UC Berkeley’s needed to get inventive when coping with protestors attempting to cease the college from constructing a brand new housing website.
The college on Thursday stated it is stacking delivery containers to create a “secure perimeter” across the historic People’s Park in Berkeley, California, which activists say ought to be preserved.
“Over the next few days, surrounding streets will be closed to traffic while crews install a secure perimeter consisting of double-stacked shipping containers,” the college stated in a public assertion.
The rows of containers had been arrange after a earlier effort by UC Berkeley to take care of a fence across the space was foiled by protestors in August.
The makeshift wall is round “15 to 16 feet high,” UC Berkeley spokesperson Kyle Gibson informed The Associated Press.
UC Berkeley’s $312 million housing advanced is ready to supply flats for college students and native individuals with out lodgings on a 2.8-acre website at People’s Park. Around 60% of the positioning will probably be left as an open park area, the college stated.
Protestors are opposing the redevelopment as a result of the park was central to the counterculture motion of the Sixties. Some individuals with out everlasting housing have additionally been tenting on the positioning, although UC Berkeley stated it lately provided them lodging elsewhere.
Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times through Getty Images
Activists have delayed UC Berkeley’s building plans for months. In August, individuals in a mass protest pushed down a fence that UC Berkeley tried to make use of to cordon off the world.
But the college swept by way of the positioning in an early Thursday morning takeover, with armed law enforcement officials slicing down bushes and clearing the world of activists and campers.
Several individuals tried to carry out in a treehouse, however finally left on situation of them not being arrested, per The Guardian.
Seven individuals had been arrested by the top of the takeover, per native media experiences.
Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times through Getty Images
Despite gaining management of People’s Park, UC Berkeley cannot begin building till the California Supreme Court resolves authorized efforts filed to dam the constructing try, the college stated.
“The site is being closed now to lessen the possibility of disruption for the city of Berkeley and campus communities,” learn its Thursday assertion.
The college added that its new housing advanced is “urgently needed,” with the UC Berkeley campus internet hosting sufficient housing for less than 23% of its college students.
The empty delivery containers round People’s Park echo the tons of of containers set as much as fill gaps on the Arizona-Mexico border in 2022. State officers had lined the highest of these containers with barbed wire.