BLAM!!!
Fifty years ago, the rules of engagement changed. On Thursday May 15th 1969, police opened fire with shotguns on mostly peaceful, unarmed student demonstrators who were protesting the seizure of the People’s Park in Berkeley, CA.
The cops were given the green light to do whatever the fuck they wanted or in PR parlance use whatever force was necessary to remove the demonstrators. The word had come down from California’s Governor Ronald Reagan who thought Berkeley was “a haven for communist sympathizers, protesters, and sex deviants.” Some of the cops agreed. These were mostly hyped-up ex-Vietnam vets who thought hippie draft-dodging commie student bastards were the nearest thing to the VC they’d ever get a chance to blast on home turf. The cops were just pawns in a game but their actions were bloody, unnecessary, fatal, and ultimately futile.
BLAM!!!
In the mid-1950s, the University of Berkeley wanted to buy a stretch of land to redevelop as student residences, a parking lot, and some campus offices. Student numbers were growing and there was a lack of good affordable student housing. The university bods eyed up a 2.8 acre plot of land just east of Telegraph Hill and about a block from one of Berkeley’s other student dormitories. As there wasn’t enough cash to buy the land and pay for its redevelopment, the plans were put on hold until 1967 when the university bought the plot by eminent domain (or compulsory purchase) for $1.3m. The land had about 25 various low-rent working class dwellings which were soon bulldozed to make way for the bright shiny brand new future.
But fuck all happened.
After almost two years, the land had become nothing more than a dumping ground for garbage and wrecked automobiles. Word soon went round campus, with an earnestness only the young can afford, that the land grab, the bulldozing of the houses, and the promise of a bright new shiny future had just been a clever ruse to rid Berkeley from the influence of the radical left-wing dropouts who lived in the plot’s low rent dwellings. Word was the cops and some university officials saw these people as the main instigators of Berkeley’s anti-Vietnam and anti-capitalist agitation. Get rid of them, the story went, and the university and the city and the state were getting rid of a goddam irritant.
There was some substance to this theory, which was in no small part aided by Governor Reagan’s vehemence against Berkeley, but it wholly overlooked a bigger issue which was universities like most academic institutions are run by well-meaning ditherers whose business acumen is hamstrung by their good intentions. Left untended, the site was bringing the neighborhood down and damaging local businesses.
In April 1969, concerned residents, business owners, merchants, students and alike got together to decide what they could do to change the site. The best suggestion came from student Wendy Schlesinger and anti-war activist Michael Delacour who offered up a plan to turn the area into a people’s park and free speech area. This suggestion was unanimously agreed upon by those who attended the meeting. Unfortunately, they never presented their idea for possible consideration to the university land owners. But fuck them. They’d never taken an interest in the site, they’d just bulldozed a shitload of houses and let it to go wild.
The People’s Park brought together around a thousand volunteers who helped clear out this abandoned ground for wrecked cars and dumped trash and start to landscape and plant trees and flowers. By mid-May, the People’s Park was open to all. But back on campus, trouble was brewing.
At the end of April, Berkeley Vice Chancellor Earl Cheit had released his own plans for the area. The university was now gonna turn the land into a sports facility. Cheit heard about the People’s Park and after meeting with various of the Park’s volunteers said he would not go ahead with any plans without giving proper warning. Yet, on May 13th, Cheit told the press the university was gonna put a fence around the land and commence its redevelopment.
On 15th May, People’s Park activists were allowed to remove their property from the site before bulldozers moved in to level the land under police supervision. An eight-foot chain link fence was then erected around the area. While this was happening, several thousand students and locals met on the campus’ Sproul Plaza where the cry went up “Take back the park.”
Around four thousand people eventually descended on the People’s Park. A fire hydrant was bust open. Some demonstrators started taking the fence down. The cops responded by firing tear gas into the crowds in the hope of dispersing them. When the tear gas ran out, the cops then reached for their shotguns. Protestors were now a valid target for state execution. To shoot people in cold blood is nothing else but murder—or at best grievous bodily harm. The cops fired indiscriminately into the crowd. There were now around six thousand people spilling out from Telegraph Avenue. Many were just bystanders wondering what the hell was going on. Goddam, the cops shooting people on the streets?
One bystander was James Rector. He was standing atop Granma’s Books watching the ruckus below. Cops later claimed, after the fact, protestors were chucking things from the rooftops. Rector was unlucky. The cops fired up onto the roof. BLAM!!! Rector took three hits to his left side. He went down.
Cops later claimed their guns were loaded with nothing more than birdshot. This may have been true for some of their weapons but the hospital reports on the wounded described buckshot and high caliber rifle wounds. 128 Berkeley students were admitted to hospital with “head trauma, shotgun wounds, and other serious injuries inflicted by police.” One man, Alan Blanchard was permanently blinded after being shot in the face at point blank range with birdshot. Many of the injured went unreported and untreated as they feared arrest or reprisals from the police. By their own admission (cop boss Sheriff Madigan), some of the police behaved like they were fighting the Viet Cong.
James Rector had been standing on a rooftop, this made it difficult for him to be lowered down to medical assistance below. He was eventually taken to hospital where he died from his wounds four days later. According to his autopsy report, Rector had died as a result of “shock and hemorrhage due to multiple shotgun wounds and perforation of the aorta.” Like soldiers, cops are the only state employees who can murder people with impunity.
On May 20th, Reagan called in the National Guard. The area was cleared, shops closed, and a curfew imposed. Any gathering of three or more people was forcibly disbanded. Tear gas was deployed by air in what was the largest use of tear gas on American soil.
May 30th, Rector’s death brought over 30,000 Berkeley residents to demonstrate at the People’s Park. It passed peacefully, no attempt was made to cut down the fence around the park. In the blue sky above, a biplane trailed the message: “Let A Thousand Parks Bloom.”
After seventeen days, the National Guard withdrew from Berkeley.
Governor Ronald Reagan was unmoved by what had happened. He claimed (rather unbelievably) the protestors had unleashed “the dogs of war” (say what…?) and were therefore responsible for what had happened. Almost a year later, in April 1970, Reagan caused further outrage when he said:
If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement.
In other words, when it comes to money and property people’s lives don’t mean shit.
The events of May 15th, 1969, became known as “Bloody Thursday.” Since then, different plans to develop the People’s Park have come and gone. In May 2018, the university announced plans to build a student residence. January 2019, saw the first bulldozers under police escort return to the area.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
NYC’s Beatnik ‘riot’: How singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ kicked off the 60s revolution
John Lennon and the People’s Park riots
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention get caught up in a German student riot, 1968
Riot Squad toys: Train your tots to quash rebellion for their capitalist overlords
White Riot: Classical sculpture with a modern twist
‘Reagan’s Raiders’: INSANE ‘80s ultra-patriot superhero comics