Saturday, August 21, 2021, 6–9 pm
Canessa Gallery
708 Montgomery Street, San Francisco
Presentation by David Axelrod, Attorney and Founder of People’s Park Native Plant Garden
David L. Axelrod has filed a Writ of Mandate in Alameda County Superior Court on the Berkeley City Council’s violations of the Brown Act, in formulating and adopting the City’s recent secret “settlement agreement” with the University of California. In the secret agreement, the Berkeley Mayor and City Council surrendered a lawsuit it had already won that had challenged the University’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP), a plan that seeks to destroy People’s Park and other irreplaceable neighborhood and community assets in Berkeley.
David was involved in the 1970s and 1980s as founder and Field Coordinator of the People’s Park Project/Native Plant Forum (PPP/NPF), a student and community group that executed creative user development of People’s Park, establishing organic gardens and native plant communities in the Park commencing in 1974, and built the People’s Stage in 1979, under leadership of the People’s Park Council (PPC).
During those times, members of PPP/NPF and PPC developed a generally more peaceful and cooperative relationship with the University campus administration on behalf of Park users, gardeners, students and neighbors, concluding several written agreements. David will bring alive the park history of past years, as well as the reality of legal actions of today.
People’s Park is at the center of sixteen other officially recognized city landmarks, which collectively are a de facto historic district. They represent the heritage of the 1960s and the context of the larger theme of a century of town/gown relationships. Berkeley became a major target of the New Right conservative backlash with Ronald Reagan promising to “clean up the mess in Berkeley.” Now preservation of this community-built park is threatened once again by UC Berkeley expansion.
The university has exceeded its agreed enrollment limits, which has created enormous housing displacement throughout the city. The university has responded to years of state budget austerity by monetizing its public assets in a corporate-like overreach that has also become a drain on city resources.
UCB proposes to cover People’s Park with a 17-story concrete monolith, probably to be erected by a private housing firm that will profit from student occupants. This would destroy both a historical and cultural legacy and much needed open space when reasonable alternatives are available.
If Berkeley all but invented the sixties, surely the city and its university should be able to commemorate that decade by preserving People’s Park as the heart and soul of a vital historic district.
The exhibit includes photographs, art work, posters and memorabilia from over 50 years of spirited community involvement in preserving the irreplaceable open space of the park.
Masks and Covid vaccination required.
For more information, contact Harvey Smith at 510-684-0414.
Sponsored by the People’s Park Historic District Advocacy Group.