To The UC regents, staff, and concerned citizens,
This letter is regarding Agenda Action Item F4-A: Preliminary Plans Funding, People’s Park Housing, Berkeley.
People’s Park in Berkeley is a poor choice for this housing project for a number of reasons. First and foremost is the incredible importance of this site on a national and even international level. The death and grievous woundings that resulted from then-governor Reagan’s unleashing of live ammunition on student protesters and innocent bystanders in 1969 was a pivotal moment launching a trajectory of polarized politics that is playing out today. The historical integrity of the site is not confined to 1960’s radicalism on and off campus. The advent of the user-defined development movement and the ecology and food not bombs movements also play crucial roles in the legacy of people’s park past and present. Sproul Plaza may have been the site of many rallies of the free speech movement but the flowering of radicalism and counter culture in Southside campus (which is so important to UC Berkeley’s legacy) has found its most fertile ground at People’s Park. Today the park is in use as community gardens and open space for rest and relaxation to many people, a treasured open space for over 50 years, a living monument to the passions and struggle of that tumultuous and important era. Nowhere is that legacy more integral than Berkeley, especially adjacent UC Berkeley campus. No shadowed plaque could replace this powerful testament.
In addition, students and faculty have expressed continuous interest in the park as an area of study. People’s Park offers a unique environment for experiments in user-defined community projects, as the site is not confined by city park management bureaucracy and has a large and committed constituency that is deeply invested in both the physical site and the more abstract meaning there. I and many students feel that UC should view People’s Park as part of the university’s diverse offerings, not as s blemish that needs to be suppressed and/or destroyed. I feel that the agricultural study areas at Oxford and Gill Tract are worthy of preservation for similar reasons; UC Berkeley gains value by having diverse study offerings. Local graduates also gain horticultural careers through these programs; a wonderful community benefit that the school provides.
There are quite a few other sites to build on that have much less community pain and resistance associated with them, Including the 6 other sites listed in your current housing plan. This plan spans the decade of the 2020s in scope, with the sites projected to be developed sequentially. At the end of this decade, 50 acres of UC land and another 50 acres of adjacent city land at Clark Kerr campus become buildable. 2032 marks the expiration of a 50 year no-build covenant that UC generously signed with affluent neighbors. The times have changed. Over a hundred acres of prime land near campus can, should, and will be built upon to alleviate this terrible housing crisis. With this huge undeveloped area soon to come online, there is no logical excuse for developing such a small and controversial site as People’s Park.
Thank you,
Ivar Diehl
Berkeley resident
Oakland business owner