Most Trees in UC Berkeley Grove Down, Now
What a difficult time it's been for everyone involved at Berkeley:
Four men sharing a single liter of water, high in a lone redwood, were the last holdout tree sitters in the grove near UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium on Saturday, as contractors hired by the university cut down and began removing dozens of trees nearby.
The university launched the cutting Friday, taking a decisive step after nearly two years of conflict over what the grove protestors say was a Native American burial ground, a war memorial and a vital ecosystem — and where the school plans to build a new athletic facility. . . .
"They're these huge, 100-, 150-year-old trees. You hear them crack and creak and fall over, and it makes you sick, rips apart your stomach," said UC Berkeley student Rene Carranza, 25. "And this is all so people can do sit-ups in air-conditioning."
Labels: Association for the Advancement of Sustainability In Higher Education, campus planning, community relations, construction, master planning
posted by Terry Calhoun at
2:18 PM
2 Comments:
Terry, you have somehow misrepresented the age of the trees and represented the future building as a place to "do sit-ups in air-conditioning."
Let's tell it like it is - the tree sitters are vagrants, unemployed, street people that were steered to doing time in a tree by some burned-out hippies. They are in every sense of the word, trespassers that should have been removed forceable at the first moment of their presence.
Sequoia, whoever you are, if I had made the comment about the age of the trees, I am certain that I would have fact-checked it and gotten their ages right. (Probably no more than 2-3 of them are even close to 100 years old.) That part of the post is merely quoted from the original article's interview of someone - it's not my writing or my statement.
I don't have any factual knowledge about the socioeconomic or cultural status of the tree sitters.
The part of the post which I authored was about this having been a difficult time for everyone involved.
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