Reader Commentaries from The Berkeley Daily Planet
Let's be kind and say the unwanted tree sit was an unwitting Trojan
horse that brought bad juju to People's Park temporarily. It started by
muddled minds seeking publicity ostensibly to avoid harm to the park,
but the violence and weapon and damage involved clearly brought much
more harm to the Park's reputation than would have happened if they just
let it be.
To achieve a grander people's vision of the Park's evolution we have to
get past a few misconceptions: It is not Native American owned land; the
original leaflet was a literary, not a literal trope.
The Regents are land stewards of the land and hold title for the people
of California. If as in the new article on the founding of People's Park
the former Chancellor Heyns tells UC Berkeley College of Environmental
Design Professor Sym van Der Ryn that he is just the Regents' janitor,
then we can be the Regents' gardeners and reconciliators. It is wrong
and improper to see the University as an enemy or the enemy; look to
your left, as the old joke goes and look to your right...one of those
people is a therapist. Now if the therapist is on your left, the
Berkeley dwelling citizen who works for UC Berkeley is on your right.
Rather than aspire to take away the miniscule pensions of mostly female
administrators who gave up higher salaried corporate jobs to commit 10,
20, 30 or 40 years of their lives to raise their children on a slender
paycheck , but then someday have health care and a pension to augment
medicare and social security, the carpers of People's Park and the
organizers of the assembly on Telegraph (which I totally do not support
as the cause is misguided and unproductive, provocative by nature and
too old-school) should aspire to getting and keeping jobs.
People's Park should become a focus of a green jobs total approach
involving town/gown/Berkeley and Oakland and RIchmond youth. Anyone who
wants to work and can work who now hangs out in People's Park should be
triaged, treated, led to shelter and family, given therapy and food
stamps and substance abuse treatment and get a chance to choose a better
life. I truly say that the working life is a better life than hanging
out looking for love in some of the right places, but keeping away
others who are also looking for love by the acting out of some people
who need help, not tolerance, not encouragement and enablement, but
help.
It is time to get ready to welcome the coming Anna Head students who
will live across from People's Park. Their paths of desire will draw
them into the Park and to Peet's coffee. Those students should
specialize in the emerging social sciences of happiness as taught by
Dacher Keltner and Hubert Dreyfus, our local heroes, who can rise to the
challenge of dispersing paradigms of spontaneous packets and continuous
streams of bliss at counting our blessings and stopping to smell the
roses (after we communally plant them).
We need to welcome the new top administrator from the World Bank and
have BP (Yes: Berkeley People's Park) donate a few million for micro
economic green jobs.
incubators rotating around the Park, the BART paths, Provo Park,
Berkeley City College and Ohlone Park. Train the youth on weekends.
Train the Park habitues in the skills of civility, give them access to
the things that make us more human such as hot showers, stable housing.
Work is the answer. And for those who can't work: They can't disrupt the
Park just because it is the People's Park. It is Ronnie Reagan who
closed the mental hospitals, we need compassionate volunteer
psychiatrists and psychologists and social workers and nutritionists to
help motivate Park and Telegraph Avenue dwellers to try something
different.
Since we can't seem to get our beloved Iceland open, why not build
housing on the soccer fields there that was once Savo Island (home of
the first People's Pad) and have a jobs center and mental health
consortium for the poor, transient and homeless inside Iceland.
It is time to reclaim the original concepts of volunteer work,
community, the Wow feeling of a participatory not passive event that
constructs something positive, or creates a product, including food, to
sell. From the productive Park to Telegraph kiosks, find the natural
leaders and train them to thrive. Find out their stories, reunite them
with their families in love this time, not bitterness and
disappointment.
Ishmael Reed, our resident genius, supports President Obama 100%. That's
good enough for me. Obama wants a recovery through green jobs. The new
administrator likes micro commerce, helping people to bootstrap
themselves up with loans to become independent. The youth need
mentoring, jobs, training, money and love. I suggest BP donate seed
money to Gardens on Wheels Association (my nonprofit) which would give
honorariums to leading luminaries of social change --- UC Berkeley's own
Dr. Walter Hood who can advise on how to keep the Park as beautiful as
ever and help people who are afraid of it understand that striated
multi-use reflects our society and can coexist if flagrant psychotics
are given treatment elsewhere as a matter of serving the greater good at
the same time as loving the individual. Let's bring in Don Mitchell, who
has written about the detriment to social good that will come from
extincting the rights of the people to enjoying the streets and parks. I
would be curious to see how he would balance all of the grumblings
versus how good the Park looks, with its big well maintained meadow on a
warm day when all kinds of people do picnic there or come to hear music.
It is time to reconsider if the Park itself is served by Food Not Bombs
(which I love as a concept) serving food there, as opposed to a
different location. And finally, I would ask Denny Abrams, owner of
Fourth Street and social/architectural designer, what are his secrets to
creating a fun street even just for broke browsers. I would bring in the
freakonomic writers and have them unearth whether it is actually the
changed demographics of the UC student body itself that has prevented
Telegraph from emerging from a long, long recession. And I would make
sure all seniors get their social security so they can read Kindles and
drink coffee on Telegraph, tutor students, and do some gentle weeding at
the Park.
When you wake up tomorrow morning, ask yourself: "What would Dr. Martin
Luther King do? What would Dr. King say?"
Wendy Schlesinger: all power to the nonviolent
--
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2011-02-09/article/37290?headline=Ne
ver-Mention-Tree-Sit-Trojan-Horse-again-A-Grander-Vision-for-the-Heart-of-Par
kness%3E
Via InstaFetch
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