Stupid Tree-Sits at UCSC and UCB – Part 1

-This is part one of a two part piece on the tree-sits in Berkeley and Santa Cruz. Part 2 will come tomorrow, and will focus on the Santa Cruz protests.-

UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley love protesting. Some towns unite around a specific sport, some are focused by their observance to a particular religion, and these two Bay Area cities love to “stick it to the man” any chance they get. If you can go through either town any day of the week and not find a protest, you weren’t opening your eyes wide enough.

With earth in a state of peace, and with every individual in the third world full, healthy and content, the activist community in these two lefty areas has taken on the cause of protecting a dozen trees from that ever-so-evil force: growth.

I am not surprised that the activist community has taken this on as its major cause for the year at both universities. Any of you who have spent any time at my blog know that I once ran in these very same circles while I was in high school, and then through most of my university days. I was always more of an ISO Trotskyite type, but since the anarchist circles are the biggest at UCSC, I also spent time with them and their arguments. I know where these folks are coming from, and I can honestly say I understand their arguments and how they arrived at them.

From my time on the loony portion of the left, it doesn’t surprise me that this has become a major cause in these affluent bay area towns. Since standing up for those oppressed under foreign dictators is now just something “Neocons” seem interested in, and saving those dying in Darfur is a “Zionist conspiracy”, hefty parts of the left have slowly abandoned their international principles for selfish and pointless acts that simply make those involved feel as if they are part of a revolutionary vanguard. Zombie, from the always great ZombieTime, had this to say about the Berkeley tree sit last March:

“This wasn't about trees. It was about making a spectacle of yourself. About finding the puniest and most ridiculous cause imaginable and acting like your life depended on it. Genocide in Darfur? Nuclear proliferation? Who cares? We've latched onto an issue that really matters: They might change some of the landscaping around the stadium! Action alert!”

A little background on the current tree-sits in Santa Cruz and Berkeley: UCSC and UCB both need to build new structures on their campuses to accommodate their growing student bodies. UCB plans to build a new stadium, and UCSC plans to build a biomedical research lab. Both of these buildings require about a dozen trees to be cut down so that space can be made to accommodate them. In Berkeley, it is a group of trees originally planted on the ground when the university was built, and in Santa Cruz it is a few older pines on the north end of campus. Both of these projects are important in keeping these schools competitive and accommodating to a growing student body.

The Berkeley University will actually plant more trees than currently sit on the site, but that’s not enough for our tree sitting activists. In fact, it’s not even about the trees. It’s about fighting something, and the university is always an easy, and more importantly, safe target. No one at this tree sit actually believes they will go to jail or be punished in any way for breaking the law. They talk up the rebellious angle of their protest, but rebelling in Berkeley is not just common, it’s institutionalized.



You see, it would be rather easy for the police to round up all the folks in the tree, and start work on the stadium. But this is Berkeley, and the university and its city council treat every protest as if it is legitimate and worthy of discussion.

Not surprisingly, some of the major supporters of the tree-sit are the wealthy aging hippies that own homes around UCB and have always hated having football games on campus.



Environmentalism is the safest of all political causes for limousine liberals. Unlike the millionaires’ who advocate socialist polices and end up looking like hypocrites in the process, the environmental millionaire can safely condemn the expansion of a university (one that many of them attended, and one that most surely removed trees and wildlife to come into existence) and can relive their glory days by fighting the man and protecting their pristine multi-million dollar communities. People's Park (another similar and exaggerated Berkeley event from the 60’s) will rise again! It is certainly what Marx would have done!

Tomorrow, the even more disturbing protests at the University of California, Santa Cruz.