BERKELEY, Calif. -- Activists trying to save old oak trees on the UC Berkeley campus will get more community support Thursday. A 24-hour community tree sit-in kicked off Thursday morning. Organizers said students, faculty, alumni and citizens will take part in the sit-in. The Save The Memorial Oaks Coalition is trying to stop UC Berkeley from cutting down the trees to build a sports complex. Last month, a judge ordered an injunction preventing the trees from being cut down until a full hearing is held. The university said it will not back down.
Note from editor: If you plan on joining the festivities, it’s recommended that you bring plenty of spare change, as the dirt bags, er, protesters, will definitely be hitting you up for change to finance their various addictions.
5 comments:
I'm starting to wonder about the "hippie"/"tree hugger" bagging that's been going on. Why isn't anybody holding the University accountable for any of this mess? From the research I've done, it seems to me that the University could of avoided this conflict by planning more carefully. They knew these protests were coming when many Berkeley citizens voiced their concerns at last years EIR Public Sessions. You'd think Cal would be wise when it came to consensus building and cultural awareness.
Yeah you would think that huh! Because everyone knows that the tree huggers and activists are just so willing to compromise and be reasonable. Yeah man, let's be like the tree huggers and blame everything on the University! Good point Feliz! Yeah Dude, far out!
The University could NOT have avoided this conflict no matter WHAT they did - unless they decided to do nothing - because that is what these people want. The trees are not any kind of rare heritage tree growing there from the dawn of man - they were planted by the University years ago as landscaping. The University already plans on planting 3 times as many trees as they are cutting down (just like they planted the trees in question many years ago). The trees are an excuse for a few vocal people to oppose this project - like they will oppose any and every project in the future.
Riiight Seth...and being a prick is a great way to get your point across and convince people that you're someone they should listen to.
I just feel the University could of done a better job of avoiding this. Dave is probably right, it couldn't of been avoided all together, and the replacing trees 3 fold is a good idea. However, the tree huggers have a lot of support so they obviously did something wrong... and as long as people like Seth are the opposition, they'll get more.
Feliz, I think you well over estimate the support the tree-huggers have and well under estimate the amount of cooperative work the University did.
The tree-huggers talk a big talk as if they've got tons of support, but the couple times I've been down there coupled with the pictures and videos I've seen of the rallies, they've got very little support. Remember that the injunction has nothing to do with the tree-huggers and everything to do with the earthquake fault. The tree-huggers will claim that as a victory, but it's not theirs.
As for the University, they had a series of meetings in 2004 during the planning process including putting invitations to those meetings on calbears.com. They made significant changes to their plans and their timelines based on that feedback. The city and the landowners were still not satisfied and not only demanded more but changed their demands mid-stream.
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