It looks like the end is near for the tree-hugging protest outside the football stadium at UC Berkeley. An appeals court turned away efforts by several groups to halt construction a new student-athelete training center next to the stadium, and on Saturday workers moved in and cut down 35 or the 42 trees that have to be removed for the project.
One lone redwood remains occupied by four tree-sitters, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
This story has been going on for almost two years, and has cost the university a bundle. This fuss is all about a grove of trees that was a landscaping project built in 1923. The whole story is so very Berkeley, it just cracks me up.
Well they say in the article that the delays weren't due to the protesters. The delays have been for financial reasons. Obviously the protesters haven't slowed them now. They're just going ahead with the project and soon the sitters will realize their cause is gone and come down.
The funny thing is, at Berkely it's almost a rite of passage to protest something...anything. In fact, it's a campus joke that new students need to declare what they're protesting before declaring a major.
The protesters aren't students. Most of the leftist hippy types in Berkeley aren't students, they are random people that are drawn to Berkeley because of it's culture. The students are much more conservative, and I think most are sick of the tree sitters.
It may be a campus joke and all but I give them credit for standing up for something like this.
Indifference is part of what's killing America these days.
I hope that wood goes to good use, I can suggest a few interesting things that could be made out of it...like a warm fire every day in the cold dead of a valley winter.
Sister Ruth at Saint Agnes once told me I was irreverent. I proudly figured I had reached the pinnacle of orneriness being told that by a nun of her stature. However, Bart, I think you have me beat with your last comment. I don't know what made a bigger impression on me, the comment or the milk I sucked up my nose laughing. Now quit poking these people!
Progress always constitutes the removal of something. I don't know how anyone can stay in a tree for so long but if it isn't those trees it will be others.
Not for awhile, I understand the monkeys are in custody on a banana fast, relearning to eat bologna and white bread. Maybe they will get the help they need also. Meanwhile unless the judge is on a Sierra Club membership roster, freedom may be conditional.
I look forward to a law that includes the use of chainsaws in its language to shorten the time police waste on this sort of nonsense. Law Enforcement is a resource, like air and water.
Being a lifetime woodworker, I wondered what was to become of the wood myself. All the things I could have made with the oak and the redwood. If I could have paid the trucking, it would be stacked behind the shop right now. Burning it would be a shame.