“Let there be Light” in Memorial Oak Grove
Have you ever sat underneath a beautiful canopy of trees with the solid, living wood of a Coast Live Oak pressed gently against your back, and meditated while beams of sunlight caressed your face? It’s a truly beautiful experience – and one that the Save the Oaks Campaign is trying to keep alive for generations to come.
Fiat Lux – “let there be light” - is the motto of the University of California. But its Latin etymology renders the meaning accessible to a small handful of Western-educated people. So in essence it stands for “let there be light for a few.” This unfortunately has been the attitude of the University of California toward the beloved Memorial Oak Grove.
Back in May 2006 the university announced plans to construct a new athletic training facility to serve the needs of Cal’s student athletes. This was to take place upon a mature grove of 42 native trees including Oaks, Deodars, and Redwoods. Adjacent to the Memorial Stadium on Piedmont Ave., the woodland has been enjoyed by generations of Berkeleyans, who love it for many different reasons. Some find this Urban Forest to be a special place to just relax and enjoy life. Native Americans have reason to believe that the grove is an Ohlone burial ground. Veterans view the grove as a sacred part of the Memorial to those who perished in the First World War, which includes the stadium and the surrounding park. During his weekly Canyon Walks, Prof. Ignacio Chapela explained that the grove is a wildlife corridor – Red Foxes and other critters have been spotted scampering through the grove.
Cal could have chosen to spread its light to serve the needs of the entire community by building the gym somewhere else while leaving the grove intact, but protests and petitions went unheeded.
Inspired by Julia Butterfly Hill’s famous two-year-long treesit to save a Redwood Tree, local indigenous leader Zachary RunningWolf and his friends Jess Walsh, Ayr, and several other Berkeley activists got wind of Cal’s plans and decided to experiment with a treesit as a way of saving this urban forest. Equipped with carabineers, harnesses, and their inner light of hope, they scaled the trees before dawn on December 2nd, 2006 – the morning of the “Big Game.” Now in its second year, this longest-running urban treesit ever has attracted over 100 treesitters (including students) and has garnered media coverage spanning from the New York Times to the Hindustani Times. The treesitters have successfully raised public concern about the University’s contradictory practices of addressing the needs of athletes at the expense of the well being of the diverse life-systems that the public still expects it to serve.
Just like spotted owls are an indicator species of the health of an eco-system, the treesitters see themselves as an indicator species of the health of this public university. They see the demolition of a local healthy ecosystem that was free and open to the public to be replaced by a concrete gymnasium as yet more poison in the well. But even as the poison manifests in different forms - corporatization of research, privatization of public knowledge, conflicts of interest, ecological devastation, war profiteering, nuclear weapons development, and now British Petroleum - it consistently performs the same function. The poison blows out the light of creativity, cooperation, wisdom, and compassion for the diverse yet interdependent forms of life that create our University community. This poison, embodied in the motto “let there be light (for a few)” requires the destruction, absorption and exclusive reallocation of light from the infinitely diverse life-system at large to a select few, as if this light were a scarce resource.
So a young woman and a Native American elder scaled a tree to mount a David and Goliath battle against this theft of light. Since the sit began, thousands of supporters have brought their own light to the grove to help sit in the trees, support on the ground, prepare food, offer warm beds to weary treesitters, provide legal council, play music, make friends, and become inspired by the “treevolutionary” spirit.
Students have played a big role in the campaign from day one, organizing petitions, rallies, and nonviolent direct action trainings. On September 14th 2007, 34 students from the Free Speech Free Trees Coalition were arrested for climbing over the first fence the University erected around the grove, in protest of its being closed to the public. Before they were hauled away, students held a dance party and drum circle in front of confused-looking police officers, and conducted a consensus-based meeting despite the fence separating the students from each other.
As of January, 2008, there are two fences topped with barbed wire that enclose the grove. Security guards, whose hours are being scaled back in order to deny them benefits such as health care, are stationed at the treesit 24 hours a day in order to arrest sitters or any ground supporters who provide them with food or water.
In the early days, the treesit acted as a magnet for community gatherings. Treesit supporters organized festivals and slumber parties, with lots of art, music, cooking, creating, and even philosophy salons. One of the many amazing facets of the sit was the “radical community” that arose – rich people in the hills, folks who were houseless, activists, people of all background gathered in the grove, a "Free and Forever Wild" space where money mean nothing and humanity meant everything. Since the fence went up, it’s been harder for such gatherings to take place. But as of this writing, every Sunday at 2pm at the grove the Berkeley Grandmothers for the Oaks show up to sing to the treesitters and send up food, water, and supplies. If you come by, bring some stuff to donate with you! Recently the cops have been arresting individuals for sending up food, but they don't arrest the grannies.
In addition to the treesit, three groups – City of Berkeley, the California Oak Foundation, and the Panoramic Hill Association – filed a lawsuit against UC. Presiding Judge Barbara Miller issued a preliminary injunction in January 2007 barring UC from cutting the trees, and a final decision is expected in early 2008. The lawsuit focuses on alleged violations of the California Environment Quality Act and the Alquist-Priolo Zoning Act. The lawsuit touches on many issues, but two of the biggest ones are:
1) Whether or not the UC Regents properly studied alternative locations (Maxwell Family Field, the most obvious alternative, was not studied, suggesting that UC’s Environmental Impact Report was “rigged” to support a pre-determined outcome);
2) Whether or not the new training facility would constitute an “addition or alteration” the stadium (if it does, it would probably violate the 1972 state seismic law, which limits “additions or alterations” to less than 50 percent of the value of the existing structure).
Meanwhile, the treesitters continue to live in the grove. (They’ve vowed to stay put until Cal chooses a new location for the gym, no matter how Miller rules.) Each night they are bombarded by the artificial light of generator-powered flood lights. These loud and obnoxious concentrations of artificial light are currently the signature of our University. The treesitters' light shines from within, organically and abundantly - indeed, some treesitters talk about experiences of healing and spiritual transformation during their time at the grove. Theirs is the signature of an alternative movement to “shed light” on and within all members of the University and Berkeley community.
As the treesitters are fond of saying, “We can have old trees and new gyms.” Let there be light for everyone!
more info: • www.saveoaks.com • www.freespeechfreetrees.org • Sundays at 2pm: Berkeley Grandmother for the Oaks feed the treesitters