If We Should Live Up in the Trees, Part Two

What else can be said when confronted by the police occupation of Memorial Oak Grove?

To resume, I offer my perspective on the passive tree-sit protest and the University's extravagant overkill response.
When word first spread of UC's plans for the stately, shady oaks on a gentle hillside, a number of people felt compelled to take up residence in certain trees. The first of them was a notorious anti-car activist and mayoral candidate named Running Wolf. He began residing in a redwood slightly north of the grove's center. A Native American himself, he emerged as leader and spokesman for the protest which soon was bound by evidence that this was a First Nation burial ground.
These young people built little human nests in the trees. Challenging of course, but they freely came and went via ropes and climbing gear. The police lurked at a distance. Meanwhile banners were hung between the trees and a table was set up with literature and refreshment. Frequent spontaneous musical events erupted, all in a peaceful, locally-supported manner. Lots of long-time area residents began to frequent the grove to talk to the young raggle-taggle heroes willing to spend each day and night out in the elements to save these trees.
More important, the tree-sitters resist for principles that many, many hereabouts share, principles for benefit of all. Trees are, after all living things that make life possible for all other living things that depend on air. This is opposed to the will and pleasure and financial clout of some for whom competitive college football holds a higher priority. A powerful minority imposes its will over the local popular will and tough luck about it.
Other trees will be planted elsewhere we are told. Fine, but that doesn't replace having our life-giving trees here. The glaringly apparent truth is that UC has plenty of alternate sites for its gridiron gladiators available a short hop away.
These decisions are made by administrators who are often short-timers from the world of corporate finance who walk off then with huge bonuses. They leave the average citizens to live with the consequences of their schemes. This type has been running wild for a long time, but they ran amok in the last seven years. And as of 2001 they have had access to unlimited resources for any ugly move they can paint as an issue of national security.

I found myself more and more attached to the grove, a very pleasant place with a cool breeze and the feeling of a refuge. I found myself in far-reaching conversations with the new inhabitants, including a young journalist with long blond dreads. He went up the main occupied oak for an interview, a sheer ascent aided by rock-climbing apparatus. I would have gone too, if I were maybe twenty years younger. The perches where the sitters spend their days are quite high, a few boards suggest a floor, provisions are tied-up in hanging bags.
On other afternoons, I played harmonica and sang with one other musician or joined a circle of many. I had a nice ground-to-tree-haven chat with a young girl. She had a charming elemental pseudonym, one characteristic of the names chosen by the group such as "Ayr". This was Winter of 2006-2007, extending into the following Spring. There was a lot of joyous activity on the ground: the gentle installation of a whole network of communicating cables, ropes, and hammocks, community democracy, and counter-cultural celebrity appearances. Country Joe MacDonald came and sang the songs of Woody Guthrie. Hand-painted signs and banners etc. mushroomed in the grove, rallying people and spreading the word. And of course the mainstream media came and went, pimping their usual sensationalism. This was followed by gaggles of politicians such as the hobbit-like former mayor and some city councilors who were hoisted to a large makeshift platform in the trees. The town was seen as standing on its hind legs for once.
Meanwhile, UC's calmer heads with colder hearts got their legal, political and propaganda game on. The months went by. Events would occasionally grow tense--the police snatching tables and gear, and then recede again into uneventful stretches. Arrests did happen but they were still scarce in the first six months of the action.

Over near the north side redwood tree-sit, I found an estimable Oak that I could manage to climb. I would pleasantly lie on a lower branch, relax, and watch the scene. Often somewhat caramelized, I just had to pay attention and not roll over. I imagined what it must be like to live in these trees round the clock--the skill and balance one must learn to thwart the constant pull of gravity, mistakes were irretrievable. I wanted to spend time up in these sturdy, elephantine oaks. I put in regular appearances to make a public statement--that we local residents use and esteem this grove. What if we occupied every tree?

While the lawsuits opposing the university plans for a "high-performance" sports training center made their glacial progress through court, UC started to wax a bit antsy. It was as if they were too accustomed to an extremely tilted playing field to accept due process for very long. They were constrained from making changes to the grove by the initial court orders, but were too wound-up to content themselves with just endless patrols and shakedowns, or with merely keeping police spies in the vicinity, slyly videotaping visitors.
The protest had begun on "Big Game Day" at the end of last football season. So to prepare for the new season's opening game, UC made a transparent effort to isolate this widely supported peaceful action. After it was already in place, they announced that they were building an enclosing fence for public safety. Shock and awe, baby.
Gone was public access to the center of the grove. The information and support table was pushed-out to the sidewalk. And with the fence, of course, an expanding number of full-time guards. The plastic rationale for making such a radical alteration to the site, in apparent disregard of the courts orders, was that crowds of football fans might commit acts of mayhem against the tree-sitters.
In other words, they were doing it mainly for the safety of the tree-sitters. To give the devil his due, there had been opportune agents provocateurs from the presumed football fan base who had hurled projectiles into the inhabited trees on a few occasions. Yet I called their rationale plastic because, like the one for the invasion of Iraq, it seems as malleable as a toy Gumby left out too long in the sun.

And of course subsequent events would all bear out the analogy.

I will return to my tale in the forthcoming Part Three.