Occupy the Farm: UC Sues, Hopes Courts Will Evict Protesters
Categories: Occupy Bay Area
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| Kate Conger |
The lawsuit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court, seeks a restraining order and an injunction against the protesters, which could result in six months behind bars.
What's more, the suit claims, protesters are interfering with the annual corn-planting on the site, which is not meant to be a 24-hour-a-day encampment.
"We're happy to have a conversation about both the short- and long-term future of the Gill Tract," Dan Mogulof, a UC Berkeley spokesman, told the Chron. "But that conversation must include members of the Albany community who have been involved with us in a collaborative planning process for more than eight years."
Meanwhile, occupiers are doing what they can to at least share the land with professors and students. Here's a statement Occupy the Farm released this morning:Yesterday evening, in order to free up as much space as possible for researchers, the farmers began relocating the temporary camp to a more southern portion of the Gill Tract which has long been vacant, not used for agricultural research. The move was completed this morning, after the scheduled planting with Professor Altieri, and offers a win-win scenario, where the farmers can maintain access to the crops and the researchers can begin their research unimpeded.Protesters moved onto the Albany site, known as the Gill Tract, on Earth Day, in an effort to preserve the land as a community farm. Since then, demonstrators have ignored all requests by police and the university to leave, and have continued to till the land and plant thousands of new seeds and vegetables.
Yesterday morning, police barricaded the area, and protesters sent out a statement, saying they were preparing for a raid. Obviously, that never happened.
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