http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=11-23-07&storyID=28547
11/23/07
By Michael Rossman
This is a minimally edited transcript of a speech improvised on
September 14, 2007, from the steps below the oak grove near Memorial
Stadium, where a small group of protesters had been occupying the
trees since last December. Several weeks earlier, the university had
put a chain-link fence around the grove, ostensibly "to protect the
protesters" from maddened football fans, but actually to further
harass the protest, which it was also attacking in court. On this
day, after I spoke, 40 members of a new student group supporting the
protestwearing blue-and-gold T-shirts proclaiming "Free Speech" and
"Free Trees"scaled the fence to bring supplies and moral support to
the protesters. Twenty-one remained, choosing to be arrested.
Right before my turn, a young woman, introduced as one of the
original tree-sitters, was brought to the steps to speak. Jessica
Walsh began, "Wow … So, I ran up into a tree …" and fell silent. She
just stood there, shaking slightly, her eyes bright with tears, so
evidently moved that the small crowd of listeners remained completely
transfixed, save for those who called out "We love you, Jess," and
"Thank you for doing this." Finally she choked out, in a small voice,
"These trees saved me." After a longer silence, she said, "That's
all," handed the microphone back to the moderator, and stepped back
among her friends. After a brief introduction, thanking me for my
role in the Free Speech Movement and ending, "… and let us learn from
our elders," I took the steps.
That's really a hard act to follow. Four words: "These trees saved
me." Jeepers.
I don't usually flaunt credentials, but I'm doing it here for a
reason. Yes, I am a genuine relic from the Free Speech Movement. I
was there, I helped do that. I also was a two-time varsity wrestler
at the University of Chicago in my youthso I'm not hostile to
college athletics. And I was also a science teacher to young children
for 29 years, so you'll understand why I start by saying that I want
to talk about ecology. And I want to talk about social ecology.
Now you know, these oak trees, ravaged as the ground beneath them is,
are home to 400 different creatures large enough to see with your
eyes, from sowbugs on up to squirrels. It's a real, little forest, it
actually is doing its job. It's not like the eucalyptus trees on
Treasure Island, which back home in Tasmania have 400 things that
live with them but here have practically nothing because their
chemicals are weird and not adapted here. So that's trees, not a
forest. This is a patch of genuine forest.
But I want to talk about social ecology. You understand what an
indicator species is. The spotted owl is an indicator species. When
the spotted owl numbers go down, it's wrong not just because we care
for the spotted owl, but because the spotted owl is a species that
testifies to the health of the entire forest. If its numbers are
declining, that means the whole forest is sick.
The oak grove here is an indicator species in the social ecology.
When the oak grove is going down, it's not just about the oak grove.
It's a symptom of a general sickness in the whole social ecology. The
oak grove is not separate from the rest of the university, which
looks like it's across the street. But there's not a street dividing
it into two parts, it's one thing.
The university acts in this town … lord, how can I begin? I should
not go on too long, right? The university is a large corporate force
in the town that is utterly impervious to social control. It uses
city services and doesn't pay for them, it expands one way and
another into different parts of the town, and up into Strawberry
Canyon, without adequate consideration of the environmental impact.
You understand, I'm talking about the social environment. The
problems of control right here are not different from the problems of
control of the university in the entire town. We don't want to crush
the university. We love it. But we want it to act right. It's a
corporation, so it's a "person," unfortunately. So it should act like
a good person in the social ecology that we live in, rather than
befoul it and pollute it. [applause]
Fifty years ago, when I was a student, I used to come and sit here at
times, under these oaks, just to feel my life, to feel the
environment, to try to understand who I was in this place, what I was
doing here, what the place was. It gave me some breathing space, some
perspective on the university. Kids had been doing that for
twenty-five years before me, kids have been doing exactly the same
thing here for the last fifty years. I'm talking heritage, I'm
talking function. I can't testify to the Native American bones that
are buried here, but I understand that this grove was planted
originally as a testament to those who fell in World War I. We're in
the middle of another war at this time, when why they're falling
makes much less sense. Just considering this isolated point, it's not
the best time to tear down a memorial to people who fought in a war
that in some respects made more sense.
Fifty years ago and up to this time, students have been using this
space. It's not just an empty space that's decorated with some trees.
It's a functional part of the campus, it's like a piece of lung where
people can breathe. Forty years ago, I used to pause here while going
up to the Greek Theater to see the Grateful Dead or whoever, because
this was a good place to have a few puffs. For thirty-five years
before that, kids had been pausing on their way to the Greek Theater
to have a little tipple. And in the years since I did this, that's
been part of the night function of this little lung here. Hey, that's
part of the night-time university. They say it doesn't count like the
day-time university. That's not true, you learn as whole people. What
goes on in the night informs what goes on in the day, they should not
be artificially separated. And thesehow would you describe what I've
just been talking about, "social amenities"?should not be easily
sacrificed to corporate greed.
O my god, how can I speak of corporate greed? Well, let's talk about
it. I'm a friend of athletics. But baseball isn't baseball any
longer, you know that, not even Little League. We used to choose up
teams ourselves and make our own field … Football isn't football any
more. The kids who play football here are not getting paid so much
right now, but they're going to make five million next year. It's a
feeder for the vast corporate entertainment industry. [applause]
So put first things first. That the university wants to build its
athletic center here is a sign of the corporate priorities. Hey,
you've got a stadium here which many of us love, I used to go watch
the Bears in the stadium. You've got a stadium here, it's cracked,
it's broken. And you know that the ground's going to shake. I've been
living here since 1958 and the ground didn't used to shake, and it
keeps going more and more like this [demonstrates], I can feel it
with my body, I'm an animal on the planet, I feel the ground shaking,
this is not a joke. It's going to shake big-time, and if it shakes
when there are sixty thousand people in there, there's going to be
many more people killed than if they did something to fix it up.
"No, no! We've got to build a $125 million athletic facility here,
right next to the stadium, so the kids don't have to walk so far."
There are places all over the campus where you could do it, there are
places all over the town where there are ugly buildings, where
there's a university-owned parking lot. You just have to build a
structure above the parking lot, it's not taking anything away, it's
not where it will blight people's vision. No, get the priorities
straight. Fix the stadium before you build something else right on
top of the Hayward Fault. [applause]
You don't have to be a graduate student in social policy, a graduate
student in engineering, to understand that this is not smart. You
don't have to be a graduate student in political science to
understand that there was something fudged in the Environmental
Impact Report. And that when the university can get away with doing
its own Environmental Impact Report, and have it sanctioned because
it's a high governmental agency already, without going through the
offices of the town, then something is wrong. So, I'm still talking
about indicator species, you understand? This is a profound indicator species.
The university takes over more and more territory in the town, and
the town, on the whole, has rolled over, because it's just another
big developer, in fact it's the biggest developer, right? So the town
has actually rolled over the most for the biggest developer. So much
for our present city administration! You understand? You do
understand, because you've followed these things. Your opinions ought
to be respected, young people. That was true in my day, and it's true
now. How much of what I'm saying is new to you, aside from maybe the
metaphor of the indicator species? Nothing! You know all this stuff
already, right? How come no change happens? Whoa! It makes less sense
to me now than it did when I was your age, and it didn't make hardly
any damned sense then.
The campus itself … I stand before you as just another aging hippie,
standing around a fence. Like when I was a younger hippie, with this
hair, I was standing around the fence they put around the People's
Park. Whoa! They did the same thing then, they're doing the same
thing now. We made something pretty there, and they put a fence
around it, and said "you can't do that here, this is corporate
property, you can't touch it." This grove was already here, it didn't
need any amenities, it was okay like it was. Let it be. Right? But
you pointed out the problem, and so they put up a fence to keep you
from parking here, from speaking here.
Before the fence went up, three old ladies went and climbed a tree
here. Only they weren't just any three old ladies. The oldest of them
is old enough to be my mommy, Sylvia McLaughlin, 91 years old, she's
not seen on the streets much these days. She comes out of her place
to climb the tree to make a point. She's not just any old lady, she's
the old lady who with her two buddies started Save the Bay, which
stopped them from filling in the Bay, which looked like an inevitable
consequence of unstoppable power. [applause] But they stopped filling
in the Bay. And now we're reclaiming the Bay. These things can
happen. These things can happen. It doesn't take very many people who
are determined, to actually do it. This is the profound lesson from Sylvia.
This is the profound lesson from the Free Speech Movement, also. You
should get it straight. The press makes it look like, "oh, there were
giants in the earth, in those days!" It's not true. We were just like
you. Except we didn't have T-shirts like yours printed up, because it
cost too much then. We had the same feelings of being outshouldered,
neglected, bulldozed, nobody listens to us. We looked a little funny.
We dressed a little funny. So it's not the past. The past is still in
the present. This is a profound free speech issue. These people in
the trees, they're there for me. I didn't climb the tree. They did it
for me. Thank you, people in the trees. [applause] I'd like to say,
"because you were there, I didn't have to climb the tree." But you
know, that's a cop-out. That I didn't come before this, that I didn't
climb a tree like Sylvia climbed the tree.
A reverse metaphor here. They were filling in the Bay, they've
stopped it. Look, the university before, when I was young, it had
many lungs. You understand? There was a lot of breathing space in the
university. There were more spaces like this one. And they've gone
down, one by one. It's like they've been filling in the Bay of
Peaceful Spirit here, with this building here and that building
there. And where you can go just to sit and relax and be yourself,
and breathe with the earth, which is still in the middle of all of
this, it shrinks smaller and smaller. "Well, that's not important.,"
they say. "That's not important, it's just some kind of amenity.
What's important is to build a new $300 million research facility
funded by corporate pharmaceuticals." Well, that may be important, in
some ways. But hey, get it in balance! Don't forget about it!
Okay. I could go on and on, but I think I've hit the main points.
[applause] Except for free speech. These people in the trees are
canaries, singing for us. The university's got no right to stop them
from singing. This is sacred space, not only for the things we've
listed, but also because this is one of the places where we ringed
the campus with picket signs after a bunch of us got dragged off to
jail in 1964. Zachary, the Free Speech Movement didn't start on
December 2, that's when it peaked, with the Sproul Hall sit-in and
strike. So starting an occupation here on that date was even more
appropriate than Zachary indicated.
Now, one last thing. I come walking along, right over there, and I
see this big bronze bruin sculpture, right? It's the Cal Bear! What
kind of bear? A grizzly bear, right? Well, the last grizzly bear was
seen in this state when? In 1896, or something like that, right? So,
after the grizzly is safely extincted, they raise a monument to the
grizzly. Now, I am the grizzly. Look on my chest, there's a picture
on my T-shirt, of all those people in the Plaza, sitting around the
police-car in '64. You have now in the middle of the campus the Free
Speech Movement Café. I helped to plan it. But I don't want that to
be the statue of the grizzly. There's a picture of me there. One of
the people walking through Sather Gate, on the right-hand side, one
of the guys with his hand on the pole of the banner that says "FREE
SPEECH" is me when I'm your age. Okay? That's the grizzly. Okay?
You don't want the Free Speech Grizzly extinct on this land. You
don't want them boasting about how they got its pelt and its bones
without live grizzlies in the streets, up in the trees, doing what
grizzlies do. [applause] And you've got to live with them! That's the
thing about bears, the bears are coming back, and you've got to live
with the bears. They're people, right? They're actual people, more so
than corporations. The Native Americans had it right. The bears were
people, we're people. They lived with the bears. You've got to live
with them, you can't just go thunk and they're gone. The free speech
grizzlies are Bears. The university has to learn that it's got to
live with them. It can't put up fences, make law-suits to extirpate
them, because they're going to come back, again and again and again.
When whoever it was among you put forth this litany here – "oh, we
knocked, we lettered, we petitioned, we had meetings, we gave this
and that" – tears literally came to my eyes, because that's what we
did, and you know, the truth was, you've got to go through all those
steps, and it won't make a damned bit of difference to them, but
you've got to cover your ass. And then you take the next step.
Because of potential felonious conspiracy charges, I am definitely
not urging you to go do such nasty things to this fence that they
have to have a 24-hour armed police guard continually here to make
clear to the public what is happening here. I can't say that, I can't
ask you to do that, you know. But I will tell you what happened in
1972, after two and a half years, with the fence around People's Park.
Somebody printed up 500 copies of a flyer that gave a certain date.
And on that date, three thousand people came to People's Park, around
the fence, and they pulled it down with their bare hands. [applause]
And then what happened? Then they came in with the shotguns, and they
killed one, blinded another, wounded many, I got a little buckshot …
no, I'm sorry, that was the first time. The second time we did it,
they didn't do anything. Because the fallout from the first time,
when they shot and beat so many, had been so extensive, that they
actually let three thousand people pull down the fence and take the
Park back. And the Park still, in its battered way, in the social
ecology, is still limping along. God help us, it's still an open
space, for that long. May this fence come down! May this place still
be an open space, thirty years from now! [applause]
[Had I not been flustered at running on so long, I might have added:
"How fine it is to see you grizzly cubs come back to this land. Go
Bears!" But I think they knew how I felt about them.]
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