So long, People's Park

National Review, August 26, 1991

THE PATCH OF LAND at the University of California at Berkeley unofficially known as People's Park was taken over during the tumultuous summer of 1968 by the surrounding counterculture. The open land was invaded by bedraggled squatters who grew and smoked marijuana, played musical instruments both familiar and weird, and fornicated in public.

The occupiers were--at least for the most part--not Berkeley students. And indeed, the occupation coincided with a crime wave on that campus in which the criminals were mostly not students. Capitalist or "Amerikan" property was supposed to be fair game for those opposed to the System.

The occupiers had no legal right to the land, but the university dithered. Then Governor Ronald Reagan ordered out the constabulary, and the university took back formal control of People's Park, putting up a fence around it. Since then, however, the university gradually caved in again. The unsightly canaille of the Sixties moved back. Church groups fed them. They could get lunches at nearby AIDS services. Even Hare Krishna lent a hand.

Recently, however, the university repossessed People's Park, and moved in police and bulldozers. The repossession indicates that the lingering remnants of the 1960s--the semi-anarchi counterculture that still exists in San Francisco and Berkeley--are for the moment defeated. The property again belongs to the real "people" of California, the taxpayers.

The 1960s arguably began at Berkeley. Maybe they have ended there.