Orange sparks flew as officers cut the community kitchen open with a saw and a metal grinding tool. There were people inside, Jonah Gottlieb knew as he watched nervously.

Other officers continued to ransack the rest of the park. Community members and students yelled in protest.

Amid the chaos, memories of the park seemed to intertwine with the blur: chess games, movie nights, concerts, conversations by the community library and kitchen.

To Gottlieb, a senior history major at the University of California, Berkeley, People’s Park in Berkeley is a unique public gathering place for the people of the Southside neighborhood and Berkeley students like himself.

On Jan. 4 around midnight, hundreds of police officers descended on the park with orders to clear it for construction.

Though Gottlieb was horrified to see what was happening, he was not surprised.

“They’ve been trying to kill this park since the ’60s,” Gottlieb told McClatchy News in a phone interview.

The history of People’s Park

People’s Park started in the 1960s when UC Berkeley razed a block of houses on the Southside of Berkeley with plans of building dormitories, according to The Guardian.

But funding for the development dried up and a large patch of dirt remained, according to the Berkeley Library.

The decade was the height of the Free Speech Movement, and as more campus organizing was happening at UC Berkeley, students and locals turned the dirt patch into a park, the library said.

In 1969, People’s Park was the scene of a large anti-war protest when Gov. Ronald Reagan sent the National Guard to quell the demonstration. The confrontation turned deadly and became known as Bloody Thursday, according to the library.

Tensions continued with UC Berkeley’s multiple attempts to build in the park after that, but none of them were successful.

“In the ’90s, it was volleyball courts,” said Gottlieb.

It was basketball courts a short time later, according to ABC News.

“UC Berkeley loves its radical history but ignores the fact that at every turn, this radical history was made by people who are directly opposed and undermined by the UC,” said Gottlieb.

UC Berkeley again tries to build in the park

Now, UC Berkeley has a $312 million plan to build student housing on People’s Park, according to The Guardian.

“There are 13 other sites the UC has identified where they could build housing for students and unhoused people if they want to, and these places would not encounter this type of resistance,” Gottlieb said.

The construction is contingent on a decision from the California Supreme Court, but the university is “enforcing its legal right to close the construction zone by surrounding it with a border of double-stacked shipping containers,” UC Berkeley said in a Jan. 3 news release.

Officials said they previously halted construction in August 2022 amid protests.

“(We) oppose development on People’s Park because we don’t want the last greenspace, the last park in our neighborhood, to be destroyed, and the community space that exists there to be destroyed.”

Gottlieb, who had arrived at the park on Jan. 3 around 11 p.m., was standing among other students and community members when police got there. People began protesting peacefully, he said. Eventually, over a loudspeaker, officers ordered people to disperse. Few did.

Around 2 a.m., Gottlieb was standing with other protesters when he saw a group of officers approaching them. Suddenly, the officers began to push the people demonstrating, he said. He felt one officer’s hands on him.

“You’re under arrest,” a voice said.

Police arrested seven protesters that night, according to the university. They were cited with trespassing and later released.

Now, People’s Park is surrounded by 150 shipping containers that crews put in place that day to barricade access, KTVU reported.

Gottlieb and members of the community are not discouraged.

“We’re gonna keep the pressure up,” he said. “We’re still mobilizing and making sure that People’s Park will remain free and open to every single person in this community, not just those who can afford $2,000 a month dorms.”

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