Extra

"Almost sacred," was one California Historic Resources Commissioner's reflection on the 6-0-0 affirmative vote to recommend the eligibility of People's Park for federal recognition on Friday, October 29th, 2021. Another commissioner expressed concern about the University of California's leadership given their inability to recognize the Park's obvious cultural significance, while another reminisced about where they were and how old they were when the headlines around the world when the national guard was sent to Berkeley and CS gas wafted across the campus. 

The more important element at the California Historic Resources Commission was the almost casual notation that while the University of California had registered an objection to the proposal for federal recognition, it is not a private owner, but rather a public trust. The democratic balance so missing in the university's and regents' world was, for a brief moment, restored. All the voices, voices from Chicago, West Virginia, and of course our most respected historians, activists, musicians, and gardeners, finally had the chance denied them so far by the City of Berkeley and the University of California to reiterate the application's powerful elements, a successful project taking over two years to research and present. 

This is the moment when those who cherish peace, open space, the raptors overhead and the roots beneath, to renew their plea for Berkeley's leadership to recognize that Berkeley needs to rethink its negligence of People's Park, an internationally recognized - and our town's most famous - landmark. The world finds obvious what your Berkeley City Council representative is for some reason afraid to say, that this "almost sacred" Ohlone land and its hallowed stage has seen enough war. Use your voices, your songs, and your heart to save the place that helped launch dozens of the most respected tangible movements of our time, the garden that stopped a war.