June 18, 2008
UC/Berkeley Uses Force to Oust Tree-Sitters
The battle to save an oak grove on the UC-Berkeley campus turned even uglier yesterday. Protesters sang bizarre Native American-ish sounding songs (seriously, check this out) and threw buckets of urine at police and arborists (where "an acrid tang hung in the air afterward." Ew.)
One female tree-sitter was forcibly and understandably removed and placed into custody after she bit an arborist. Millipede, as she now goes by, was arrested and might possible be booked on for assaulting a police officer. Check out footage of her throwing a major temper tantrum as she's yanked from the mighty oak by police officers.
According to the Save the Oaks site, they would like you to "do whatever you can to save the Oak Grove, no matter what the 'Court' says. Come to the Grove! Bring your friends and help us stop any attempt to extract tree sitters and tear down our Trees!” Chortle.
As of now there remains anywhere from 8 to twelve protesters sitting in the trees. No word yet as to how the university plans on removing them all. But stay tuned. It sure will be fun to watch.
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I saw footage last night of one of the protesters pissing from a tree onto the "sacred" grounds they are supposedly protecting. What a joke.
don't trees burn in berkeley?
Ah, the wonders of trust fund babies and the air thats wasted upon them. If I knew at lease one these masked cowards in person I'll slap them around for the rest of the human race.
They should handle this red-state style and chop those trees down with the sitters in them. Let them weep for the environment from a hospital bed. They can afford the medical bills after all, since it's all on daddy's dime anyway.
I wonder if they realize that the carbon reducing benefits of a tree are pretty much over once the tree gets to be about 50 years old. Although, these don't sound like the kind of people to weigh empiricist evidence against whatever they thought of while high.
Make them cry in horrid pain: Cut down all the branches except for the one keeping their platform stable.
Cut off their supply of weed and funyuns, and those tree sitters will be gone in hours.
Sue them and their heirs, parents, et al. for police costs, as well as hazmat cleanup for all that urine.
I'm with you guys (so far). No sympathy. If you really want to help the environment, there are a million things you can do more important and effective that this attention-whoring stunt.
It'll be interesting to see if there are any pro-tree-sitter comments here.
aj, i highly doubt any tree protester will comment here as fostering a discussion about the environment isn't really their point.
Finally. They never should have been allowed to stay in the trees for a year and a half.
My husband's boss is apparently very pro-tree sitter and grows increasingly disgusted with my husband's semi-humorous comparisons of the sitters to monkeys in the zoo flinging feces around.
So far, that's the only person I've heard defend this "Summer's Eve" set. (thanks for that expression, btw)
I'm in the same boat as everyone else commenting in that the lack of any pro-treesitter outrage - here or in the media- is pretty telling. I'm sure there would be minimal PR blowback if they forcebly removed them from those trees.
I had the immense joy of debating some tree sitter supporters up at the grove yesterday. I pretended at first not to know very much about it and had a lovely time getting them to slowly admit that the trees aren't old growth and are actually being replaced.
My favorite, though, was the befuddled, but very nice tree sitter supporter who didn't think arborists were the most qualified to remove the tree sitters' structures. (Seriously, who's more qualified?)
Oh yeah, and we got it all on video.