Jul 24, 2008 12:37 am US/Pacific
More Cal Tree-Sitters Appear After Judge Rules
BERKELEY (CBS 5 / BCN) ―
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An activist uses a newly-erected cable that crossed Piedmont Avenue on Wednesday. The cable was later taken down.
CBS
Two additional tree-sitters Wednesday joined the three already perched in an oak grove where the University of California, Berkeley plans to build a new sports center, a spokesman for the group Save the Oaks said.
The new tree-sitters maneuvered across a line used Wednesday morning to send six bags of food to the hungry tree-sitters, according to spokesman Doug Buckwald.
Protesters who oppose the university's planned removal of the trees to make way for the construction of a new athletic training center managed to tie the line from a tree in the oak grove to a Redwood tree in a parking lot behind offices on Piedmont Avenue, located about 50 yards away from the grove, Buckwald said.
"After sending the food, they traversed across the lines themselves, above the parking lot, the cement sidewalks and the streets in a dramatic climbing feat to join the cause," Buckwald said.
Before the food was sent over Wednesday, the tree-sitters already in the grove had been existing off energy bars provided by the university that amounted to 1,800 calories a day per tree-sitter, the amount needed to survive as determined by campus medical director Dr. Brad Buchman earlier this month.
Buckwald did not know exactly what kinds of foods were sent to the tree sitters, but said, "One of the tree-sitters was seen eating a banana, and he sent word that he was as happy as he could be to taste that banana."
On Wednesday afternoon, a spokesman for the university said an agreement was reached between university police and protestors.
Spokesman Dan Mogulof said the agreement was reached around 5 p.m. after "a quite extensive, lengthy conversation" between police and a man who goes by the Ayr and represents protestors who have been living in trees that would be cut down for the proposed sports center.
According to the agreement, the protestors removed a line that was rigged along Piedmont Avenue to the trees Wednesday morning in order to send bags of food to the tree-sitters, Mogulof said.
The tree-sitters also vacated a new tree that they took over earlier on Wednesday. They will also lower all the human waste they have been stockpiling and continue to lower it on a daily basis, said Mogulof.
The agreement requires the supporters of the tree-sitters to cease attempts to re-supply them with food or storm the barricades the university set up around the trees, he said.
Mogulof said that in return, supporters will be allowed on a daily basis to send up a bag of food that has been searched by university officials.
One of the two people who joined the tree-sitters Wednesday morning voluntarily came down and gave himself up to police. Mogulof added that the protestor will be identified and released as long as he has no outstanding warrants.
University officials agreed to give a 72-hour notice if they plan to either end the agreement or forcible remove the tree-sitters, the spokesman said.
"This was done purely in the interest in public safety," said Mogulof. "The line represented a significant hazard to pedestrians, vehicles and the protestors themselves. There were significant fears of stockpiling waste and using it as a weapon."
Earlier on Wednesday, the mood at the grove was "strong, and very happy," according to Buckwald, despite a ruling late Tuesday by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara Miller that allows UC Berkeley to begin construction on the sports training facility at the site of the oak grove.
A UC Board of Regents committee approved building the sports training center on Dec. 5, 2006.
Shortly afterward, a group of people began living in a grove of oak trees next to the stadium to protest the project because it calls for tearing down many of the trees.
UC attorney Charles Olson said the estimated cost of the project grew by more than $11 million since Miller issued a preliminary injunction Jan. 29, 2007. Miller's latest ruling dissolves that injunction in seven days.
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