Public Comment

Only a couple of weeks ago, People’s Park was recognized for its importance, and placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

You can watch the fascinating State Parks nomination hearing if you scroll down our website’s main page (peoplespark.org). But UC, the institution of higher learning, seems to have no respect for some of our most important local and U.S. history, or the ongoing needs of those of us trying to stay in the city. Now, UC has turned the park into a staging area for its ongoing deforestation of the hills of healthy trees which capture moisture, drip it onto grasses to keep them moist when the sun hits, and store huge amounts of water (and carbon) in their trunks and roots.

UC has filled the park with massive mounds of wood chips (some 8 feet high and about as wide), and huge logs, some 4 feet in diameter, now a fire danger because they are drying out in the sun.

As two people from the city manager’s office were pressuring people to leave the park on Monday, June 13th, after the logs were dumped, I asked them how the city is involved in this dumping of flammable materials in the park. They said it was UC doing the dumping. I asked why this was happening and they said it was being done to keep people from putting down tents. The City of Berkeley and the University of California at Berkeley, , in other words, are in contact about this.

Both Monday and Tuesday I told these people that the City has to get involved in getting rid of this danger. I explained that I had emailed and called the Fire Department and had, had no response and that the city manager’s office needed to make sure this fire danger is mitigated. They were not interested. 

So I went over to the Berkeley Police Department bike cops who were relaxedly watching what was taking place in the park which was causing so much distress, as park users were being pressured and threatened with the loss of belongings, even people who clarified that, they don’t sleep I the park but just come to spend time there. 

I asked these city representatives to call the COB Fire Department to come out to investigate, and mitigate this spontaneous combustion danger created by UC. The one said, “Oh, I don’t think it would spontaneously combust.” The other said, “You should call UC.” 

The major fire concern is of spontaneous combustion (weather is forecast to be in the 80’s and 90’s early next week) and if those piles combust and then ignite the wood chips spread around the park, and the logs as they dry out, the whole neighborhood could be in danger. Please view the photos here https://www.peoplespark.org/wp/take-action-to-save-peoples-park/ and realize these photos were taken after a lot of wood chips had been spread by park activists. We hope you’ll come pick some up to take away, and spread some to knock down the possibility of spontaneous combustion. 

This all is happening while UC waits for legal challenges to their flimsy Environmental Impact Report to wind its way through the court system. (Please! Donate to the legal work here, as often lawsuits are the only thing that in any way slows down UC: https://www.peoplesparkhxdist.org/about/). Meanwhile they harass people who are enjoying the park, even in the middle of the day. We have pointed out many a time that, this is one of the only places in Berkeley where Black residents gather in numbers, in what otherwise can be a relaxing setting with tall trees and wildlife (Thursday night we saw an owl swoop and then land on a light pole to watch the happenings). 

If you have been listening to UC’s narrative in the last few years (actually, decades) you might believe UC, the institution, cares about students, housing, education, and all of us in Berkeley. While I could write 100 pages now (have written many hundreds or more, often one by one, to students and anyone else confused about UC’s obsession with takin g over People’s Park), let’s go over a few facts here, since most of my time that I devote to the continued work to save People’s Park and also the Berkeley Student Co-ops, is spent myth-busting. 

Some personal background: I first set foot in the park in 1983 and was enchanted with not only the beauty of the old and newer trees and gardens, but the Free Speech Stage park activists had built only four years prior in celebrating the park’s 10 anniversary. Having come from the classical music world and singing in maj or concert halls and venues, seeing “fine arts” in the U.S. not welcoming those without much money, I was captivated by this idea of a stage anyone was welcome to use, a stage and park that was not monetized. 

And without going further, I will say that this whole struggle over the park is about money, and about wanting to shift Berkeley to support only the wealthy, your basic capitalism formula of delivering land and other resources to the wealthiest, at the expense of everyone else, who then is encouraged to fight over crumbs. Really, it is that basic. Sociologist Inge Bell wrote in one of her early 80’s books that, in 1972 the UC Regents represented 1/10th of the top 1% of U.S. society. 

Many people have written on these pages about the ills of UC since its inception, and the City’s recent collision with UC, and many have done excellent numbers-crunching of the secret agreement Jesse Arreguin made with Carol Christ, the Chancellor. This will cost the rest of us enormous amounts of straight-ahead cost, but also the cost of people’s individual financial loss due to artificially-inflated rents (and mortgages). There are over 4000 empty rental units in Berkeley right now (15-20% in the large apartment building where I live), and that does not include empty UC-owned dorms or vacant apartments on land UC has leased to big developers. It’s land speculation, of course. It all looks so good on paper, as long as you remove people and the environment from the equation. 

Everything intensified to another level when UC started marketing more in 2018, and on. I wish someone would do calculations on how much public money and students’ money, much of it loans that will impede most for decades and many for life, has been spent on marketing? While they have not provided enough core classes for students (so that they get pushed into a 5rh year (great for their real estate interests), or clog the Peralta community college system, further crushing many of the most vulnerable who are trying to open some doors in life by attaining higher education. When one of my kids was at BCC, they had one class where one Cal undergrad was taking two of his four classes at BCC, displacing others because… wait for it… an ugly deal had been made giving Cal students preference over others. 

So in the midst of them having $168 Billion listed as assets on their investments page of the Office of the President of UC for July 1, 2020- June 30, 2021, they also crow on that page that, in just that year, their investments grew by $37.7 Billion.. .that’s a ‘B’. While they’ve closed down many libraries. Hmm. And while several thousand students are sleeping in their cars. Hmm. And while they are trying to get their hands on the student co-ops, which actually provide much more affordable rents than anything UC offers, where the name of the game is to stuff 3-4 in a small room, and charge $2000 a month for rent, including only 12 meals a week. I hope those kids are into intermittent fasting. 

UC (public) land has been handed to developers for student housing, which in the case of what they call Anchor House they sold to “the public” as being for transfer students (who in most cases are not wealthy), demolished a 112 year-old rent-controlled building, then launching residents from an expected future they could afford into their rent control, if they could get into a rent-controlled place, starting at triple or more the rent. Anchor House? We’ve heard the rents are planned to be $4400 for a 1 br. A good trade-off for more profits; that is, trading off students’ well-being for profits for the developers, part of the Regents’ class. 

I’m full of factoids and analysis but let’s get back to People’s Park, the City of Berkeley, and fire danger. 

Ever since the residents and users of the park started being pressured to get out, they were being told that the City and UC cared so much, they were going to provide temporary housing at The Rodeway Inn for 18 months, food, and services. However, once people moved in, they were being threatened with 3-month limits; no services to speak of, some really disrespectful staff (those contracts the City Mgr. hands out…; they do not have keys to their rooms and have to be let in by a guard; they are locked out if they return later than midnight, even if they need meds; the food is inadequate, except for Food Not Bombs supplementing, further extending the volunteers’ work which they fund on a shoestring; they cannot have visitors; there are random room checks. Folks, if you have not experienced an extended time in jail, I can assure you that, this lack of freedom is a jail situation. Let’s make no bones about it. If freedom to come and go is conditional, or you may be barged in on at any time, you cannot have even your mother or father visit, as one man said, let alone his significant other, that is utter disrespect, and is damaging to a person emotionally and mentally. This is not a recipe for people improving their lives. Rather, we’ve seen people come back to the park, even sleeping back at the park, because of the lack of dignity afforded people at The Rodeway. So, please, let’s be clear that, this is what the City of Berkeley is funding, and is further subsidizing UC. And as they have limited rooms at The Rodeway, they’ve been taking people to a shelter in this forced relocation. But what I’m seeing is more people in tents on the streets again as both these options are full of faults. 

The park was so crowded due to so much need during the pandemic, and yes, there always have been heavy drugs but you may not know that all these decades, UC has left the heavy-drug dealers, different names and faces over decades, but well-known and obvious to anyone who spends any time at all in the park. UCPD and BPD endlessly are in and out of the park. UC refused to build bathrooms so we tried and at every attempt UC sent in their people to take our pipes and fittings and fill in our trenches. As we were trying to be good neighbors after Reagan had dumped people out onto the streets without a safety net, we saw more people in the park, as everyone did in urban areas on both coasts because of more survivable temperatures for people living outdoors. 

Eventually there was media coverage of the bathrooms debacle and UC looked so bad, they built some and built a cop shop overlooking the park. It was staffed by a UC person for nearly three decades until the pandemic, at which point UC kept not unlocking bathrooms, and was not stocking toilet paper until way into the pandemic, and never has regularly stocked soap, or otherwise maintained the bathrooms in any reasonable manner. Please take a look at this video we made and presented to everyone City and UC early in the pandemic which should give you pause to question UC’s intentions, if nothing else has done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCmRP5W-ME 

So, UC always has known the heavy-drug dealers but it’s the users who are hassled, ticketed, jailed, and some have died. Why, you may wonder, would this be? It’s useful to step back and consider UC’s largest goal, expansion of capitalism, which benefits a few financially. 

And you thought UC was about education! 

Since its inception, UC Berkeley has been based on expansionism, and has a dirty history of devaluing Southside to then sweep in and convince people to sell for less than market rate (and that’s a discussion for another day). They proclaim that a building is in a dangerous neighborhood, so is worth less than in other parts of town: a neighborhood depressed due to violence or drugs, for instance, and then they take property by Eminent Domain and pay below market rate. A former UCB student wrote an excellent paper on UC’s expansionism going back to the inception, and it’s well-cited. You can find it on the website home page (scroll down to see ‘U.C. Expansionism….’). It’s worth a read in these troubling times. 

So, yes, those drugs in the park have been real. And they have benefitted U.C., at the expense of the users, and all of us. 

When you go to see the photos of the fire danger, you’ll see a request for action. As I write this Friday evening at about 8 pm, there still has been no response from any of the institutions listed. They need to hear what you think about them colluding in not removing the fire danger UC has created, since starting to dump these massive mounds of wood chips on June 9th, threatening all of the neighborhood. 

Email, call, share on Social Media, and email info@peoplespark.org to get onto our announcements list, and if you use a cell phone text SAVETHEPARK to 74121 to get onto the bulldozer alert. Things could move quickly, as this incursion into our park space, as many things indicate, but public pressure can slow things down as more people get involved, again, in creating the park we all deserve, one in the long tradition where poor, wealthy, and everyone in between has been able to co-exist and enjoy good company, green, and some great shows.