Public Comment
It's Time to Burn Your Sierra Club Membership Card, or It's A Sad Day When the Courts Stand Up for Redwoods But the Sierra Club Takes a Pass
People's Park advocates spent over a year providing information to the East Bay Sierra Club appealing for their support for People's Park remaining public open space in the densest, most under-parked area in town. One of the sympathetic members prepared a letter of support to present at their meeting, but pulled it from the March 1, 2022, agenda when "advocates" objected that they might look like NIMBYs, or "not in my backyard" people.
In the meantime, the University of California's Capital Strategies just unveiled a new plan not just to demolish a public park, an underground creek, and a community garden (People's Park) in favor of 12 stories of high-end, student-only housing --- they plan to demolish a twelve-story building on campus and replace it with open space.
The Sierra Club Executive Committee is not unaware that People's Park is full of redwoods and sequoia, pollinators and native plants. They are not unaware that retrofit and re-use is the greener alternative to demolition, or that demolishing parks is abhorrent. They include Berkeley City Council member Sophie Hahn and former Rent Board Commissioner Igor Tregub, neither of whom offered any objection to the default position the Sierra Club's Executive Committee is now taking: having nothing to say about sacrificing parks for housing when alternatives exist.
Meanwhile, 10 empty acres closer to the campus than People's Park sits empty up at Smyth-Fernwald, UC property designated for housing (and former post-war housing) at the top of Dwight Way. Across the street, also closer to the main campus than People's Park, 50 acres at the Clark Kerr campus already has low-rise student and community housing amid a sea of empty, unused buildings and broken glass.
The takeaway for anyone sentient is that we don't need to destroy our parks, our stream beds, our community gardens, our "quintessential public forum" as Judge Ramsey designated the court-protected People's Park stage which now has federal landmark status in addition to city landmark status, to build housing. Park supporters are not NIMBYs, or people who oppose housing. The takeaway is that YIMBYs have effectively sandbagged an organization that used to stand for parks. It's time to burn your Sierra Club membership card. Again.
Signed, Dee Allen, Carol Denney, Martha Giddings, Hali Hammer, Michael Hughes, Professor Bruce Ziff
