Wednesday, June 18, 2008 – “Muffin,” short for “Dumpster Muffin,”—her tree sitter nickname hiding her identity from police—is alternately sitting and standing in a plywood box measuring about 2 feet by 4 feet with sides about 3 feet tall. The box is bolted to the top a 10-foot tall 4 by 4 inch post. And the post is strapped to the top of a redwood tree sixty or seventy feet tall. This description won’t even make sense without an accompanying photo or video because most people, including me, have never seen this kind of rig before. She is actually above the redwood (not an oak like so many in the grove) supporting her; the oversized star of her evergreen Christmas tree. She is farther off the ground than all but two of the hundreds of people watching this spectacle. Later, as this drama continues on and off for over six hours, three TV news helicopters will hover and record some of the events. Only she may not be alive for long because everyone watching can plainly see her life is in danger. And it’s not Christmas, it’s June in Berkeley, CA and at least 85 degrees in the baking sun of this cloudless day.
U.C. Berkeley’s P.R. guy, Don, unfailingly, and always with a straight face, calls the men in hard hats, her would-be captors, “arborists.” Have YOU ever heard of an arborist trained to forcibly remove people from treetops? He will also this day repeatedly tell reporters that the sitters throw human feces and urine at his “arborists.” What he WON’T say is the sitters have such, um, weapons because the 24/7 guards and fences prevent them from removing their waste. He also doesn’t provide context for this admittedly unpleasant tree sitter behavior. The EXTRACTORS are so desperate today they’ve brought knives and chainsaws and cherry pickers they threaten the kids with while sawing down their platforms, cutting their supply lines and worse, the support lines their bodies hang from.
By Sunday, Don the P.R. guy will up the ante in the war of words and stop calling this grove of trees a grove of trees. He will stick to his new, improved script and repeatedly tell the press it is “a 1923 landscaping project.” Which is not technically incorrect, but ignores other facts. The Berkeley Memorial Grove was planted as a living war memorial to California WWI veterans. Also, this GROVE OF native oak TREES has, against the odds, matured and become self-sustaining. Orwell was not the first to point out how powerfully words shape our perceptions.
The university also refers to the tree sitters as criminal trespassers who are resisting arrest. Again, from one perspective this is true. But of course it was also true of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and so many political activists we honor today, now that our society’s views have evolved to match these visionaries’. These kids in the trees, many only in their 20s, are a new breed and the real deal; 21st century nonviolent environmental activists.
Muffin is part of the longest-ever tree sit in a U.S. city—542 days and nights long as of today. She herself has been living in these trees for about seven months. Despite greatly increased efforts again today by U.C. Berkeley to forcibly remove these environmental activists, this record-long civil disobedience to save a grove of trees continues. Anywhere from ten to a dozen young adults, men and women, many just in their twenties, inhabit the trees, 24/7, on the U.C. Berkeley campus, since December of 2006. They refuse to come down until the trees are legally protected from death by U.C.’s proposed development. The project has been frozen by court challenges from several groups (not just tree sitters) for numerous reasons, including earthquake safety concerns (the stadium next to the proposed new gym sits on top of the active Hayward earthquake fault, increased traffic and noise in a residential city neighborhood, and environmental impact reports.
More than once the crane’s boom moves within a few feet of striking Muffin’s small wooden box. Oh, and did I explain that there is a second, smaller but still huge crane that does this same scare tactic, coming within inches of banging into her rickety perch? No one can know whether she would be instantly knocked off her treetop or not. No one wants to find out, least of all Muffin, so each time either crane approaches she screams bloody murder to get them to back off. I’m of the opinion they don’t plan to actually strike her, but they’re so desperate to end this televised spectacle they’ll say and threaten all sorts of nasty stuff we on the ground can’t hear. But the men’s platform sways on its steel cables and I’m also of the opinion they don’t have subtle control over their heavy rig and could easily knock into her, knock her over, and severely injure or even kill her. But no one knows this better than Muffin and she is not going to give up, nor go quietly, and she lets them know this at the highest, craziest volumes her body can generate.
A crowd of onlookers, a mix of sympathizers, supporters, curiosity seekers, passersby, reporters and TV cameras are watching Muffin in her exposed perch, high above the tree tops, the only sitter not obscured by tree branches. Many think her crazy, especially those not on the scene who will later see just a few seconds of video out of context, the inevitable distortion of events delivered by media in bite-sized pieces. No witness would disagree with the assessment that her life is in jeopardy. But examine this scene, realize what she’s up against and realize how much it means to her to prevail, and I don’t think she’s crazy at all.
What other defense does she have? Being a nonviolent demonstrator, she employs no weapons (not chainsaw, knife, nor human waste). Wouldn’t you scream and yell and act like a lunatic if it kept these men away from you? Think about it. What would you do in her place? I bet I know your answer because I’ve given this thought. I’d bet it’s a variation on mine: “I wouldn’t be 70 feet in the air, alone, in a rickety plywood box on top of that tree in the first place.”
Let me stop preaching to the environmentalist, tree hugger choir for a moment and toss a question out to you few out there—mostly men I’d bet—who think Muffin is out of her mind and this tree sit is all one big joke. When you’re done laughing, tell me, When was the last time you put your life on the line for something you believed in?
And if you can answer that one, try another one I can’t keep from wondering, over and over: What would happen if U.C. Berkeley just pulled back? Meaning, removed the tree sitter extractors. Reassign the dozens of university police to return to patrolling the rest of the campus; Lord knows they’d enjoy this after months of this endless, thankless, pointless duty. Send the additional security guards home too. And take down all three layers of chain link fences and metal barricades that encircle the grove as if the trees themselves were criminals confined to a compound. Then, with this mess of metal cleared, just walk away. Let the university continue the court battle if they must, against all reason, argue for building a new gym and rebuilding an old stadium directly on an earthquake fault, despite massive and sustained community outrage.
What then would happen in the grove? What would the tree sitters do? What harm would befall anyone or even any property? I bet the sitters would…continue to sit and sleep in their trees, with 1/100th the noise and drama and bad publicity and all the meanness the attempts at containment, control and eradication cause. U.C. repeatedly says all the police and fencing are necessary for safety, that the sitters could drop belongings or fall from the trees. But no one could claim this current circus without nets is anything but more dangerous to everyone on the scene, as well as a colossal waste of money they keep trying to blame on the demonstrators.
If you live in the SF Bay area, visit the site of this record-long nonviolent demonstration on Piedmont Ave. near Bancroft Way in Berkeley and see for yourself. It’s perfectly safe to do so, despite the university’s hope you’ll be scared off. They want to isolate the tree sitters, pretend they don’t have a good amount of public support, and put an end this 18-month-long civil disobedience that obstructs their ill-conceived building project. They want this whole uncontrollable mess to go away, but it won’t because the issues at stake are bigger than one grove of trees. The university’s aggressive reactions—fences, police, arrests— to good old American Constitutionally protected civil disobedience only fan the flames of outrage and dissent.
As things stand, with tensions rising under the summer sun, as the university now intensifies its assault on a handful of kids living in trees, their public image will continue to blister. Heaven help them if someone gets seriously hurt or killed. Not only would this likely turn public opinion FOREVER against them—and then they surely wouldn’t get their stadium built here—the regents would actually have to live with this on their consciences for the rest of their lives. I hope instead they can still remember what it was like to be young and idealistic and full of passion with the courage to act on their beliefs and ideals.
Muffin’s dramatic act of defiance today has me wondering if it’s most of us down here on the ground who are crazy, going about our business as usual as our icecaps melt and global temperatures rise. Maybe we’re the crazy ones, watching calmly and quietly as a giant, impressive machine of our own making threatens to knocks us off our perch atop the food chain. And Muffin, screaming like a crazed animal backed into a corner, screaming for her very survival, is screaming for us all.