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Recent
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May
21, 2003
Dave
Lindorff
Ari Fleischer Quits the Scene: The
Liar's Gone, the Enablers Remain
Chris
Floyd
How Blood Money Becomes Business Opportunity
Dr. Gerry
Lower
Graham's God and Bush's Pathology
Patrick
Cockburn
In Post War Iraq, the Signs of Breakdown
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Brian Cloughley
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Saul
Landau
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Larry Kearney
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Elaine
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May
20, 2003
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Ben Tripp
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Linda
Heard
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Cynthia
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Edward
Said
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Mokhiber
and Weissman
Why Ari Should Have Resigned in Protest Long Ago
Stew
Albert
Yale Men
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Elaine
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Condy Rice's Yipping Tirades
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May
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Those Who Don't Count
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May
15, 2003
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Tanya
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14, 2003
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May
13, 2003
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Steve Perry
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May
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Marty Peretz
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Aslam Khan
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Arrogant
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May
23, 2003
Long
Live People's Park!
Showdown
in the Counterculture Corral
By RON JACOBS
In April of 1969, an eclectic bunch of people
in Berkeley, California reclaimed a piece of land owned by the
University of California, dug up the asphalt parking lot there,
tilled the soil, planted trees and plants, put in a swing set
and benches and turned it into a park. Black Panthers, street
people, elderly women and men, students, children and dogs all
joined in to make the park a piece of liberated territory. It
became know as People's Park.
The University, with the urging of then
governor Ronnie Reagan, decided to end this endeavor in neighborhood
land reclamation. Reagan and the rest of the university's regents
were already ticked off about the Third World Strike that had
effectively shut down the Berkeley campus for much of the spring
semester. The creation of the park was the last straw. Reagan
and the university administration decided to do something. On
May 15, 1969 University police took back the park in a pre-dawn
raid. They arrested the street people who were sleeping there
and sealed off an eight-block area around the park. A construction
crew came in and begin to fence off the park's perimeter. At
noon, a rally of over 6000 people was held in Sproul Plaza protesting
the police occupation of the park. The rally ended with a march
to the park. All hell broke loose once the protesters met up
with police from all over the East Bay. Police fired shotguns,
killing James Rector and wounding over 100 others. All public
assembly was banned and the National Guard was activated. For
the next two weeks, a state of insurrection existed in Berkeley.
The park remained fenced off. In the years immediately following,
the fence around the park became a ready target whenever Berkeley
erupted into protest. After a particularly raucous protest in
1972 after Nixon mined the harbor of Haiphong, Vietnam, the fence
was torn down for the last time and the city of Berkeley leased
the land for a nominal sum and let it be administered by a council
of citizens and park habitués-the People's Park Council.
Since that time, the university has attempted to reclaim the
park land a half-dozen times or so, only to be met with protest
and ultimately backing down.
The park recently celebrated its 34th
year as liberated territory. It has not been without its problems,
but it has always remained as a symbol and a reality. What follows
is a remembrance of a 1979 attack on the park's existence by
the University-an attack that was resisted by community action
and solidarity.
Another showdown. For those who were
around in 1969 or 1972, it was an eerie deja vu. Some of the
same cops and some of the same fighters in the battle for People's
Park were facing off again. The park was a piece of land that
the University of California had been attempting to develop since
the late Sixties and had been rebuffed by determined community
resistance each time. The veterans on both sides were all a little
grayer, but the grudges remained. For most of us, though, it
was the first major battle. This was a different battle than
those daily skirmishes where the cops swaggered through the park
spreading their porcine presence. They'd walk over to a group
of folks and demand identification, just because they could.
If you refused, you went to jail. No questions, just handcuffs.
This was counterinsurgency of a certain type.
The University of California had pushed
it too far this time. The afternoon before, a couple dozen members
of their police force escorted a bulldozer into the park and
began removing benches. The morning paper had written about a
University administrative plan to start charging for the westend
parking lot-the only remaining asphalt in the park. We had heard
rumors about this possibility for months yet in the Council's
negotiations with the University they insisted the rumors were
lies. More bureaucrats speaking with forked tongues. The bulldozer
was phase one. One of the park's denizens --a big mean guy named
Tommy Trashcan -- walked over to the dozer and pulled out the
ignition wires. I never liked the fellow before or after that
act, but at that moment he was my hero. The police attempted
to arrest him as more cruisers arrived. After a twenty-minute
tussle, Trashcan was in the police van. It was immediately surrounded
by a couple dozen folks, who sat on the ground around the van.
The cop at the wheel revved his engine and charged through the
crowd. After that, somebody went to the tool shed in the bushes
at the other end of the lot and brought out a couple of pickaxes.
We took turns removing the asphalt in the parking lot piece by
piece. After giving us a series of unheeded warnings the cops
left, bragging to us that they would win and take the park back.
Before dawn the next morning several
hundred enraged citizens hung around in the park and the surrounding
sidewalks. The University had installed machines overnight that
dispensed tickets at the entrances to the parking lot overnight.
Some of us who were hanging out passed out leaflets urging drivers
to park elsewhere, some drank an early morning beer, and some
sharpened sticks for use in the attack they felt sure was coming.
In the parking lot across Haste Street were the police. Maybe
a hundred cops milled around drinking coffee, putting on their
riot gear and talking on their radios. They were preparing for
battle as seriously as those looking for one on our side of the
street. The adrenalin levels were high all around.
About half an hour before the University
had commanded the new pay parking lot to open, a bus from the
Hog Farm commune that they called the Asp drove up. While some
of the parks swarthier defenders removed the machines demanding
parking fees from the earth, the Asp's inhabitants began handing
out balloons and tying a string of them around the park. Those
of us in the park smiled a little, our tenseness eased a bit
by the Hog Farmers' antics. As I watched the officers across
the street however, I noticed that their apprehension didn't
seem to change. Indeed, their desire to attack only seemed to
be enhanced by the Hog Farmers' lightheartedness.
As the defining moment approached, Salty,
a member of the park's organizing and maintenance committee,
spoke on the phone to the mayor, Communist Party member Gus Newport.
The Hog Farmers continued to distribute balloons. Somebody, maybe
it was Wavy Gravy, was playing Reveille on a kazoo. While the
Farmers were finding plenty of takers among the citizens in the
park and those who came to park, they couldn't even pay one of
the cops to take one. Just as the riot squad moved into their
attack formation and pulled down the clear plastic visors on
their helmets, the mayor drove up. He got out of his car and
waved good morning to the park's defenders. Then he told the
police to leave. Since he was the city cops' boss they did so,
cursing, one can be sure, the commie son of a bitch all the way
back to their cars. This left a much-reduced force of University
police who could do little but observe. Which they did for six
weeks.
During those six weeks the parking lot
was removed piece by piece and the beginnings of a garden were
put in place. The occupation of the park enjoyed tremendous support
for the first month. The first couple weeks' worth of evenings,
in fact, turned into big picnics with folks from all around the
Bay Area bringing food, beer, pot and music makers. Merriment
reigned those nights as people met new friends and hung out with
old ones. Professionals with loosened ties on their way home
from work joined together with hardened park habitués,
musicians, college students and brothers from the streets of
Oakland and West Berkeley and began to plant a garden where the
parking lot had stood. Local businesses brought donations of
plants and building supplies. As time went on, though, the picnics
got smaller, and eventually the only people who remained were
those who had nowhere else to go. This was mostly a collection
of street people, petty criminals who made their living from
selling bogus dope to tourists, and hard-core gypsies. Two days
after Thanksgiving the cops moved in and sent everyone on their
way.
The anger remained, however, as did the
garden planted in that former parking lot. Over the next few
months a stage was built in the park and those of us who still
believed in the park's essential difference from the rest of
America's "private property" and weren't too disillusioned
for whatever reason, continued a public campaign in the park's
behalf. Concerts were planned, agreements with the university
penned, and gardens maintained.
We also started a newspaper called, simply,
The People's Park Press, which served the dual purpose of keeping
the larger community informed and the street community involved
in its own destiny. Articles ran the gamut from street gossip
to analysis of various local and international political realities
and were written by park regulars. Everything seemed to be moving
forward. The spring began with a couple concerts that came off
quite well. Robert Hunter of the Grateful Dead played a May gig
there, as did a band formed by a couple former members of Creedence
Clearwater Revival. Despite some rather disconcerting public
sex in one corner of the park, things went smoothly. Not Disney
World, but not bad for a bunch of freaks.
It must have been the third or fourth
concert of the year when the cops decided to end the fun. A hardcore
punk band from across the bay had just begun their second song
after a rousing speech calling for dope legalization by a peoples'
lawyer named Joe when the plug was pulled. Literally. A sympathetic
businessperson on Telegraph Avenue allowed bands to plug in to
his power source via a couple of very long extension cords and
the police just yanked them. After they drove away from the scene,
the cords were plugged back in and some of the more menacing
concertgoers stationed themselves along the wires to protect
them from the cops. The officers then threatened the shop owner
with a variety of charges if he didn't unplug the band. To his
credit he didn't. Five minutes later, ten policemen pushed their
way past the shop owner to the back of his store, unplugged the
cords and cut off the plugs, rendering the cords useless.
The band hurriedly packed up its equipment
while those of us in the park grumbled and lit up the joints
distributed during Joe's legalization talk. After most of the
band's equipment was loaded into their van, Joe took the stage.
Asking people not to leave, he urged us all to take the party
to the streets. As he shouted, fifty or so people wandered a
half block down Haste Street to where it intersected Telegraph.
Some of us began re-directing traffic while others sat down in
the intersection, nervously waiting for whatever came next. Meanwhile,
teenagers who came in every weekend from surrounding towns left
their aimless wandering up and down the Avenue and joined the
swelling crowd in the street. Jackson started playing his guitar
and money was collected for beer and weed. The cops were ignored
as they tried to clear the streets.
Meanwhile, in the park a half-dozen officers
were trying to arrest Joe and a couple of his friends. He managed
to slip away from the cops and made it to the party in the street.
Excitedly, he told us what was going on. Just as he was finishing,
several police vehicles pulled up and emptied themselves of several
dozen cops in riot gear. Two of them grabbed Joe and began wrestling
him to the ground. All hell broke loose. Bottles and rocks flew,
windows were smashed and the police began hitting whomever they
could reach. Then just as quickly as it began, the melee ended
and the police pulled back. The street party grew and didn't
end until evening when police from Berkeley and Oakland formed
themselves into a wedge formation and cleared the streets. The
next morning the street cleaners were joined by some of the park's
early risers as they swept up the trash from the day before.
Ron Jacobs
is author of The
Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground.
He can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu
Yesterday's
Features
Dave
Lindorff
Ari Fleischer Quits the Scene: The
Liar's Gone, the Enablers Remain
Chris
Floyd
How Blood Money Becomes Business Opportunity
Dr. Gerry
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Graham's God and Bush's Pathology
Patrick
Cockburn
In Post War Iraq, the Signs of Breakdown
are Everywhere
Brian Cloughley
The Fatuous Braintrust: Newt, Rummy and Wolfowitz
Saul
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Shopping, the End of the World and the Politics of Bush
Larry Kearney
Two Morning Poems, May 2003
Steve
Perry
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Elaine
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