People’s Park Uprising: August 3, 2022 — part 27

photo by Ximena Natera

My impression is that the University seriously under-estimated the level of resistance that happened today when they tried to start their construction project on the People’s Park site. I, myself, wasn’t expecting it. So I have to assume the University wasn’t expecting it, either.

They probably assumed that, 53 years after the creation of the park in 1969, most of the original activists had grown old or died off. And that the newer generation had no connection to that idealistic ’60s hippie shit. And that the Berkeley community as a whole — which had been overwhelmingly supportive of People’s Park for decades, including the support of every administration in City Hall right up until this current pack of weasels presently infesting those hallowed halls — had finally turned against the park, due to all the homeless people that had basically been living in the park for years, and all the problems that go with that. . . They probably figured there’d be a small handful of protesters, which they could quickly round up and arrest. And everybody else would be intimidated by the army of cops in riot gear standing guard around the park.

So they probably woke up this morning in a state of shock, confusion, and/or bewilderment. As they surveyed the large contingent of people who are now occupying the park — as well as occupying the bulldozers and construction vehicles that they left behind when they made their hasty retreat — and digging in and fortifying themselves for the long haul. So the University must be wondering how their nice, clean plans could have went so terribly awry. And now they have this big and unexpected mess on their hands. And they’re probably seriously wondering: “What the hell are we going to do NOW??”