(5 Jan 2024)
FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4471290
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Berkeley, California - 4 January 2024
1. Fork lift drops off shipping container to barricade People's Park
HEADLINE: Berkeley blocks park with wall of shipping containers
2. Workers cleaning up in front of People's Park mural
3. Drone shot of wall of shipping containers at People's Park
ANNOTATION: UC Berkeley plans to build student housing at the city's famed People's Park.
4. Bulldozer moving dirt at People's Park
5. Police officer standing in front of wall of shipping containers
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Kyle Gibson, UC Berkeley spokesman:
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"Shortly before 1 a.m., we began the process of clearing the People's Park site and the installation of a perimeter barrier to ready the site for construction. We are currently awaiting the resolution of a legal matter before the California State Supreme Court, which we are anticipating will be in our favor. And as soon as that happens, we will begin construction on the student housing, supportive housing and new park space for the site."
6. Various of shipping containers barricading People's Park
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Kyle Gibson, UC Berkeley spokesman:
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"We are constructing a perimeter using shipping containers, which are going to be double stacked about 15 to 16 feet high. They'll extend around the site."
8. Various of demonstrators protesting near People's Park
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Rick Shahrazad, Berkeley resident:
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"So we see the People's Park as being one of the few places left where you could sit down on a bench. You could talk with your neighbors. There are trees."
10. Police in riot gear watching protesters
11. Drone shot of People's Park with UC Berkeley tower in background
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Rick Shahrazad, Berkeley resident:
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"Berkeley is known throughout the world as the birth of the Free Speech Movement and People's Park."
13. Fork lift moving shipping container past wall of containers
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Rick Shahrazad, Berkeley resident:
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"They should build housing and low income housing elsewhere and leave the park alone. There's only one People's Park."
15. Demonstrator holding sign
STORYLINE:
Police officers in riot gear removed activists from Berkeley’s People’s Park and crews began placing double-stacked shipping containers to wall off the historic park overnight Thursday as the University of California, Berkeley waits for a court ruling it hopes will allow it to build much-needed student housing.
The project has been ensnared in a legal challenge that claims the university failed to study the potential noise issues caused by future residents and to consider alternative sites. The park has also been the scene in recent years of skirmishes between activists opposing the project and police trying to help clear it.
Authorities arrested seven people Thursday on misdemeanor trespassing charges, and two of them had additional charges of failure to disperse after they refused to leave the park, which is owned by UC Berkeley, university officials said in a statement. Those arrested were booked, cited and released, they said.
The university wants to use the park to build a housing complex that would accommodate about 1,100 UC Berkeley students and 125 formerly homeless people. Part of the park would be set aside to commemorate its significance in the civil rights movement, university officials have said.
University officials said they would ask the Supreme Court to consider the new law in its ruling.
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