going on, really, at that time).

Where the Park stands today there was housing. The housing was largely occupied by unaffiliated counter-cultural types the University saw as a political threat.

Back then, the University found a flimsy excuse (a false promise to build student housing, ironically) to take that housing by eminent domain, evict the counter cultural residents, raze the buildings, and salt the earth by leaving behind a huge dirt patch. Meanwhile, the University continued its oppression of students who questioned and challenged the society around them, and the institution that processed them like commodities.

The Park grew out of student and community frustration and anger, and the something-in-the-air of the times that sought out solidarity, positive creation, much needed earth-loving, and the spontaneous discovery of the power of positive direct action. Watch some of the videos of the Park being built — and of the military counter-attack – to get some sense of the times.

Incidentally, the much beloved Ohlone Park in North Berkeley grew out the very same process of direct action. It was initiated in a moment of response to the murder of James Rector and the maiming and injury of others by the literal occupying army sent to suppress the People’s Park movement. The Park is sacred for many reasons.

For 50 years, the University has done everything it can to interfere with the Park’s positive development. You write of “services” the Park provides? You have no idea how much more extensive the mutual support was in the Park before the University cracked down on it. If it looks shabby and beat down today — keep in mind that the sticks used to beat it down were wielded by the very powers you think you are now negotiating with.

My metaphor for what even the well meaning author’s of this piece propose is an ugly one: It reminds me of those horrific photos of trophy hunters gloating over dead elephants, rhinos, and big cats — the kind you see flying around social media. You may mean well but if you think “just development” means anything more than giving some very mean folks a trophy photo, please reconsider.

The People’s Park civic landmark status with the city ends April, 2019. The People’s Park Committee is applying for civic landmark status, state and national, I am to believe. The regents were aware of this, I am to believe. The regents should have known that the millennials were coming, and likely have had at least 50 years to plan for their arrival. I am to believe. The regents should know the importance of green urban space and how it revitalizes the community. I have an MA in urban studies, not from UCB or any UC, and I am very aware of the importance of green urban space and how it revitalizes our community; it seems that you are not aware of this.

It furthermore seems disingenuous and scandalously unfair to destroy our vital urban ecosystem in this time of poverty, pollution, and political strife. One should think that any kind of destruction to People’s Park would not take place until after April of 2019 as per any recurrent civic landmark status. 2018 in many ways marked the first time in history that people began to take for granted an urban forest in eastern People’s Park, instead 2018 will be marked by how the UC regents choose to once again put gentrification [which is a form of genocide,] before community.

The Sacred Berkeley Oak Grove and it’s systemic treesit should have taught the regents that policing is as expensive as replanting trees, and by replanting I am to mean that one would use engineering to remove and replant them elsewhere. Our point then was replace fossil fuels and our point is not much different today. We also wish to preserve nature, but you don’t seem to understand this, I am to believe.

With some sort of focus on education, in today’s terrible world of industrial haste, one might believe that the UC regents might wish that urban gardeners, at the Walnut Street student farmer and volunteer co-op garden, at Occupy The Farm in Albany [The Gil Tract Farm,] and People’s Park should be a pinnacle for social outreach, ecological / agricultural education, Native American folklore education, social justice education, and so on. But what we find from many but not all students, and people in general is that the misinformation from their ‘mainstream,’ cultural conditioning does little to help define sub-cultural phenomenology beyond the market value of a tie died t-shirt. The importance of how micro or sub cultural sociology helps to create facets and trends in the macro sociological matrix is lost on people in general and people take sub cultural values from the past for granted, yet at the same time fascism currently looms around the transnational matrix.

If you are unaware of how invaluable sub-cultural sociology is for human awareness locally, and in general, I would recommend any book, passage or article by Rebecca Solnit on the subject.

The United States is not a Democracy it is an oligarchy where capitalism is king. In a socialist country at least people don’t seem to die on the streets as much. The blight in People’s Park is systemic to a dysfunctional governance. Stop nullifying us. We had a forest. All of us. I am to believe that the regents do not value nature.

If you are unaware of how invaluable nature is to cities read any book or passage by Jane Jacobs on the subject.

The wildlife in our community hates you, and we howl in the wind.

In my opinion that makes no difference to the regents because they cannot hear anything other than themselves and capitalism while the Earth dies screaming.

— Darin Allen Bauer, artist / photographer / laborer / writer

 

Make the Park Better

by Sennet Williams, November 2018

Here is the campaign I would suggest:

Make alliances with student groups concerned about the housing shortage like CalPIRG and others for this solution.

1: change the language MAKE THE PARK BETTER, rather than “save the park,” because a lot of people are unhappy with the way the park is now.

2: change the name to “Tree-people’s park”.

2a: The park can be a showcase for FIGHTING GLOBAL WARMING by GROWING MORE TREES.

2b: It should NOT be part of campus. Make it state property for a tree park or city property.

3: point that it would be silly for student housing because the students do not want to surrounded by people spanging all the time, which would be the case under the proposed “plan.”

4: The proposed “plan” would make traffic/parking a lot worse on southside because students have friends and they drive her to pickup, drop off or visit.

5: The city has already asked U.C. to stop expanding in Berkeley.

6: All Cal’s new construction should be at Cal’s Richmond “field station” that has plenty of land and vacant buildings. Most of the suggested new housing will already be at Richmond.

7: For students to live in Richmond there will be a new rail transit system which is ALREADY PLANNED to be built, but it is still being kept secret from the media for legal reasons. But the plan is to start building it from Richmond to Cal. ASAP.

8: The most likely rail system, with offices at Cal’s RIchmond property is called CYBERTRAN.com, and it will solve the parking shortage because it is so much better than driving, Berkeley AND U.C will stop wasting huge fortunes building parking garages, and students will not need autos to get to class.

More immediately AC Transit is the problem for changing bus routes and not having enough buses, and that is why most students do not like to ride the bus and want to live near campus.

* Line 51 should be restored to one route instead of being split in two. (the major route to dorms, needed to reduce traffic)

* Line 6 should have the same route to campus 24 hours instead of shutting down at midnight. I believe “line 41” was 24 hours.

With these changes, many thousands of students will be happier to rent rooms in other towns with lower rent.

Btw, I have been a professional developer and I have a LONG history with Cal, but I am probably leaving the state for months very soon, possibly for years so that is why am sharing this info now.

Anyway, anyone can contact me: sennetwilliams@yahoo.com

To Chancellor Christ
by Joseph Liesner
August 2018

As the 50th anniversary of the first creation of People’s Park approaches it seems you have chosen to mark that anniversary by rolling out the same deception that Chancellor Heyns used in 1969. Let me be clear: Roger Heyns did not take the 30 to 35 homes that stood on lot 1875-2, now People’s Park, by eminent domain for the purpose of building student housing, or soccer fields, and neither is the need for student housing the reason you have declared your intention to build on that lot before any of the other pieces of land upon which the University could build.

The evidence that Roger Heyns had other reasons for taking the homes of some 40 people with alarming haste and callousness is evident in the statements of faculty members, members of the Board of Regents, and the long time residents of those old homes. Professor Sim Vander Ryn, Chairman of the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Housing and Environment, stated “I have it on pretty good authority that this was the pitch . . . (Vice Chancellor)Cheit’s position before the Regent’s was: ‘Let’s clean up the park and get rid of the people living there who are a threat to the stability of the University’.” Regent Fred Dutton said that Heyns and Cheit had based their case for acquiring the South Campus property on the grounds that it was “. . . an act against the hippie culture.” That “hippie culture” was mentioned to many of the homeowners on lot 1875-2 by the real estate agents who were tasked with taking their homes.

In your “Summer Letter” (“California”, Summer 2018) you also propose that building on People’s Park will include housing and services for the homeless of Berkeley. Well this is quite a change for the University. I have been a volunteer with East Bay Food Not Bombs for eighteen years and know that our daily meals for the hungry, which we serve in People’s Park have faced near constant opposition by the University. We couldn’t even get the University’s permission to allow Waste Management to come into the park to pick up our compost. Other homeless advocates have tried to distribute free clothing to those in need and time after time UCB police have destroyed those free clothing sites.

So what might be the actual reasons that your mighty institution is so determined to destroy People’s Park? In 1969 South Campus was the home of the counter culture and its radical sociopolitical consciousness. For the preceeding decade the University had been locked in confrontation after confrontation with studdent groups that wanted the right to organize on campus (The Free Speech Movement), with students of color who wanted a Third World Studies College, and with students and faculty who opposed the war against Vietnam (The Vietnam Day Committee).

UCB restricted and punished students for political organizing on campus; UCB poiice beat and jailed students on strike for the creation of a Third World Studies College; and UCB, while working to crush the anti-war movement on campus supported U.S. militarism in Vietnam and used its academic cover to further Department of Defense research.

Perhaps it is time to recognize that the University of California at Berkeley was, historically, on the wrong side in each of these, above, issues and that is why the counter-culture was such a thorn in its side. Then, that very group challenged the University’s misuse of its power by appropriating the very land which the university had turned into a muddy parking lot by taking and demolishing people’s homes. The act of students, neighbors and faculty creating a beautiful park on that lot and insisting that they, the users of the land, exercise control over it began the movement for community control. Userdevelopment is the most fundamental legacy of People’s Park, and it continues to this day. People’s Park is a unique and beautiful refuge for many, especially those most abused and marginalized by our system.

As Robert Scheer summarized the situation in Ramparts (August ’69) “The Berkeley crisis was never over whether the University would be able to stop one ‘People’s Park’ but rather over whether it would succeed in what had been a long-term strategy of eliminating the culture of protest by denying it its turf”.

So, in this time where the right of dissent is threatened world wide, and the 50th anniversary of People’s Park approaches, we must remember that what Mr. Scheer refers to as the “Berkeley crisis” was marked by death and maiming, the arial tear gassing of the campus and swarths of the city, and the occupation of the City of Berkeley by the National Gurad for several weeks. Was that military attack launched on Berkeley to stop a park? Of course not, it was launched by the University of California and the State of California as a unified attempt to crush the independent, progressive political and social expression of students and citizens. Now, seeing the “Berkeley crisis” for what it was, progressive thinkers must insist on the intact preservation of People’s Park and the values for which it stands.

— Joseph Liesner