But Larry Bishop has never been afraid of anything ever, so why would he care about a mini black hole being formed on the planet's surface somewhere in Switzerland? Can you get to Switzerland on a motorcycle? It might as well not even exist.
I watched "Easy Rider" tonight. It made me afraid of Southerners. It makes me wonder how much has changed. I don't think enough. It depressed me a great deal, but today was a very depressing day.
I woke up to helicopters. My iPhone and Associated Press told me that the police were going to get rid of the tree sitters once and for all. So I went to the stadium to see it. All the trees but one were gone. Oaks and redwoods mostly. After two years it came to this: a sad spectacle. Someone yelled at the supporters "you lost" and "go bears," cried another. There were many stupid people there who had not yet learned that it is always sad to watch a big thing die or see an ideal defeated. The police arrested something like ten people by the time I left. I didn't stay to watch once the tree sitters had all been taken.
And UC Berkeley did it all for a new gym. UCPD is a police force that has no way of supporting or representing a community. It insteads serves the will of investors, donors, and the powers that be. The UC system should be ashamed of itself. It was just last year that that kid got tazered by UCPD in LA., and how many people died in dorms and sorr/frat houses? UCPD is a gang that might or might not be on your side if you're near a UC campus. They are a gang who does the bidding of special interests. It is incredible how easy it is to buy and sell someone's sense of right and wrong. I hope the cops at UCPD are making a lot of money for doing that job; you can't sell your conscience too dearly.
Makes me want to get a motorcycle and ride to Mardi Gras. Maybe southerners aren't all that bad.
8 comments:
-number of coastal live oaks being destroyed: 38, 74 coastal live oaks replanted elsewhere to replace them
-are coastal live oaks endangered or threatened, according to the national forestry service: no
-were the trees on state property: yes
-are there more important battles: yes
do these treesitting clowns damage the leftist cause everywhere by conveniently taking up pointless causes at home in the liberal bay bubble instead of, say, fighting the wholesale destruction of the fucking amazon: yes
Some fights happen at home. If you can't protect what's in the bubble, how can you point outside of it? I don't see how the treesitters damage liberal causes. Are people going to stop caring about polar bears because bay area activists want to save their own trees? Local activism is an important component of a successful community. I don't want a Wal-Mart in my neighborhood, so I will protest if they want to put one here. That doesn't mean that there aren't bigger fish to fry, but just because there are bigger fish doesn't mean that the small battles aren't important.
It doesn't matter if something is endangered or threatened. For something to die for nothing is wrong. I count a new gym as nothing.
Just because you own something does not give you the right to abuse it. If you beat your dog, it's not OK because you own it. If you abuse the land you own it is equally deplorable.
And to say that 74 will 'replace' the 38 is kind of funny. If I kill five babies but promise to sire ten does that make it all right? It takes trees a long time to grow. And their impact on local air quality and aesthetic is tremendous. To kill something beautiful here just to build something ugly in its place isn't made acceptable by planting trees somewhere else. If you burn down a library but promise to build one hundred in Alabama, I will still miss my library.
There isn't much I can do about the amazon or about a lot of things that go wrong on earth. I give my monthly donation to Greenpeace and try to live a green lifestyle. But this is right here, right now. This is in our own backyard. Are you saying that because huge atrocities are taking place, the small ones don't matter?
no i'm just saying you pays your taxes you takes your chances it's disingenuous to get so worked up over trees that someone else owns and pays for with your own willingly surrendered funds, check it, trees aren't children nor are chickens
I don't think any of those funds are "willingly" surrendered.
You're right about trees not being chicken or children, but their immediate importance is more palpable than that of them. Chicken and children are not big oxygen producers, and neither help fight global warming or play an integral part of the local ecosystem or even look as pretty. No offense, all you chickens and children out there.
Ownership of land does not absolve you from a responsibility to your community; in fact, it does quite the opposite. And when I give money to anyone, especially the gov, I expect them to act at least somewhat responsibly, and I don't think that's too much to ask.
The death of trees to make way for a fitness studio is unfortunate. It's ugly. And when there are alternatives, it's criminal and worthy of scorn.
well, it's also colossally stupid...i am troubled, of course, by the destruction of the fruits of the earth in the name of collegiate athletics, an industry which is doing exponential damage to higher educations's ability and willingness to educate. but why wasn't this a theme of the tree protests? why wasn't it a referendum on UC's long-term expansion plans? instead we got this interminable charade of berkeley identity politics that make our/your city look more and more like a weak idea and less and less like a municipality. "guantanamo berkeley"? are these people actually that insane? i smoke a lot of dope too, so you can't blame it on that. no, it actually seems like the whole thing was about the ability of people with them-tailored concerns to sit in trees for as long as they wished, and that is no cause for regard or remark.
I think that there is a growing group of people who feel that their voices go continually unheard. Those people don't always have all the channels available to them to fight the long-term problems organizations like UC Berkeley or Wal-Mart present.
I think that there are a lot of people out there who don't care about much, but when they see something they do care about getting smashed for no reason, they get vocal. It just happens to be that I care about trees, too. For the past two years, I have been caught up in so many things involving school and poetry and Shakespeare, I probably wouldn't even know about the oaks getting mowed. I try to steer clear of that side of campus. I might not have ever noticed. They made me notice. And now I think that I have see the UC a little differently, and I hope that the UC, after getting so much press about this, might think twice before they just decide to start chopping down old-ass trees.
i'm glad we had the chance to have this nervy yet approximately civil exchange, somewhat eminent sir.
Exchange is fun. You should come out more.
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