street roots
Oct 28, 2011
Another piece of
occupied land:
People’s Park
More than 40 years on, the creation of
People’s Park remains an inspiration
for modern movements
BY MARY PACIOS
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
The year was 1968, the place Berkeley,
Calif. When eco-activist Chuck Herrick was
killed in a car accident, a few of Chuck’s
friends planted trees and flowers on a piece
of public land at the comer of Dwight Way
and Telegraph Avenue, near the University
of California; We called the small area
Herrick Peace & Freedom Park. Hie
Berkeley Barb, an underground newspaper,
called it a “people’s park.” For a few
months, in Chuck’s memory, we served free
soup and bread at the small piece of
“liberated land.”
A couple of months later, people
started planting flowers on vacant land a few
blocks away at Dwight Way and Haste
Street The land, owned by the University of
California, Berkeley (UC), was the subject
of controversy. Students — until evicted by
the university in mid-term — had lived in the
large homes that once stood on the square
block ofdand. The students had pleaded
with UC to let them stay at least until the
efldjDfdhe^s^esler, but the university
administration insisted they needed the land
right away. The houses remained vacant for
months, eventually becoming crash pads.
The administration threw out the
trespassers, and in a city with a desperate
need for student housing, razed the
buildings. The lot turned into a muddy
wasteland.
Word of mouth and the Berkeley Barb
(cell phones and the Internet did not exist)
helped swell the first trickle of gardeners
into hundreds of ad hoc beautifiers.
Weekends turned into huge block parties.
Artists brought sculptures. Meandering
brick walks were laid down. Merchants on
Telegraph Avenue donated money to
purchase trees and bushes. The “hippies,”
instead of hanging out in front of the
Telegraph Avenue stores, moved over to the
park and solved what merchants considered
a major problem
blocked doorways that
turned away
That weekend the most
customers. A
radical thing a person could makeshift sign went
up in the blossoming
do in Berkeley was plant a
lot — “People’s Park”.
flower. Pick-up trucks filled
Hie architect Sim .
with trees and plants were
Van der Ryn,
Professor of
driven all over the city;
Ecological Design at
guerrilla gardeners jumped
UC, attempted to
out of the back and quickly
negotiate with the
planted trees and flowers in
campus administration
to keep People’s Park
any vacant land they
intact Van der Ryn
spotted. Police in hot pursuit proposed that the
brought their cars to a
park become a
screeching halt, jumped out, laboratory the
landscape architecture
and pulled up any new
department could
plants within view.
study. He noted that
at a time when it was
difficult to get people
involved in planning
open spaces and parks, hundreds were
creating People’s Park.
The Berkeley Gazette (an ultra
conservative newspaper) quoted Black
Panther Eldridge Cleaver calling for “the
people” to seize all vacant land and grow
food for the poor. The UC administration
reacted, and while the negotiating talks with
Van der Ryn were in progress, hastily
erected a chain-link fence around the park
to keep people out On May 15,1969, a
burgeoning crowd rallied on the Berkeley
campus, marched to the park, and stormed
the fence, pulling it down. Sheriff’s deputies
in riot gear were called to disperse the
crowd. Faced with the show of force, people
retreated up Telegraph Avenue, blocking
traffic. Someone threw a rock. The lawmen
fired.
Over a hundred demonstrators and
sheriff’s deputies were injured in the melee.
Two bystanders watching from a rooftop
were hit by sheriffs’ buckshot One, an art
student, Allen Blanchard, was blinded; the
other bystander, James Rector, was killed.
Returning home that night, we saw a note
pinned to our door. It was from Charlie
Deylin, a pacifist and dedicated
environmental activist Charlie quoted Golly
Jipson: “This is not the vision I had.”
Amid the furor, Councilman Ron Dellums
was the only elected official who made any
sense. At an emergency Berkeley City
Council meeting, Dellums said, “No crummy
piece of land is worth a human life.”
The ex-Hollywood actor, Governor Ronald
Reagan, called out the California National
Guard, and a curfew went into effect
Coming back from Oakland, we were halted
at the Berkeley border and had to produce
evidence of where we lived. Other cars were
turned back.
National guardsmen — young guys, who
were from rural areas and who, in all
likelihood, had joined the guard as a means
to avoid the draft — were stationed on street
corners throughout Berkeley, guns at their
sides. A large contingent protected the hew
fence. The guardsmen stood with rifles
drawn, keeping the crowd at bay as
policemen in riot gear, stationed behind the
fence, pulled up the flowers and plants in
“People’s Park”.
Students approached the guardsmen
without hostility, speaking softly; some put
flowers in the gun barrels. A coed standing
next to me took off her blouse, shimmying
her exposed breasts as the crowd chanted:
“Make love, not war!” For one guardsman it
was all too much; he put down his rifle, sat
on the pavement and cried.
That weekend the most radical thing a
person could do in Berkeley was plant a
flower. Pick-up trucks filled with trees and
plants were driven all over the city; guerrilla
gardeners jumped out of the back and
quickly planted trees and flowers in any
vacant land they spotted. Police in hot
pursuit brought their cars to a screeching
halt, jumped out, and pulled up any new
plants within view. The police cars were out
numbered, and the plants temporarily won
out
A few days after the guerrilla planting, my
husband and I were having lunch with
Stephen, our five-year-old, in downtown
Berkeley. Emerging from the restaurant we
See PEOPLE'S PARK, page 13
Above top, police
march against
protesters during
the demonstrations
in defense of
People’s Park.
Above, People’s
Park as it lookds
today.