Police confiscate material, arrest one at Berkeley Oak Tree-Sits

Support for Berkeley Oak Tree Sits Confiscated, One Arrest

University of California, Berkeley-UC Police today conducted a sweep of the support presence at the tree-sit in the oak grove now in its 82nd day. One person was arrested. Despite the fact that oak and tree sit supporters have drastically scaled down their presence recently in compliance with campus police requests, police arrived at about 1:15 pm today to cut down a tarp keeping rain off a small area, and cleared away informational literature for visitors to the grove, loading it into a flatbed truck brought by maintenance workers. In addition, police took away a small info table on the sidewalk, which is on City property and under City of Berkeley jurisdiction rather than the University’s, disposing of the educational information from that table as well. The City of Berkeley is the plaintiff on one of the four lawsuits active against the University to stop construction of the project.


The oak grove on Piedmont Avenue below Memorial Stadium on UCB campus would be leveled under UCB’s plan to build a massive project including a sports training facility next to the Hayward earth quake fault. Earlier this week, the presence of evidence of Native American burial grounds in the area was revealed. The University is required by law to survey for and address such archaeological resources, which they did not do in their planning documents. Lawyers are looking into additional action against the University on that issue.