DanNation

The final four at the Berkeley Oak Grove

Having lived in the SF Bay Area for close to 20 years, I’ve seen my share of protests — especially in Berkeley.  Today, after 21 months, the “final four” hippies who took over a useless grove of coast live oak trees adjacent to the Cal Berkeley Stadium finally were forced came down today and were arrested.  The various protesters have lived on platforms for 649 days and were protesting the university’s building a new sports facility where the trees now stand.

Don’t get me wrong — I believe in protest and I am an environmentalist.  But, it irks me (as it does many people) that the group (none of whom are Berkeley students) decided to play a protest card for a group of trees that:

• are not endangered
• sit on a small island of land in the middle of an urban college campus
• are abundant all over Northern California

People — we have a war in Iraq that does not have an end in sight, one of the most important presidential elections in our lifetime just two months away, and bigger environmental issues where your protest endurance would have been more valuable (e.g. protesting movements towards reinstating major offshore drilling, yelling about opening up protected wilderness areas for timber harvesting, etc.).

I do give you credit for sticking it out for as long as you did.

However, while I can’t speak for liberals everywhere, I can speak for what I believe your protest has accomplished for those who view the Bay Area as a socialist suspected outlier of liberalism out of touch with the rest of the U.S. — you made the rest of the U.S. feel validated about this perception.

Embarrassing…

But, I can’t say it any better than this post to Craigslist…