Berkeley Tree-Sitters Forced To Climb Down
by Alex Smith, San Francisco, California on 09.12.08
After 21 Months, Berkeley Tree-Sitters Surrender
Since December 2006, a community of UC Berkeley tree-sitters has been occupying a 1.5 acre grove on the university's Campus. This Wednesday, the last four remaining people climbed down. Pics of the tree people--and the fate of the trees--below the fold.
Berkeley Tree-Sitters Surrender and Their Tree Falls Down
The tree-sitters' goal? To keep the University from building a training facility there, next to the school's stadium. The tree-sitters believed the campus needed to preserve the trees, many eighty five year old oaks, to keep alive one of the few open spaces left on campus. Since the beginning of the tree sit-in hundreds of people have occupied the trees, some for days others for months.
While the University had tried to negotiate with the tree-sitters before, the ruling of a lawsuit last week gave them the final go ahead with building after protest from environmentalists and homeowners. Soon after the green light was flashed, the school cut down forty trees, isolating four final tree-sitters in a ninety year old redwood. Authorities then built a scaffolding structure that eventually brought them level with the sitters. After a long process of negotiation, all four landed on solid ground, charged with trespassing.
Just after the last of the sitters climbed down, the tree they occupied was cut down.
More on Treesitting:
Berkeley Tree-Sitters End Their Protest
Protesting In Trees
Protest Structures
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Ah well, they certainly gave a good go at it. I'm proud of them that they stayed up there for almost two years! It wasn't an easy feat to live there in the first place, and to live there for that long for something they believed in shows great personal fortitude. I wish them the best of luck in the future :)
they're courageous! this is fantastic! Couldn't they build the training facility in another place? :-(
I just had a tree planted in a california Forest to support the efforts of these students. I used http://www.treesinstead.com
I live in Berkeley, drive a hybrid have solar panels on my roof. I applaud their conviction, but... the amount of energy and money WASTED is just sinful, in my opinion.
How many homeless people could have been fed and housed with what was spent babysitting the tree sitters? I'll be paying for this stunt out of my higher taxes, thanks so much!
I'm all for a good cause but this was misguided. Talking to the supporters on street level several times when walking by, I got different stories as to why they were there; from Indian burial grounds (unproven when I checked around for proof at the library and city hall) to ancient oaks (they were actually planted by the university) none of the stories panned out. Also, the university had proposed to plant 100 new trees on campus for the 40 that were to be cut down.. to me it seems more than reasonable.
Some times I feel that in our zeal to save the planet, we pick the wrong battles to fight at the expense of the war we need to win and, in the process, waste talent and energy and resources. Isn't wastefulness un-treehugger like?
Wouldn't you agree that they'd be better off protesting proposed developments (on the other side of the hills) for large McMansions that will require freeway access and lots of water for their manicured lawns at the expense for acres of wild habitats?
maybe now they can be productive members of society - by like getting jobs! and taking baths....
...and not spend their lives focusing all their attention on their own media coverage when there are much huger fish to fry (environmentally speaking and then some). It ends up being all about how extreme they are, how long they can "fight the man", instead of doing something worthwhile. I mean, let's face it - they failed!
After their 15 minutes of fame - where no one will remember their names tomorrow - let's hope they put their further energy towards larger projects with measurable results. Otherwise, its all just ego-stroking.
Yeah, it shows great personal fortitude to break the law for two years.
The problem with demonstrations like this is that it makes it that much harder to convince people that conservation is important because when they hear words like environmentalist, they just think about a bunch stupid students sitting in a tree.
You might win a battle doing stunt like this, but it makes it much harder to win the war. And oh yeah, they lost the battle too. Great work guys.
There`s nothing better than to have people illegaly trespass on property, property that you`ve obtained in a legal transaction, trying stop you from modifying the parameters of said owned property. These people have shown great disrespect to the land owners, and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent.
These people have wasted 2 years of their lives for absolutely 0 outcome. They could have contributed to society by planting hundreds of trees instead. Or perhaps those 2 years could have been spent performing various clean-up efforts around the globe. But no, they decided it would be better to help the earth by delaying a large organisations who wish to rid themselves of a couple dozen trees.
Tree planting math:
(4 men X 52 work weeks/year X40 hours a work week) X 2 years = 16,640 Man Hours.
1 tree takes about 1 minute to plant, or 1/60 th of an hour
16,640 X 60 = 998,400 trees.
Let`s SEVERELY round down that number to 800,000 trees. Now let`s subtract the ammount of trees they were trying to save. We`re left with 799,959 trees that could have lived if these people dedicated those 2 years to actually helping the environmnet instead of butting heads with people with deep pockets . If anything these protesters have proven themselves to be quite selfish and lazy.
agreed. These people are the reason that I cringe when someone calls me an tree hugger or a hippy. Lest we forget they were throwing their own feces not too long ago. These filthy thugs should be ashamed of themselves.
Wow, the attacks are pretty mind numbing. I can see that people may not agree with this specific battle they took on, I can also see that people may not agree with the method they used. What I can't see is how disagreeing with one or more of those reasons somehow makes them bad, lazy, stupid people.
I guess sitting on your butt, making comments on online forums is more effective than getting out and doing something....anything.
Brutal.
When will the development stop?
"I guess sitting on your butt, making comments on online forums is more effective than getting out and doing something....anything."
In the end, they accomplished close to nothing, except maybe a few criminal records to their resumes.
What Ron Demers suggested should be the OBVIOUS thing to go out and do. It makes too much sense to not do it, and it makes more sense than fighting battles you know you were going to lose.
You can pick and choose battles you can win, and pick some you might win, and avoid one's you'll obviously lose and spend your time money and resources doing good in the world.
Their are CRIMINALS who spike trees to stop logging when the same amount of manpower would plant many more trees than spiking DOESN'T save. How are these guys any different?
They broke the law, and will be lucky to stay in the university system. At some point somebody didn't get into the university because it was taken up by somebody that spent two years in a tree. Shameful.
I have an environmental fundraiser for the Tree Sitters to raise their bail money. Please contact me anytime at 408 476-3750 or mdcnet1@gmail.com. Too late for these trees, but maybe this could be used for future protests to support the Cause, especially at UC Santa Cruz.