Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to the Bay. Local news to keep you rooted. People’s Park looks much different than how locals might remember it. This once public green space and symbol of Berkeley’s history of protest, resistance and mutual aid is now surrounded on all sides by shipping containers.
[protest audio]
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: But not before protests by defenders of the park who came face to face with police in riot gear in an attempt to stop UC Berkeley from closing off the area in order to build student housing.
Enrique Marisol: They’ve mutilated what it was, but, like, give me the park, how it was 4 or 5 years ago. Like that was beautiful. I don’t know why we can’t work toward restoring that.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Since its founding in 1969, People’s Park has always been a contested space. UC Berkeley has tried to take back control of the land for years, but this time around, the university is closer than it’s ever been to doing what it wants with the land.
Kyle Gibson: We’re looking at taking more than just 1100 students with this project alone out of the private Berkeley rental market. So that not only helps our students, but helps raise up over a thousand units of housing for the broader Berkeley community.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Today, the latest battle over People’s Park.
Vanessa Rancaño: This is the university’s latest attempt to prepare the land for development.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Vanessa Rancaño is a housing reporter for KQED.
Vanessa Rancaño: It was pretty wild to see what the park looked like after law enforcement had cleared it early that Thursday morning. There was a ton of law enforcement like at one point, this failing of officers was like 20 or 30 or in riot gear. They had helmets, face shields, these padded vests, pads strapped to their arms and legs. They were carrying batons.
Vanessa Rancaño: Meanwhile, these enormous shipping containers are getting stacked, uh, along the edge of the park and inside at the park itself had largely been raised. There were these huge piles of debris. Trees that had been cut down were piled up, heavy machinery in their tire tracks all over the place. And you could see some remnants of the people who’d spent time there, like I saw a crumpled Palestinian flag on the ground. And it was weirdly quiet, kind of eerily quiet.
[protest audio]
Vanessa Rancaño: And then around 11 a.m., more protesters started showing up outside the barricade on Telegraph. You know, around 100 people chanting and passion speeches and the 100ft or so behind these barricades, there was just a line of officers in riot gear facing the protesters.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Who’d you talk to while you were at the park, Vanessa?
Vanessa Rancaño: One of the people I talked to was Enrique Marisol, they’re 23 years old and just graduated from Cal.
Enrique Marisol: I live two blocks down. I mean, I’ve slept in the park a lot. I’ve been homeless for sporadic periods myself, but, um, I currently have an apartment. Yeah.
Vanessa Rancaño: The night before I met Enrique, they were in the park, in the building that functioned as the kitchen with a few other people. When they got a call that law enforcement was on the way.
Enrique Marisol: And then I heard a bunch of screaming and yelling from outside. And before I could even, like, climb back up to get out of the kitchen, there was two more people climbing in and slamming the door behind them. And like we locked in.
Vanessa Rancaño: They said they were surrounded by law enforcement. Officials started using a chainsaw to try to get into this building.
Enrique Marisol: They they were hitting screws and stuff, so it was causing sparks and smoke and flames and like we had a fire extinguisher in there because obviously it’s a kitchen. We need to be prepared. Um, so I picked up the fire extinguisher and I was holding it like pointing it out where they were cutting, because that’s where the flames were coming from.
Vanessa Rancaño: One of the law enforcement officials and pointed a gun, a rifle. I think they said at them.
Enrique Marisol: They had cut a hole like a little window where they could look through. And when I was holding up the extinguisher, one of the police pointed his rifle like in my face and told me to drop the extinguisher and put my hands up. So we were just like standing there.
Vanessa Rancaño: It was very scary for them and they did end up getting arrested.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Especially if you’re in Berkeley, you’re probably very familiar with People’s Park and the role it’s played in Berkeley’s radical history. But just remind us, why is what’s happening to this plot of land in Berkeley so contentious in this city specifically?
Vanessa Rancaño: This space has been contested since its creation. The university bought this plot of land back in 1967. Initially, they intended to build some kind of playing field on it. They didn’t get very far before they ran out of money, and then this lot just sat empty and became sort of a dumping ground. And then a couple years later, in 1969, this group of locals, young people, hippies, artists, they planted trees and flowers and made it into a park.
I’m Chief Beale of the Berkeley Police Department. At five minutes of nine, we declared this to be an unlawful assembly. There is no permit for this meeting.
Vanessa Rancaño: The university tried to take it back. And there were these major protests that have gone down in history. There was a lot of tear gas. Someone ended up getting killed. Governor Ronald Reagan at the time called in the National Guard. And really, ever since then, the fight over the future of this park has existed in some form. The university has made other attempts to build, and the park, meanwhile, has acted as this site of protest and community organizing.
[protest audio]
Vanessa Rancaño: The fight for the park has often been tied to bigger fights against what I think people see as abuses of state power, like anti-Vietnam protests, freedom in South Africa. And out there today you hear people talking about Gaza.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Okay, so it has that history. And that’s sort of roots in Berkeley’s radical history. But the university, as you were just saying, has always wanted to use this land for something else. What does the university plan to build on this land, exactly?
Vanessa Rancaño: UC Berkeley is planning to build a housing complex that would include apartments for about 1100 students, plus some permanent supportive housing for very low income and formerly unhoused people. This particular effort goes back to around 2018, and the plan does call for leaving about two thirds of the space as a park, but a much more developed park that includes, like cement walkways and some kind of tribute to the park’s history.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: And what does the university say about why it wants to build on this land?
Vanessa Rancaño: Now, they say this is primarily about the fact that there’s a dire housing shortage in California and a student housing shortage. UC Berkeley has the lowest percentage of beds for students of any campus in the UC system.
Kyle Gibson: At this point, we’ve had a very successful morning. We are closing the park, and our goal is to close the park and not pause this operation.
Vanessa Rancaño: Kyle Gibson is the communications director for the university. And yeah, he talks about the need for student housing. He says they are building on other available sites, but that they really have to move on every piece of land that they have the potential to build on because the situation is so serious.
Kyle Gibson: The housing we looking at building here, including at People’s Park, is where the students who are already here. And I would emphasize part of the reason that we’re doing that is not for enrollment growth, but we’re looking at taking more than just 1100 students with this project alone out of the private Berkeley rental market.
Vanessa Rancaño: That’s the main thing. But they also argue that this is about safety. They point to this increase in criminal activity in People’s Park in the last few years or so.
Kyle Gibson: We need to close the site for public safety when construction begins. And the best time to do that is at a moment when there is as few people around as possible. So we can basically control the streets like we are currently doing. These are large vehicles, large pieces of equipment, and doing this a time when our students and a lot of the City of Berkeley population not around is a good thing.
Vanessa Rancaño: There have been unhoused folks on this land for a long time, but during the pandemic, there was a real change, um, an encampment of the kind that we had not seen previously on this park developed. And there were complaints. You know, the way that we see complaints about encampments all over the state, and this has become part of their argument for why the project is necessary.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Coming up, why UC Berkeley might be closer than it’s ever been to building housing on People’s Park.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, I mean, Vanessa, if you’re a student in the Bay area, I feel like you know very well the need for housing, how difficult it can be to find housing. And I know that the university tried to break ground on this development before, including back in August of 2022. Can you remind us briefly what happened then and how this moment compares?
Vanessa Rancaño: There were big protests back then. People tore down the fencing around the park that the university have had put up. They vandalized construction equipment in there. A handful of people were arrested, and ultimately a court order was issued that temporarily halted construction.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Why does it seem like the university is actually getting closer to actually starting development on this land this time around?
Vanessa Rancaño: This project has been mired in legal challenges for years, and it now looks like the university may have gotten a break. Um, there’s this case moving through the state Supreme Court that stems back to a 2021 lawsuit arguing that the university should have considered alternative sites for this project. An appeals court sided with them and said that student noise in this housing complex could violate the state’s environmental law. What’s happened since then is that Assembly member Buffy Wicks introduced a piece of legislation that Governor Newsom signed this past fall.
Vanessa Rancaño: That seems like it could clear the way for this housing to go forward. And a lot of people think that it undermines the appeals court’s ruling. So we still got to wait for a decision. Um, the university can’t start building until we have one, but it looks like they’re in a better position than they have been in years. I think you can see from the pretty major action that they’re taking here that they are really, uh, setting themselves up to be able to move as soon as they get a decision, which they, uh, seem to expect is going to go in their favor.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, Vanessa, I can’t imagine that the folks who have been defending People’s Park for decades are very happy. Who are the people protesting this project now? And who are the what are the objections that you’re hearing from from those protesters?
Vanessa Rancaño: It’s a mix of Berkeley ites who know and love the park from growing up with it. Folks who have come to Berkeley from all corners and found community in this park, and young people, students, former students, and Marisol was one of them.
Enrique Marisol: It’s horrible to see what they’ve done to the park in just the last three years with I mean, I don’t even know how many trees they cut down last night because we haven’t been able to go in and do it count. But they cut down 47 last year.
Vanessa Rancaño: They told me something that I heard from a lot of people out there, which is that they they feel like the university has really neglected the park, failed to manage it. They talked about all the trees that have been cut down over the years, a lack of maintenance. And they see this as like a deliberate effort to undermine the park, to make a stronger case, uh, for, for developing the land.
Enrique Marisol: Like the vast majority of the problems in the park are caused by either larger social problems that occur everywhere, or specific actions by the university to undermine the health of the community here.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, I know you also spoke with someone in student government who has concerns about the university’s plan for People’s Park. Can you tell me about Nick Grosh?
Vanessa Rancaño: Nick Grosh is a third year student at Cal, and he chairs the student government’s housing commission.
Nick Grosh I I’m, I like I was saying, in support of new housing, I’m not necessarily in support of the housing that’s going on in People’s Park.
Vanessa Rancaño: He says the university should have moved on every other possible site available to them first. Um, he talked about feeling like there wasn’t enough of an effort to get community input in and buy in.
Nick Grosh: Students aren’t the only group that’s invested in that area. He said, there’s a there’s a history to it. There are people living on it, and I don’t think they were taking their consideration, the opinions of those people.
Vanessa Rancaño: And he expressed doubts that the housing will actually end up being affordable for students. One of the other things that he and other folks have expressed concerns about is the fact that the nonprofit developer that was partnered with the university to build the permanent supportive housing for low income and unhoused folks has pulled out of the project, and the university has yet to select another developer.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I mean, Vanessa, this has been an ongoing fight on this land since the 1960s and since the creation of People’s Park. And in many ways, what we’re seeing now seems to be kind of the same fight. But do you think it’s safe to say that the university is closer than it’s ever been to finally building housing on People’s Park?
Vanessa Rancaño: It does feel that way, and we’ll see what the court decides. We’ll see what activists throw at this. But the university is making a stronger stand than we’ve seen. It looks like they are closer to taking back control of this land than they have been for many decades.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: What do you think is, uh, at the heart of this conflict?
Vanessa Rancaño: I think the park is really meaningful for some people, both symbolically and practically. People talk about finding meaning there in the community that it draws. They see it as a place where outsiders belong. And one of the last remaining vestiges of a radical Berkeley that has largely faded away.
[protest audio]
Vanessa Rancaño: So I went by Monday night to see where things stand.
[protest audio]
Vanessa Rancaño: And there was a guy in front of one of the barricades performing music, and he was talking about what it had meant for him to be able to come to the park as a young person and get free meals and to be able to perform on the stage in the park. So I think for some people, that’s the crux of it.
[protest audio]
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Vanessa, thank you so much.
Vanessa Rancaño: Thank you.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: That was Vanessa Rancaño, a housing reporter for KQED. This 40 minute conversation with Vanessa was cut down and edited by producer Maria Esquinca. Alan Montecillo is our senior editor. He scored this episode and added all the tape music courtesy of First Calm Music and Blue Dot sessions. If you’re new to the Bay, welcome.
