UC-Berkeley Occupy Movement Devolving into Agrarian Land War
You've got to hand it to the members of the Occupy movement at the University of California-Berkeley. They take their philosophy of class conflict so seriously that they're now staging protests seemingly drawn from the age of feudalism. From the Daily Californian:
Protesters continued occupying and farming a UC-owned plot of land in Albany Monday and said they plan on staying as long as they can...
The demonstrators consist of community members, urban farming enthusiasts and people aligned with the Occupy movement who have come together in hopes that the land be turned into a farming space. So far, they have ploughed and tilled the land and have planted broccoli, chard, squash, beans, kale and pumpkins...
In response to the Albany occupation, the university turned off the water supply that provides irrigation to the land.
“This land is essentially an open-air research lab — it is not public land in the common sense,” [university spokesman Dan] Mogulof said. “It would not make sense to provide them with resources to continue an activity that would stand in the way of research that our university is conducting.”
According to Keith Gilless, dean of the UC Berkeley College of Natural Resources, the research that was being conducted by the campus involves plant biology.
“My concern is that the researchers who have things planted there will not be able to complete their projects,” Gilless said.
According to Haddock, the demonstrators are not concerned with potentially disrupting university research because they believe that biotech efforts do not benefit the greater community...
But Gilless said that to call the projects biotech is mischaracterizing the research, which he said studies plant pathology and disease.
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Comments:
Apr '12
Re: UC-Berkeley Occupy Movement Devolving into Agrarian Land War
What is it with these people? Do they want us to go back up the trees too? What about sending them to stay in Zimbabwe where there are few people and lots of untouched land. Even better, there is no fuel or cars used. Paradise.
May '10
Re: UC-Berkeley Occupy Movement Devolving into Agrarian Land War
Troy, the protesters are gone. They were given an ultimatum to leave and those who did not were arrested. Said one bewildered thief, "I’m feeling like all of this is super bizarre. We were already in some form of negotiations with the university, so why do they need 80 to 100 police in riot gear."