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Occupy Berkeley Survives—For Now!(News Analysis)

By Ted Friedman
Tuesday December 06, 2011 - 12:31:00 PM
A portion of the burgeoning encampment at the "other" Occupy Berkeley, Monday at MLK Civic Center Park.
Ted Friedman
A portion of the burgeoning encampment at the "other" Occupy Berkeley, Monday at MLK Civic Center Park.
Occupy Berkeley's kitchen in better days and before it was purloined by the adjoining encampment.
Ted Friedman
Occupy Berkeley's kitchen in better days and before it was purloined by the adjoining encampment.
Man with bike, left, who "vilified" the facilitator at general assembly Monday night in MLK Civic Center Park, being asked to leave by camp security.
Ted Friedman
Man with bike, left, who "vilified" the facilitator at general assembly Monday night in MLK Civic Center Park, being asked to leave by camp security.

It is often confused with Occupy Cal, especially on-line, has launched no major actions, and has not distinguished itself from thousands of similar-sized Occupies—but it has something that other Occupies, (including O.C.) might envy—it has survived. 

Occupy Cal is on vacation, and a New York Times on-line header calls Occupy Cal, Occupy Berkeley. O.B. is a good half mile from Cal. 

But, hey, O.B. made Glen Beck's radio show Dec. 2. The controversial conservative talk-show host and TV personality for Fox News was "irritated" when he heard an interview with a camper at O.B., who was discussing alleged sexual offenses within the camp. 

It is now no secret that the burgeoning encampment is troubled. So much of the general assembly's time is spent with inter-camp squabbles that it can do little else. 

Still, O.B. has managed to hold a folk concert (David Rovics, Nov. 19, reviewed on SFGate) and stage a knit-in the following week that was publicized on KQED F.M. 

O.B. made nice with the Berkeley Farmers' Market 20th Annual Holiday Crafts Fair (an Ecology Center benefit), Saturday, and will be cooperating with them on future weekends, as they share the park, according to the key-person coordinating for O.B.. 

O.B. still enjoys the all-but sponsorship of the city of Berkeley. Last week, according to Larry Silver, a long time Berkeley activist, fire officials asked tent-dwellers to move their tents away from over-hanging limbs during the weekend's fierce winds. According to Silver, a two month O.B. camp veteran—campers mostly co-operated, and the firemen left without incident. 

Through thick and thin (and there has been lots of thin) O.B. has showed its scruffy ability to survive. However, O.B. is always a few steps from self-destruction, according to O.B.'s own print newspaper, the Occupy Berkeley Herald, which notes, "Over the last few days there has been a large influx of Oakland Folks into the camp. There has also been an increase in alcohol use and fights." 

When I visited the camp Monday afternoon, I was surprised at the size of the encampment, which has grown from 25 to 50 tents and dominates the grounds of Civic Center Park, a goodly chunk of the park's 2.77 acres. 

I talked to two groups of eight in the park on a cold, but clear and sunny afternoon Monday. One group was self-proclaimed high-school dropouts which said, resentfully, it was their park before the tent city moved in. 

The other group was campers gathered in an outdoor kitchen composed of a stove and pots of cooked food. A cooked chicken-in-a-pot looked good, and the campers were willing enough to share, although they were not happy with the kitchen wars between O.B.'s kitchen and theirs. 

Later, I was told by several O.B.ers that their kitchen was "stolen" by the other camp. 

There are, according to Silver, no more than five overnight O.B. campers holding down the O.B. camp, vastly out-numbered by a huge tent-city. The two camps are split, and the new, beefed-up camp, while sympathetic with O.B. in principle, has its own agenda. 

At the general assembly, Monday evening, the history of the kitchen squabbles was aired in elaborate detail. The kitchen wasn't exactly "stolen," but rather, claimed, after O.B.ers, tired of being "bullied" by often-unruly adjoining campers—abandoned their kitchen. 

According to the bigger camp, when O.B. walked away from the kitchen, it was theirs for the taking, and they moved the O.B. kitchen into their camp. 

Later, a representative of the kitchen-rich camp spoke at GA, inviting O.B. to use its "stolen" kitchen under the auspices of the larger encampment. O.B. has been swallowed whole by the visiting encampment, but at least has a dinner invite. 

It is now no longer a matter of O.B. feeding the camp, as O.B. had hoped, but the camp feeding O.B.. 

Silvers says the kitchen, which he once helmed, was a "Dadaist work. Each day, we would build up the kitchen, but by the end of the day it would be destroyed [by the other camp]. The next day, we'd start all over again. They just wore us down, but it was really an art piece." 

Yet another fallout from the other camp is oppositional campers, who disrupt the GA, often, with invective and insults. Veteran facilitator, Miles Murray, a high school English teacher, who was in the process of defining, "persona non grata," was vilified by just such a non-grata person. 

Murray later explained that disruptions stem from a decision among facilitators to open the meetings to unrestricted discussion, a shift away from the goal oriented, proposal process, after some members of the GA had complained about restrictions. 

According to Murray, the ranks of facilitators are thinning, with many facilitators, suffering from what he called "burnout." 

Murray invited members of the GA to lead a GA. 

Drayco, who was allegedly "stabbed" in a tree in People's Park in January, when he confronted "Midnight" Matt Dodt in his tree during an ill-fated tree sit, blared threats from the edge of the GA. "I'm gonna rebar [a steel bar] the other camp tonight and take back your kitchen," he roared. 

Drayco, a full time avenger and self-styled fixer, apparently was fixing People's Park in January when he confronted the tree-sitter, whom Drayco reportedly believed was responsible for an increase in citations in People's Park. 

But, unappreciated, he has been repeatedly asked to leave GAs and to leave the camp as well, and he was reportedly denounced recently on IndyBay website, an activist bulletin board and radical news source. 

Drayco ended the People's Park protest, trying to reduce police presence. He could end this one by bringing police to the camp to stem mayhem. 

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Southside reporter, Ted Friedman, made a point of using his kitchen Monday night, and he made sure he was alone. As his story shows, too many chefs spoil the kitchen.