In Search of Lost Time
“Them Versus Us” - People’s Park, May 1969
In mid-May 1969, the counterculture came into armed conflict with the California National Guard in Berkeley, California. On one side were thousands upon thousands of angry students from America’s premier public university, armed mostly with shovels, spades, potting soil and placards; on the other, stood soldiers armed with rifles, bayonets and tear gas. Over a three-day period, student protesters - long-haired, deeply anti-Vietnam, anti-military draft and pro-people power - stood up to the university’s regents, who had announced their intention to develop a parcel of university-owned land about four blocks south of the Berkeley campus and just east of Telegraph Avenue in order to build an athletic facility.
Furious at the proposed development, a angry gathering of students dragged sod, trees and flowers to the empty lot and proclaimed it “the People’s Park.” In response, UC erected a fence. The student body president-elect urged a crowd on campus to “take back the park” and more than 6000 people marched down Telegraph to do just that. A violent clash ensued, leaving one man (James Rector, who was visiting friends in Berkeley and watching from the roof of Granma Books) dead, a young carpenter (Alan Blanchard) permanently blinded by a load of birdshot fired directly to his face and at least 128 Berkeley students and residents admitted to local hospitals for head trauma, shotgun wounds, and other serious injuries inflicted by police. Then-governor Ronald Reagan declared a state of emergency, thus giving him legal authority to summon nearly 3,000 troops. Upon being informed of Rector’s death and Blanchard’s blinding, Reagan explained to members of the press, "Once the dogs of war have been unleashed, you must expect things will happen, and that people, being human, will make mistakes on both sides."
I well remember the extraordinary mix of anger, energy, fear, and youthful self-righteousness of those days now more than a half-century ago. I remember a number of my friends and classmates hauled off to the Santa Rita Jail over in Dublin. According to their accounts, they were forced to lie face down in the yard while guards hit their calves with nightsticks, demanding that they, the protesters, scream out WE LOVE YOU BLUE MEANIES! (The “Blue Meanies” were a fictional army of fierce though buffoonish music-hating beings and the main antagonists in the surreal 1968 Beatles animated film Yellow Submarine. Ironically, it was - and still is - the nickname of one of the most potent magic mushrooms on the planet.) The protesters were all eventually released, just in time to finish out the Spring Quarter. The university decided not to develop the land. Indeed, it did become a people’s park, flush with flowers and vegetables, swing-sets and families, and with the passage of time, lots of homeless people.
A month or so after the riots I found myself in Washington, D.C., about to begin an internship in the offices of U.S. Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska. From the perspective of 53 years, I find it amazing that at the time of my arrival on Capitol Hill, Senator Gravel was a mere 38 years old . . . 3 years younger than my youngest child is today; then, he seemed so old. I well remember looking for a place to rent, and happened upon an area called “DuPont Circle” which today, is extremely pricey. Back in 1969, it was pretty hip and mirabile dictu actually had a pharmacy called PEOPLE’S DRUGS. I felt like the revolution had been won! It took about 30 seconds to decide that this was the place to drop anchor. (Back then, a spacious 2-bedroom apartment in a late 19th-century brownstone rented for under $200.00 a month. Today, the same space costs in the many thousands.) 2 months after my arrival, Woodstock happened . . . love and peace, pot and flowers were back in bloom - both in Berkeley and in Bethel, New York. I will be perfectly honest: I did not attend Woodstock, and am glad I chose instead, to attend the Berkshire Festival where I had the great joy of listening to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Maestro Erich Leinsdorf, play Beethoven’s Ninth. And there was neither a drop of rain nor a hint of mud.
So why am I writing about 1969? Well, just the other day, an Alameda County judge named Frank Roesch ruled that UC Berkeley can begin clearing the historic park and starting site work on the construction of apartments and dorm space because the university’s plan does not violate the California Environmental Quality Act. UC Berkeley and the city of Berkeley first proposed redeveloping the park in 2018, calling it a first-in-the-nation plan to build long-term supportive housing for homeless people on university land. The university would also build 1,100 units of badly-needed student housing and retain some of the park as open green space, while also erecting a monument to its storied history.
But two organizations — the People’s Park Historic District Advocacy Group and Make UC a Good Neighbor — jointly filed a lawsuit, arguing, among other things, that the university had other options for developing housing and had not adequately studied them, as required by state law. Two other groups filed their own challenges, which will be consolidated into the judge’s decision. A UC spokesperson issued a statement stating that university officials are “pleased with the judge’s decision and look forward to the court making it official early next week, just as we look forward to starting construction sometime this summer.”
City and university officials have hailed the plan as a model for other universities and a landmark solution to both California’s homeless crisis and the housing shortage at UC Berkeley and other UC campuses. “It begins with partnership,” UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ said earlier this spring. “And it also begins with the university’s accepting that this is our responsibility to address the tragedy of homelessness in our midst.”
In learning of the judge’s decision, I found myself recalling in pretty vivid detail, the events and feelings of 1969, and asking myself “On what side of the issue do you stand Doc? Has there been a change in your worldview from when you were 20 and today, when you’re a few days away from turning 73? Is there truth to the old saw "If you’re not a liberal when you’re young you haven’t got a heart, but if you aren’t a conservative when you grow up you haven’t got a smart?” In the midst of my pondering, I find myself remembering the title of Marcel Proust’s staggeringly long 7-volume novel In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu), originally translated as Remembrance of Things Past. Why? Well for one thing, I am myself “in search of lost time.” Then too, at the time of the People’s Park riot, I was midway through volume 3 of Proust’s masterpiece, The Guermantes Way (Le côté de Guermantes) and having my head filled with thoughts about politics and society, romance and reality. . . the greed and vacuousness of society . . . whether it be 19th century France or 20th century America.
In my search of lost time, I find that while I am perfectly sanguine with what I/We did in vigorously - and for some, violently - protesting the People’s Park evisceration 53 years ago, I am just as sanguine with having the University reclaim a hefty parcel of that park in order to build affordable housing for both students and the homeless 53 years later. Back in 1969, things seemed so much more black-and-white; of those whose motivation was doing good, versus those whose motivation was doing well. Back then, gradations of grey were difficult to discern; the young couldn’t wait to change the world for the better . . . to inject idealism into the body politic. We were motivated as much by anger as by optimism.
Today, of course, anger is still a major motivator in politics. The difference, it seems to me, is that for far too many, optimism has given way to both pessimism and fear … fear of “the other,” fear of failure . . . a fear engendered by every conspiracy under the sun. Many find irrational comfort in anchoring their boots in the concrete of mindless dogmatism, and taking both their marching orders and worldview from those who often do not believe the bilge they spew. (Of these spewers of bilge, Proust himself reminds us “It is not only by dint of lying to others, but also of lying to ourselves, that we cease to notice that we are lying.”) To them I say “I’m not going to argue with you in an attempt to change your already made-up minds; I’ll be quiet and let you be wrong.”
Searching through the dustbin of lost time can be both beneficial and a bit bemusing, to say the least. As we age, remembering facts of past events can lull us into mental haziness. But the search can also be empowering . . . especially when remembering how we felt during seminal events of our youthful past. If we discover that with age we’ve changed, so be it. But never forget that so long as we have breath in our lungs, ideas in our heads and ideals in our hearts, we can still help foster positive change.
It’s what Proust brilliantly referred to as “. . . that translucent alabaster of our memories.”
Copyright2022 Kurt F. Stone