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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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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