In the 1960s, berkeley became a center of youth counterculture and social movements – the Third World Liberation Front, the Black Panther Party, and many more. These movements had broad support and were connected globally and locally. The university was at its most robust as a public institution – serving thousands of students of color, veterans, and students of all ages. The amerikan government, along with their cronies the UC regents and administrators, sought to thwart transformative activity on their campuses and in their area by any means necessary.

UC forced a majority Black high school to relocate, so it would be further away from campus and Telegraph Avenue. They deployed police up and down the blocks to harass people on the street.

The block that is now People’s Park (between Haste/Dwight) was affordable housing and known as a place where a “culture of resistance” lived. These buildings were a key center of the Telegraph Ave scene, and UC sought to eradicate them through urban renewal schemes.

Bulldozers arrive in February 1968 and begin immediate demolition of the residences. But the university ran out of development funds, leaving the lot only partially cleared of demolition debris and rubble for 14 months. The muddy site became a quasi parking lot derelict with abandoned cars.

A few people begin to discuss how this vacant lot could be put to better use.

In April 1969, a call was put out in the Berkeley Barb newspaper to come on Sunday and create the park! “Bring shovels, hoses, chains, grass, paints, flowers, trees, bull dozers, top soil, colorful smiles, laughter and lots of sweat.” On 4/20 the park was born, with over 100 people showing up to create it!

Each weekend, as negotiations flew between the university (who wanted to destroy the park) and the park creators (who had the broad support of the town), people came out to work and play.

On May 15, 1969, Governor Ronald Reagan lashed out with fascist energy by sending CHP in to fence off the park and destroy some of what had been created. Throughout the morning, thousands of people began to coalesce at a rally and spontaneously decided to take back the park from the pigs.

They marched to the park and faced off against the cops in a violent confrontation – police fired tear gas, beat up and arrested hundreds of people, and fired lethal buckshot at protesters. These shots killed a man named James Rector, who was just a bystander. 128 people went to the hospital with police-inflicted injuries. This day is known as “Bloody Thursday.”

On May 20, 1969, Reagan called in the National Guard to reassert control over the park. The guard flew helicopters over the Berkeley campus with airborne tear gas. Winds dispersed over the entire city, sending school children miles away to hospitals. This is one of the largest deployments of tear gas on amerikan citizens. The Black Panther newspaper noted: “The chemical that they used, is the same kind of chemical that the U.S. Imperialists are using against the Vietnamese people.”

Berkeley residents were fed up. 30,000 people marched across the city in support of the park on May 30, 1969.

The university still had the empty park fenced off, having changed their supposed plan from building housing to building a soccer field there.

In early May 1972, a candlelight march was hastily called in Ho Chi-Minh Park to respond to Nixon’s latest acts of war. Starting with only 200-300 people, it grew to thousands as they marched through Berkeley. That night, people tore down the fence with their bare hands. A police car was overturned and burned. Skirmishing with police lasted into the morning hours. But at last, the park was liberated!

In 1979 the university tried to convert an area of the park which had been free parking into paid parking. In fall 1979 an occupation of the west end began, that continued uninterrupted throughout December 1979. Park volunteers tore up the asphalt and heaped it up as barricades next to the sidewalks along Dwight Way and Haste Street. The parking lot was abolished and turned into the community garden on the west end of the park today.

In the spring of 1991, the university released plans to redevelop People’s Park. It was an incremental plan bent on destroying the park, beginning with the construction of volleyball courts. The City Council and other bureaucrats quickly caved and backed the project.

A new wave of organizing began, with the rallying slogan “Defend the Park,” which was shared in coordinated solidarity with organizers against gentrification and displacing poor and unhoused people at Tompkins Square Park in the Lower East Side of New York City. Identical “Defend the Park” stickers sprouted across Berkeley and NYC!

Emergency committees were established. Nightly vigils and open meetings were held each night in the summer of 1991. As a UC construction team arrived in July 1991, hundreds of protesters gathered to prevent the bulldozer from breaking ground.

Protests grew each day, and police escalated to shooting wood pellets and rubber bullets at demonstrators. The Examiner later reported the total cost to UC of installing one sand volleyball court to be $1 million. UC reportedly paid individuals $15 per hour to play volleyball in order to make the courts appear to be in use, with round-the-clock police supervision.

On December 15, 1991, the Daily Californian reported that “an unidentified vandal used a chainsaw to cut down the central wooden post of the volleyball court. UC quietly gave up on the whole project.

In the early morning of August 3, 2022, UC moved to destroy the park. Swarms of riot police descended to evict the last residents from their tents and surround the park with military-grade fencing. Several people were arrested, and many more were injured by the sharp fence links — designed to cut hands — or police brutality.

Police held hundreds of students at bay for several hours while many of the park’s trees, including historic Redwoods, were cut. This directly contradicts the university’s claim that a majority of the land will remain as usable green space.

By the afternoon, a street collaboration of hippies, students, and demonstrators had breached the fences and the university retreated. The park was quickly liberated!

Efforts have to rebuild from this destruction have been ongoing since, even as the university threatens to unleash similar trauma and violence upon the community again in 2023 or 2024.