Free Speech: It Ain't Always Free
University of California lawyer Michael Goldstein just clobbered the tree sitters in (perhaps) the only way a University lawyer knows how: by attempting to extract from the protestors what this SF Gate article dubbed a 'pound of flesh' for the cost they incurred. Specifically, Mr. Goldstein is after something to the tune of $10,000 per sitter, to compesate the $800,000+ UC Berkeley spent on police and security measures during the twenty-two month string of shenanigans.
A rhetorical question: Absent Mr. Goldstein, does the University magically absorb the cost? Or pass it on?
"It's really vindictive," said an attorney for some of the sitters, Dennis Cunningham. "They don't have this kind of money."
But I don't think so. This isn't venomous or unreasonable, this is retribution. What were the University and its students (like me) supposed to do with the tree sitters? Thank them? Encourage them to keep spending money? Feed them, for crying out loud? The bottom line is that I certainly don't have ten grand to spare, either -- the difference is I didn't glibly inflict the cost.
Seriously, I am so thrilled to hear this I don't know where to begin. Maybe with a disclaimer: I love trees, worry about the 'hand of progress,' generally believe that folks in suits should be handled with extreme caution, etc. But come on. Berkeley, California, is NOT the place to stage a progressive protest. It's like going to your grandmother with an owie and demanding a sympathy kiss; people in Berkeley are going to approve of activists -- it's their nature. To relish in that is to accept a gimmie. It's returning to the mother-ship. It's crawling back into the womb.
The truth is that if the delinquent idiots who have been populating our hillside for the last twenty-two months had any nerve -- if they had any stones -- they would never have crawled up our trees in the first place. They would have taken their youth and energy and passion somewhere it could do a shred of good, like Mississippi, or Idaho, or the Congo. Or even Oakland, if distance isn't their bag.
So, to the tree sitters: Thanks for absolutely nothing. Thanks for wasting your well-motivated yet impotent political energies. Thanks for the continuing low-level helicopter flights over Boalt Hall, and for taxing our already weary law enforcement and court systems. Thanks for making liberals like me look bad. Thanks, finally, for getting your worthless cause kicked to the curb.
But thank you, most of all, for being citizens of this fine country. With any luck you will be made to reckon with your bill -- so I won't have to. Perhaps Mr. Goldstein accepts installments.
A rhetorical question: Absent Mr. Goldstein, does the University magically absorb the cost? Or pass it on?
"It's really vindictive," said an attorney for some of the sitters, Dennis Cunningham. "They don't have this kind of money."
But I don't think so. This isn't venomous or unreasonable, this is retribution. What were the University and its students (like me) supposed to do with the tree sitters? Thank them? Encourage them to keep spending money? Feed them, for crying out loud? The bottom line is that I certainly don't have ten grand to spare, either -- the difference is I didn't glibly inflict the cost.
Seriously, I am so thrilled to hear this I don't know where to begin. Maybe with a disclaimer: I love trees, worry about the 'hand of progress,' generally believe that folks in suits should be handled with extreme caution, etc. But come on. Berkeley, California, is NOT the place to stage a progressive protest. It's like going to your grandmother with an owie and demanding a sympathy kiss; people in Berkeley are going to approve of activists -- it's their nature. To relish in that is to accept a gimmie. It's returning to the mother-ship. It's crawling back into the womb.
The truth is that if the delinquent idiots who have been populating our hillside for the last twenty-two months had any nerve -- if they had any stones -- they would never have crawled up our trees in the first place. They would have taken their youth and energy and passion somewhere it could do a shred of good, like Mississippi, or Idaho, or the Congo. Or even Oakland, if distance isn't their bag.
So, to the tree sitters: Thanks for absolutely nothing. Thanks for wasting your well-motivated yet impotent political energies. Thanks for the continuing low-level helicopter flights over Boalt Hall, and for taxing our already weary law enforcement and court systems. Thanks for making liberals like me look bad. Thanks, finally, for getting your worthless cause kicked to the curb.
But thank you, most of all, for being citizens of this fine country. With any luck you will be made to reckon with your bill -- so I won't have to. Perhaps Mr. Goldstein accepts installments.
posted by Patrick Bageant at 10:15 PM
26 Comments:
Wow. I am unbelievably happy as well.
A gem of good news in a shitty week.
This is the disturbing part of the article:
"So far, most of the 15 to 20 protesters arrested in the past year have been hit with fines of about $100 for trespassing and little or no jail time."
This is why we have tree-sitting problems--because random people cause cause waste thousands of UC dollars at little or no cost to themselves.
I think $10,000 fines are absolutely appropriate. $1000 doesn't begin to come close to a remedy for the UCB costs spent on this little spectacle.
$10,000? That's weak sauce. Any chance we can make it $100,000?
I couldn't have said it better myself. Kudos Patrick. The closest thing I could come up with is: "Neener, neener."
you pretty much sound as vindictive as the university. nice.
12:54,
You sound rather spiteful yourself. Good work!
Is there a reason not to be vindictive? We're talking about people who were throwing their own feces.
It's really not about being vindictive- it's about deterrence. People should know, even protesters, that they may be held accountable for their behavior. Hopefully the cost imposed will mean that those who choose protest in the future will do it for something useful and serious.
Patrick,
Not that I wouldn't have preferred to see these folks elsewhere, too, but why do you think they should protest in Idaho or Oakland when they presumably have the highest probability of "success" here in Berkeley.
(Success being defined as the trees not coming down. Ever.)
I think they got a much longer run - and had a much better chance - here than anywhere else. How long did we tolerate them? 22 months? Would Oakland have tolerated that for so long? I don't think so.
So, perhaps the rational choice was to do this in Berkeley?
9:53, an extension of that reasoning suggests the tree sitters would have been even more "successful" if they had chosen trees nobody wanted to cut in the first place. E.g., one of the memorial eucalyptus trees behind Sproul Hall -- they could have perched up there for decades. Who knew success could be so easy?
Please. That's not an extension. They're protesters. There's no point to climbing up trees that aren't going to be cut down. ;-)
There are a lot of trees that people want to cut down. If I'm for trees and want to put myself somewhere I think I might be able to stop somebody from cutting one down, it would be here.
What's your logic for them going elsewhere? It sounds like NIMBY, and my response to that would be that you opted to make your backyard here in Berkeley.
Wait, what?
Remember, the reasoning at 9:53 defined success as not cutting the trees down, ever, and then picked a strategy (the Berkeley oaks) well-suited to that end. So I suggested a strategy even BETTER suited to that end -- the memorial eucalyptus grove, which is unlikely be cut down, ever.
If you find my suggestion absurd, that was kind of my point. And by extension, the reasoning at 9:53 is absurd, too.
Anyway my backyard, which (unlike this place) could actually benefit from a tree sitter or two, is Idaho. Problem is, they get eaten by the bears.
Patrick is saying that there are more USEFUL places to sit in trees. Places where thousands of trees are being cut down, indiscriminately, without being replanted. Yet the sitters chose Berkeley, where 18 trees were cut down, and three times as many were planted in their place.
It's like protesting whaling in Nebraska.
My solution:
Reinstate debtor's prison, and force the tree sitters to work off their debt by cutting down trees.
Real cool of the SF Gate to say that a lawyer named Goldstein is trying to get a "pound of flesh." Stay classy, dicks.
UC did NOT have to spend all that money on fences, security guards, generators, floodlights and low flying helicopters over Boalt Hall. The administration chose to spend that money, with no likelihood that it would ever be repaid. They could have just left the tree-sitters alone for the duration, which would have been a reasonable alternative.
Should the treesitters be thanked? Yes, absolutely. They made great personal sacrifice for their beliefs that UC should not cut down a grove of old trees in order to spend taxpayer money building a training facility for a few pampered athletes, and build it on top of probably the most dangerous active earthquake fault in the Bay Area. If you don't think it was a sacrifice, try living on a tiny tree platform for a few weeks in the middle of winter, and imagine what it would be like to be there for two years.
Is there a precedent for thanking treesitters? Yes. Just a few weeks ago Mike Jani, the president of the new Humboldt Redwood Company, went to a grove of ancient redwoods that remained standing only because the tree sitters had protected them from Pacific Lumber loggers for several years. Now PL has gone bankrupt, and the bankruptcy court accepted HRC's offer to buy the former PL timberlands. So Mike Jani personally went to the groves and thanked the tree sitters. He promised them HRC would protect the groves forever, and that the sitters could come down now. They did, and there were hugs between Mr. Jani and the sitters. Pacific Lumber had branded them "ecoterrorists" (an absurd term for nonviolent protesters) for blocking the tree cutting with their bodies. The new HRC president called them heroes.
One of the Berkeley sitters named in the Chronicle story was also one of the Pepperspray Eight forest protesters who were tortured by Eureka cops and Humboldt County sheriff's deputies with pepper spray applied directly to their eyes with Q-tips. Remember that? No, most of you were in junior high school. In their editorial pages in 1998, the SF Examiner, SF Chronicle and LA Times all branded it a clear case of torture after viewing nationally broadcast police video footage of the incident.
In addition to being Q-tipped, Terri then had bursts of pepper spray shot directly into her eyes from a can at point blank range, and this is while Terri was chained together with three other young women (the youngest was 16) and posing no threat to anyone. The location was the local congressman's district office waiting room in Eureka. Terri and the others sued for excessive force and after three federal civil trials won their case (see www.nopepperspray.org for details)
Terri and her friends (several of them honor students) were represented by the same legal team, headed by Dennis Cunningham and aided by Tony Serra, that won a $4.4 million judgment for the late Judi Bari in her civil rights suit against the FBI and Oakland Police. The Bari legal team shared the prestigious national Trial Lawyer of the Year Award for 2003, awarded by Trial Lawyers for Public Justice in recognition of their outstanding work on the Bari case, which took 12 years to come to trial (http://www.tlpj.org/pressreleases/tloy_winners_7-28-03.htm)
Just last year, Dennis Cunningham was honored by the National Lawyers Guild with its Champion of Justice Award for 2007. (http://www.nlgsf.org/news/view.php?id=26)
Quoting from the NLG web page: "For nearly 40 years in Chicago and the Bay Area, Dennis has been a stalwart advocate, particularly for movement activists and victims of police misconduct. He has helped represent protesters in mass arrests at the 1984 Democratic Party convention, anti-nuke actions, anti-apartheid demonstrations in Berkeley and San Francisco, the police sweep of Castro Street in 1987, Central American solidarity actions in the 1980s, the Rodney King verdict protests in 1992, demonstrations by Food not Bombs, ActUp, Religious Witness with the Homeless and countless others.
"Dennis Cunningham is an inspiration to a whole generation of radical lawyers. He sues the FBI, the police, the prison system-and WINS!" said NLGSF President Hunter Pyle. "And through it all he is the coolest of cats. No one is more deserving of the Champion of Justice award than Dennis."
1:47: Never find rancor when incompetence will suffice -- it is the SF Gate.
2:35: I'm not really sure what you are trying to say. Maybe it is that the tree sitters should set policy because they were tortured? Yo must love McCain.
Patrick wrote: "2:35: I'm not really sure what you are trying to say. Maybe it is that the tree sitters should set policy because they were tortured? Yo must love McCain."
Patrick, with reading comprehension like yours, how on earth did you get into law school? Without some serious remedial reading instruction, you'll never make it in the law.
Since you are so obviously reading-challenged, I'll repeat my main points.
1. The tree sitters were not the necessary and sufficient cause for the UC Administration to spend a huge pile of money, and so it is neither just nor equitable for them to be fined based on UC's unnecessary expenditures.
2. Far from being "delinquents" as you labeled all of them, many of the tree sitters were self-sacrificing in support of their values and beliefs. One in particular has been tortured for defending her beliefs, but she did not surrender. She is an honorable person who has dedicated more than a decade of her life to helping others in need. I'd call Terri Berkeley's Mother Teresa, and she's certainly the opposite of delinquent.
3. Dennis Cunningham is an honored, award-winning attorney who has dedicated his more than 40-year career to mostly pro bono defense of civil rights.
4. No way would I ever support McLame, and only an idiot would suggest so based on what I wrote?
Money is not the measure of everything and everyone, but I'll bet you're going to law school because you think it will make you (or keep you) rich. Tear yourself away from Limbaugh and Faux News and take a look at the real world around you.
Oh since you believe that certain people are above the rule of law and misrepresent the athletic facility as being funded by "taxpayers" you must love David Addington and Dick Cheney then. Or you're a deranged lunatic.
Did the the LAT reporter see this guy at the Berkeley Bowl?
NWiln: Just because you put your illogical thoughts into well formed paragraphs does not mean they carry any force. Tree sitters suck. So do you.
lol@ wnln, you obviously have no clue about patrick's politics. he's the only active nb blogger who really qualifies as a lefty. it's amazing how you people love to turn on your own. maybe you should eat more meat.
Who let Running Wolf onto the blog? First he starts wandering around the hallways of our school, barefoot and scavenging for food. And now this?
NWiln:
I wasn't going to say anything, because it's like shooting fish in a barrel, but after saying that Patrick is in law school for money, I feel obligated.
Firstly, no one is saying that all tree sitters suck. You pointed to some great precedent. The difference between THAT situation and THIS situation? The language "grove of ancient redwoods" is a great clue. That was a forest. This is a few trees meant for landscaping. Patrick's whole point (which you would see if you washed out a little bit of the Patchouli buildup from your eyes) was that there is a time and a place for tree-sitting, and this was neither. For the reason-impaired: Ancient redwood forest = good tree sitting. Urban landscaping = pathetic, thankless attention-stunt.
It sucks that someone was pepper-sprayed. I, like you I suspect, also like to stick it to the man. However, that has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the current situation.
Finally, you say that the money spent by the city and campus to secure the area wasn't necessary. But this is where you are wrong. They spent $800k in security. If something had happened and one of the tree sitters had slipped, the University would be liable for far more than $800k. Think of that money as being spent not to protect the tree-sitters but to protect the University from the tree-sitters.
The rest of your statements suffer from your complete and utter inability to reason. A good place to start would be to realize when people are making fun of said absurd reasoning (see Patrick's McCain statement).
Actually, I said all tree sitters suck. Get a job and stop wasting the resources of an already economically troubled State/country.
I know I've said it before, but if the Berkeley tree sitters REALLY cared about the oak trees they would have taken steps to mitigate the damage they themselves were causing. Two years of limb-hanging and soil compaction had to have shortened the natural life span of those trees.
The true oak tree saviors are the researchers at Cal who study Sudden Oak Death.
NWiln: I wouldn't argue with you that the people you name aren't principled people who've done good things. I just think they picked a lame pony in this race. Protest often requires personal sacrifice. That sacrifice may take the form of physical discomfort (e.g.: a hunger strike, getting pepper sprayed), or, in this case, financial discomfort. Deal.
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