Meet the New Farm, Same as the Old Farm? Occupy Seizes Berkeley’s “Gill Tract”
The Occupiers heavily advertised their “Children’s Village,” unveiled on Saturday so the media could film it. Some parents brought their kids to the festivities.
A man sat alone in the weeds, wearing a shirt that used the word “far” as a verb.
Most of the action was in the sanitary — really, it was very very hygienic, I swear — Occupy Kitchen area, where Occupiers clustered around and ate food produced by agribusiness and corporations.
To justify their theft of publicly owned land, the Occupiers produced this magnificent manifesto explaining the moral underpinnings of their action, and then posted it at the front gate of the farm. It might be a little hard to read at this size, so click on the image to see it in full-size high resolution. Here’s a transcription:
SEEDS
Local Ecology
ENERGY
Sovereignty
Alternatives
LAND
People-power
ORGANIZED
Ecstatic WonderThis Poster Comes Out of the Gill Tract Occupation
On April 22, 2012, students, activists and neighbors came together to reclaim the last untouched tract of soil in the East Bay. This piece of public land has been (mis)managed by the University of California Regents for private interest for generations. On Earth Day, the land was liberated; transformed into a living, breathing space for the community to know food and stories.This farm embodies what we envision as an alternative to the profit-drivern educational system. With bolt-cutters, shovels, Roto-tillers and thousands of plants: we reclaim our right to shape our communities, our universities + our minds + bodies.
Love the Land!
50
x100 feet
OR
15,000
TOOLSThis is what the ecstatic wonder of a truly public education looks + feels like.
Isn’t that precious? Pin it on the bulletin board next to the turkey-hand tracings and the construction-paper collages.
As always happens with Occupations, the Occupiers spend almost all of their energy on the day-to-day business of occupying, and rarely have much time to actually do whatever it is they claim they’re doing at that particular Occupation. Thus, in this case, as I witnessed out in the fields, not much in the way of actual farming has happened yet; as the camp’s official volunteer sign-up sheet reveals, nearly 80% of the activities at the “farm” have nothing whatsoever to do with farming, but instead are political and/or household chores. Of the 51 volunteer man-hour time-slots listed, 40 (79%) are non-farm activities (“parking/trash transport,” “table crew for workshops,” “kitchen,” “Porta Pottie cleaning,” “trash can monitor,” “security (creepwatch),” “MCs,” “movie set-up,” “childcare/art,” “media tent,” and “info desk,” while only 11 (21%) are farm-related (planting, watering, permaculture, and to be generous “clucking,” which may have something to do with chickens).
Because, prior to the Occupation, this tract of land was used exclusively for agricultural research (and not establishing a grunge encampment), there’s actually less farming going on now than there was before.
But that fact gets in the way of The Narrative, so it must be vigorously discarded and ignored.
UPDATE ON MAY 14:
Berkeley Occupy Farm charade comes to predictable end
Given that the University of California, which owns this now-”Occupied” farm tract, is largely responsible for teaching the “Occupiers” the idiot theories under which they’ve undertaken this action, isn’t this really an instance of the chickens coming home to roost?
The vast majority of the “Occupy the Farm” buffoons are not Cal students; it’s mostly composed of losers who didn’t get into Cal, so in jealousy and frustration, they’re stealing the research equipment of the students who actually did well in school.
UC Berkeley is actually two completely distinct universities; the “liberal arts” half is thorough and irretrievably contaminated with Marxist ideologies; but the “STEM” half (“science, technology, engineering, math”) is very rigorous, hardcore, not politicized (and mostly Asian).
The College of Natural Resources, which does research at the farm, is mostly in the STEM half of the school (though there is a politicized component). Notice that the professors who joined the occupiers are all from the Anthropology and Gender Studies departments, not from Natural Resources.
So, this may not be a clear-cut case of chickens and their roosting behavior.
Maybe not a clear-cut case, but I’d argue a certain amount of proximate cause here.
The University of California’s more mush-brained leftist side has had a huge effect over the years on the thinking of the country, particularly Californians. Thus, even if the Occupy crowd are not students of UC, or are from the mush-brained side of the University, they are still in some sense University products, and are certainly occupying University property.
Most of the kids at Cal are business or STEM majors and do not have time for this nonsense. And the bulk of protesters are not actual students of any stripe (not just this protest).
What makes Cal seem so crazy are the non-students from all over the bay area that are just a bunch of radical looser anarchists. That show up at Cal to cause trouble
Most of these people are NOT native Californians. Same goes for the huge gay population across the Bay in SF.
The Occupy Motto. Anarchists for Big Government.
As far as I can tell the best attended event this semester (outside of Cal’s excellent sports events) was the Ron Paul address!!!
The Left like Muslims play the ‘long game’. They infiltrated Academia decades ago and have been brainwashing the naive, gullible youth that have come under their control ever since. To successfully rid the country of Left Wing moonbattedness it is essential that the Universities and Colleges be purged first.
@lester: don’t know why you are dragging gay people into this…but, now that you’ve mentioned it…there’s a “huge gay population” in the east bay too. (oakland is the unofficial lesbian capitol of the world). that said, i believe that you will find that most people that you are likely to meet, on both sides of the bay…both gay and straight…are not native californians. the bay area is filled with transplants. is that a bad thing ?
Full of transplants… Just like the “farm”.
In the sense that California has the reputation it does, at the hands of every miserable freak who moved here because we generously acted as the kidney of the nation, trapping and holding all the refuse, yes…yes, it is.
I’m stunned that these presumably sane and intelligent STEM types didn’t have barbed wire or gates to at least keep the neighborhood dogs and other critters out. Or did they? And how has this occupation lasted so long, what with the destruction of research projects evidently undertaken at the outset?
I’m just shocked at the lack of security and lack of response.
You may not get it, ar. It is possible that doggie and critter poop are part of the Natural Fertilizer Studies Program.
The poster did mention bolt cutters. I’ve never used bolt cutters to garden.
According to their web site:
” there are 8 faculty members within the College of Natural Resources that are actively supporting the idea of turning the Gill Tract into an urban farm.”
Wow, never have I heard a complete moron speak so idiotically about something that they have very little knowledge of. First off, you should try getting your facts straight. It’s pretty easy if you actually know how to read… but I understand, reading is hard
Poor zombie, just has to make up a bunch of uninformed drivel so that he can make assiduous claims and feel important. I’m sorry you didn’t get into Cal, or you second or third option colleges, but I did and so did the many other UCBerkeley students and alums who are making a working, collective farm come into being on a piece of property that was granted to a public,land grant institution.
Maybe you have never heard of seeds. So, let me inform you. They are these little, teeny, tiny hard things that you put into the ground. You water them and in 14-20 or so days they sprout and grow into a plant. I suppose it can be easy to mistake a tilled and planted row of ground for an unused space if you’ve never heard of planting seeds or know nothing whatsoever ever about growing food. Indeed, this is the sad, pathetic state of most people in this country.
So, while you are pulling your smelly, unwashed and putrified foot out of your mouth,let me invite you to actually come on down to the and educate yourself on some of the most basic aspects of the action, such as the history of the property, the UC’s plan of development, the conversations being held with the researchers and most importantly the food that is being grown. And for your information, a plot of land that has inedible corn growing on it is not a farm. Nor is this farm created or worked by OSF as you claim in your title.
One last suggestion, maybe it has been made to you before… Know your facts before you start spouting ignorant drivel from your deplorable pie hole.
What high-quality discourse! Clearly the author of such an intellectual rebuke should be permitted to take whatever they want and do whatever they want with it.
For the good of the people, who are in no wise benefited by agricultural research.
Oh, and what seeds were you planting, and when did you put them in the ground?
On the day of your seizing the farm? There should have been healthy sprouts at the one-week mark if you were using any kind of useful seed.
I hear the stuff that comes from Orchard Supply and Hardware comes with a money-back guarantee if it fails to sprout and thrive, but you’re gonna have to prove to them that it wasn’t your own incompetence what killed those plants.
Yeah dude, tell ‘em. After planting these tiny seeds, farmers just sit back on the back porch, drink ice tea, whittle, do some square dancing and wait for those seeds to eat up the evil CO2 and wallah! Plants! Food! Yeah. Gaia!!
I’m not sure what assiduous claims are, but assiduous and Occupy are not two words that belong in the same sentence.
Isn’t this trespassing? Where are the police?
If only California played host to bitterly cold winters…
Then these morons would get a swift lesson in “the tragedy of the commons” in the tradition of the Pilgrims…aka “Why socialism fails”.
Fence ‘em in, post guards, and make them live or starve on what they grow, ‘pour encourager les autres.’
These nitwits couldn’t run a working farm in a million years.
I’m surprised every other plant isn’t marijuana.
Or does that come later?
I must say that my first reaction to the headline was ‘OK, they’re growing weed’…
What a bunch of sad ‘sack’s…
They’re not organized enough, nor solvent enough, nor aware of the capitalist nature enough to grow weed, even or especially) for free. Costs money, time, effort, thought and resources to grow anything. Ask any backyard vegetable gardener.
These people are just the “free-thinker/losers” of this era. Every era has them and they’ve been with human society ever since humans existed. In ancient times, layabouts didn’t get any food if they didn’t participate in the hunt or support thereof. Elders were consulted for their wisdom and hindsight and valued and actually respected. They could no longer hunt but became the de-facto government representative as the mind was still sharp and honed with experiences that the youngers hadn’t had yet.
The occupier mentality is some garbage right out of some really bad sci-fi. Or, even good sci-fi. But in sci-fi, the writer can paint the canvas of society any way they like and randomness is not a factor. IOW, there’s a point to the story and the story is a means to an end.
But reality isn’t scripted and people aren’t “players” they are people. People who want and deserve freedom, the right to own property, the right to travel unmolested and so on. Occupiers are firmly convinced of their own intellectual superiority but in the 1950′s such people would be summarily dismissed as useless and antithetical to civilization.
But it’s nothing new.
Obama has held more re-election fundraisers than previous five Presidents combined as he visits key swing states on ‘permanent campaign’ Doherty, who has compiled statistics about presidential travel and fundraising going back to President Jimmy Carter in 1977, found that Obama had held 104 fundraisers by March 6th this year, compared to 94 held by Presidents Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Snr, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush combined. Since then, Obama has held another 20 fundraisers, bringing his total to 124. Carter held four re-election fundraisers in the 1980 campaign, Reagan zero in 1984, Bush Snr 19 in 1992, Clinton 14 in 1996 and Bush Jnr 57 in 2004. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2136851/O…
And think he’s doing most of it on our dime is enough to make you sick!!!
All very fascinating…but was that comment intended for a different thread?
cartoon caption:
Professor: “Well yes, Stalin was ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know’. But we were discussing Lord Byron.”
What’s even more incredible is that these students and faculty think their “right” in doing this. How horrible it is to see the future of our country: marxist professors teaching gullible students that they above rule of law, and can take property from others, while somehow being taken seriously when it comes to their so called righteousness. It’s a sickness. The university I attend has the same disease: marxist professors leading students down the road to serfdom. I see the flyers posted all over the place for lectures on Marx’s ideas, or classes dedicated to the Occupy movement, and even the arrogance of the people that espouse this trash, is sickening. This is what the academic world is coming to, and it’s sad that college students are falling into this pitfall way too easily.
The occupiers are NOT students (maybe a few). The major event at Cal this year (outside of sports) was Ron Paul’s address. If Berkeley had the exact same student population but was not located in the nutty Bay Area (which is full of nutty transplants) none of this would be happening.
Not enough to do at college anymore? Sheesh, what a bunch of “useful idiots”. Problem is, they took over property their mentors already controlled. Not to smart, if you will.
How ya gonna keep ‘em down by City Hall
After they’ve seen the farm?
How ya gonna stop ‘em from goin’ and wheedling
Nursery skids of commercial seedlings?
How ya gonna keep ‘em from horticulture, that’s a mystery
Although to farming life they are as green as can be
They’ve shown they’re interested in animal husbandry
How ya gonna keep ‘em down by City Hall
After they’ve seen the farm?
People who get so misty eyed about “farming” don’t know shit about real farming. They want to feed a bunch of people? Garden plots won’t do it — it’s one thing to make a salad you can get all self-righteous about; it’s another thing to actually produce enough food to feed a family, much less a community.
Much less a world.
What!? Nonsense! Farming is so easy, we could all do it in the afternoons for fun, and still feed the world and have time to sing songs and write poetry about it, in between our trips to the store where we buy food to supplement the crops that just died because we didn’t know what the hell we were doing…
/sarc
Meanwhile, the Obama DOL is busy worrying about child labor on farms…
Methinks the Mayans were right.
Oh, for a recording of Danny Kaye singing Cole Porter’s song, “Farming.” Alas, could not find it on YouTube.
It’s here, as part of a longer video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfLIgWeN9Lk
It starts at 2:21.
Some GREAT lyrics, btw!
BTW, the line from “Farming”:
Don’t inquire of Georgie Raft
Why his cow has never calved;
Georgie’s bull is beautiful, but he’s gay…
is one of the earliest uses of “gay” in its modern sense in the mainstream culture; the other is Cary Grant using the term in Bringing Up Baby.
Tell them they will have to grow everything they eat. That will end it in a hurry.
Farming is both hard work and capricious. I grow a lot of my own produce. You can do everything right and have it all turn to nothing with one ill timed storm.
Not to mention they’re averse to using things like pesticides, even when an entire crop can be lost to pests. You’ll be lucky you can feed just yourself if aphids decide to help themselves to your crops, there’s no way you’ll feed a community just sitting on your ass singing folk songs and talking about how very ~spiritual~ it all is.
The effects of hallucinogens is so very sad.
I’m surprised they didn’t try to plant astroturf.
All I can say to these deluded souls, seed-flat grown is about as far from sustainable farming as you you get. These kids are the human equivalent of overly-indulged seed flat grown plants. That’s why they can’t handle a real world environment.
Great photos Zombie.
As a former ag student I’m pretty sure there are not many occupiers in that department. They know too much about sweat and hard work.
I want to see these mooks actually farm. Like my grandfather did a 120 years ago. 7 days a week sunup to sundown. Be good for ‘em. And more important I’d like to see ‘em have to.
Couldn’t happen to a better University.
I think the funniest thing about all of this is that if the world cratered and people had to seize land for survival these losers would be the last one’s you would want working anywhere near it.
“By their logic they should be able to seize what they want if, in their minds, they have a better idea of how to use it.”
That is exactly what their patron saint the Teleprompteur is doing to us: takes our tax money and dishes out to his crony capitalists under the guise of “investing” in green cars and green energy. Wonder if the Berkely officials believe it’s alright to take from us, the faceless taxpayers, when it’s done by the man they voted for. 99.99% sure they have voted for the Teleprompteur.
Send them to the farm fields worked by legal and illegal aliens–but these soft handed, scrawny Libs could not do the work could they?
The better analogy would be leaving the door of the henhouse open and letting the coyote in. These people are trespassing, and the University is letting them, or even encouraging them, to destroy the work of a .
And the state legislature seriously thinks the taxpayers are going to let them raise the tax rates.
Hmmm … in the picture of the flats of random nursery sprouts … the nearest one looks to be big-leaf basil, both red and purple varieties. The flat with the red leaves in back of it may be red-leafed lettuce. The rest of it – and I am only a dedicated back-yard gardener – but I can’t tell what it is, from the picture. To me, hardly any of it save what is in the 1-gallon pots looks very healthy and ready to be planted out at all. If they paid full price at a local nursery, I’d say they got ripped off. OTO, if it was donated, it was stuff that was about three-quarters dead anyway.
HA!
The honest proletarian farm workers *cough*who are probably mostly living off daddy*/cough* have no need for your decadent bourgeois plant identification! They will struggle and raise an unprecedented bounty by, well, ummm, struggling! Yeah, that’s it, struggling!
I think you are right about the plants.
If any of them had the work ethic that it takes to actually make a farm successful at growing food for a lot of people, they’d already have jobs.
The farm was a hobby farm, it still is.
I suggest this fall, that all those that implemented this approach will be mandated to live off the fruits of their labor, only. Give them the site and after this fall, they are only allowed to live off the land. We will have our very own little Ukraine Stalin experiment.
More like the Cambodian Option AKA the Zimbabwe Plan.
Actually, if these Occupy types took over, the historical moment most closely matching what we’d experience is The Great Leap Forward.
For those wondering, that is the little “experiment” Mao forced on his fiefdom that resulted in anywhere from 25-40 million starvations, the loss of 90% of the country’s usable metal tools, and a generally acknowledged setback of some 30 years of development. Oh, and even today it is not officially recognized by the same ruling government.
Two things came to mind when I saw the pics: The Great Leap Forward, and the Unabomber. Do you remember how he called in his manifesto for society to dissolve into small agricultural communes?
Not only that, but it was while he was working at (can you guess?) UC Berkeley that Theodore Kasczinski made the decision to become the Unabomber.
Interestingly, however, he was in the math department, not some politicized department.
But he made the decision not because he was indoctrinated while there, but because he was disgusted by what hypocrites the Berkeley liberals were. They talked the talk, but in his opinion, they didn’t walk the walk.
The Occupiers are similarly critical of wishy-washy liberals who don’t take the ideology to its logical conclusion (i.e. “de-development” back to the Stone Age, as John Holdren put it).
That’s exactly what I said when I saw the photo of the leek just shoved into the ground. It reminded me of the cover given to Maoist central planners by local farms, who simply invented numbers for their crop yields (“This month, we harvested 30 million kajillion cabbages!”), which the central planners could then use to announce that everything was being produced way above the intended targets. Various officials would visit these farms and report that yes, everything was produced exactly as the farms had indicated. In actuality, as you know, pretty much nothing was being produced, but hey, why would a proletarian revolution-based government care about feeding the proletariat? The proletariat already put the officials into power, so they were no longer necessary . . .
The useful idiots lost their usefulness…
They were the first to be executed in the period of “normalization”.
I suggest checking out Yuri Bezmenov’s interviews and lectures online.
If they were to get their utopian fantasy, they would be the chattel picking crops all day at the farm collective. I’m guessing that detail is not included in their political sessions. They probably have some notion about being among the decision makers.
Query
are you sure that is an anarchist tattoo on that guy’s arm? I’m familiar with the semiotics of the major anarchy symbols, the enclosed A meaning anarchy is the beginning of order & and the A overwriting an O meaning Anarchy replacing order, nbut have never come across an O broken by A, what does that mean?
I’m not exactly sure!
I think it stands for a**hole.
+1
Thanks, that makes sense.
That bolded line in the University’s response, while correct and to the real point, sure does betray a certain lack of self-consciousness on their part. They are state-funded, with stolen money *cough* taxes, yes? When it gets right down to it, how is their whining about their “property rights” after they had it stolen from the taxpayers for them, any different from the Occupiers doing the same thing to them? The only difference is that the Occupiers’ theft, lacking the cat’s paw of government theft, is more direct — one might even say “honest”, in a superficial kind of way.
The people of California frequently and willingly raise their own taxes to pay for the universities. It’s only “theft” if the population doesn’t really want it.
And the university research actually results in a net benefit to society (at least that’s the plan). Even if it’s an open question whether or not tax-payer funded universities are a good thing, I am 100% certain that these Occupiers produce ZERO benefit for society, or actually have a net negative effect.
When Victor Davis Hanson reads this, it will undoubtedly make him very angry, and his reply is going to be epic.
Another great article Zombie. You have to wonder how these people don’t realize how freaking stupid they are.
Maybe the communists are right.
These people are incapable of surviving in a competitive capitalist system and need to be fed, clothed, housed, and medicated.
Most of what passes for political activism on the left is really just untreated mental illness. That’s what we’re seeing here.
Actually, I see it (in this case) as “flexing your power muscles.” They’re trying out taking things away from daddy.
Sundog, I’m sure that you are aware that liberals feel the same way about you. The one it seems we can all agree on is that everyone that disagrees with us is an idiot. Kumbaya. Makes me proud to be an American
Zom, the coolie hat on the scarecrow is hardly “colonialist”. It’s very sheik “Viet Cong”. Run into any VFW or American Legion hall carrying that sucker and you’ll find out … fast.
I’m surprised they made their scarecrows “cool.” I expected they’d make effigies of George Bush and other satans to scare the birds.
Most of them are probably too young to even personally remember who George Bush was.
It must be tough being a rebellious youngster who thinks the current President of the US is kinda hip and on your side. If there is no “Man” against whom to rebel (and model your scarecrows after), then there must be this suspicious hollowness to your sensation of youthful anti-authoritarianism.
I’m expecting that Obama will claim that first one as looking like the son he would have had.
Does bear a resemblance, don’t you think?
Is “sheik” a typo (and you meant to type “chic”), or do I not get the Middle Eastern reference?
Probably evil auto-correct. It decides what you mean.
*joke
what a moronic circle jerk..
Circle-jerk or daisy chain gang?
Why are they allowed to do this? Can’t the university throw them off? Why aren’t they?
It’s all part of the plan:
First you have a small meaningless protest to provoke the police; then sue; then the university is too afraid to call the cops on your subsequent protests.
This is exactly what happened, and was part of the original plan from the start. (I called it at the time, and was right.)
Ah, I remember that. The “block the police until they pepper-spray us” incident. Yes, you did call it at the time, right on the money.
The graduate students and their teachers involved in research on the Farm should occupy the residences (homes and apartments) and offices of the Marxist professors and the leaders of the Occupy movement. If experiments on the Farm have been wrecked, the papers and notes of these crazed professors should be “compromised” as well. The legal officials will have a really difficult time prosecuting those engaged in such acts of reprisal if they have taken no action against the original protesters. Reciprocity is quite underutilized in the battle for sane inter-group relations.
Jerry, I cannot imagine (actually I don’t want to) how furious I would be were I a graduate student there whose dissertation work was bing trashed by these self-important creeps. The turnabout you suggest might seem like justice, but it seems to me to be too weak. After all, research on the farm required long, hard work. Replacing/restoring it will be difficult and will require a lot more hard work. If the ‘research’ of the leftist professors were trashed, how long would it take them to re-create mindless drivel?
I’m willing to bet that Berkeley is the only place in the country where one can find professional students and professional protesters.
Guess again. Professional students go back to at least the 70s when I was in university – and I didn’t go to school in the United States.
I suspect they are a reality at just about every major university and a whole lot of middlin’ ones…..
– I thought you meant Stanford. Anyway, do tell us more about that professor with the whiteboard.
I don’t get it. Why are they still there?
I wonder where those people learned such a twisted view of property rights. Could it have been….at Berkeley?!!!!
I am with Spokker. Why did the university respond with a press release rather than a call to the police to evict tresspassers?
Because the University administration is populated by invertebrates.
Let’s fast forward to “Year Zero”, when they are marched out of the cities for real and forced to farm (as capitalist profiteers and members of the bourgeois). They will either starve to death or be beaten to death as parasites who eat but don’t contribute to their new masters.
They will also discover that “taking” things is only doable when you are neither facing armed property owners, or don’t have to worry about the even rougher crowd coming to take from them.
The future is going to be very frightening, and they are not even aware of what is coming even as they work to create that particular future.
You know in many parts of the country the Capitalists have stolen the land and put up polluting pieces of paper. They then shoot polluting pieces of lead through some kind of bourgeois gadget. Well anyway it has to stop. Its time for Occupy the shooting range.
Most Occupiers just have to link hands on the yellow line and we’ll take care of the rest.
We have planted our seeds.
We ask that our efforts be worthy to produce simple food
for our simple taste
We ask that our efforts be rewarded.
We thank You for the food we eat from other hands…
that we may share it with our fellow man
and be even more generous when it is from our own.
Thank You for a place to make a stand.
Amen.
Anyone recognize this prayer?
The starving commune in EASY RIDER! Funny how these dipsh!ts learn absolutely nothing from history.
If these glorious soldiers of the proletariat are serious, they ought to rent some buses and head for Detroit. There are acres of destitute broken neighborhoods waiting to be reclaimed by these brave pioneers.
They remind me of Stephen Gaskin’s Farm commune in Summertown, Tennessee. The busloads of hippies who went there nearly starved to death in the early 70′s, kicked out the lazy useless among them, deposed Gaskin as leader and today stand as an anachronism amongst the local Amish and Mennonites. Farming is not for simple minded dreamers. It’s hard work.
Parasites, all.
Is it strange that I find this entire thing hilarious? I’m a city kid born and bred, but my family grows its own fruit and vegetables, and even someone as urban as me knows that what these people are doing is going to be a colossal failure. They’re probably farming ultra-organic, too, which means no pesticides. At this point it’s just a toss-up to see whether pests ruin their ‘crop’ before their own mismanagement does.
Hopefully, the farm experiment will provide a rude wake-up call for at least a couple of these Occupy nitwits. Once they figure out that their almighty theories aren’t everything, the reactions should be good.
Also, is it just me, or are they going through some sort of reverse-civilization cycle? First we had the busy crowded tent cities, complete with pre-industrial hygiene. Then they moved down to the 17th century, with the rat problems and cholera outbreaks. Now they’re trying to invent agriculture. When do you think they’ll get around to discovering fire? Should be good, anyway, since the fire we’ve always had is soooo bourgeois and capitalist.
Rosa E, your reverse-civilization observation made me LOL. I tweeted alink to your comment. I think the whole thing is so full of fail, and I’m just the occasional gardener.
I admit to being angry on behalf of the research students – all that time & tuition money down the drain.
I’m looking forward to the triumphant exhultations that are bound to ensue when the Occupiers discover *drum roll* THE WHEEL.
I’ll patiently await the day when they begin grazing and crawling on all fours. Then we can round them up and house them at the San Diego zoo, right next to the poo-flinging monkeys.
Or, if the zoos are too full, there’s always Soylent Green.
That’s the thing right there: even your average urbanite who works a plot in a community garden could tell you that there’s more to gardening than simply sticking a plant in the ground and standing around feeling self-important. Even hydroponics are a lot of hard work, and it only gets harder working an entire homestead or farm.
You’re absolutely right about it being a toss-up between whether the insects do them in or their own incompetence.
Surprise surprise, this has been joyfully diaried at Daily Kos. One commenter asked if this wasn’t a wee tad intrusive on the research activities. Answered “citisven”:
To which “wu ming” replied:
GAWD how I wish they’d try this sort of “occupation” on an Indian casino, a Mexican pot farm, an Afghani poppy field, a French vineyard, or a plain old Irish potato farm. Surely the workers at those places would compromise and negotiate away a few patches for the work of the liberators?
They also have a website: http://www.takebackthetract.com/
I link to their web site at the very beginning of the report (“The “Occupy the Farm” group (loosely affiliated with Occupy Cal and Occupy Oakland, but a new separate group) has already put up a slick web site called “Take Back the Tract” which explains the “philosophy” justifying their behavior:…”).
In their universe, their farm occupation is the most fantastic, heroic, and morally supreme action any human being has ever done. If they ever saw this PJM report (doubtful, but we’re talking in theory here), they literally would not even be able to comprehend what I was talking about.
They have only ever received praise, kudos and groveling their entire lives. The very concept of “criticism” is outside their ken.
Who is the 1 percent in this case? The University? The university owns the tract, right? Doesn’t that make every student and faculty member at the university an enabler of the 1 percent? So if they had any integrity, shouldn’t the professors who support the occupation quit their jobs? Otherwise, aren’t they merely tools of the 1 percent?
>a shirt that used the word “far” as a verb.
I think it’s actually missing an ‘o’ from ‘too’; but that’s what happens when you stop correcting kids’ spelling because it might hurt their self-esteem and creativity.
I know that; I was just making fun of the misspelling.
Well, as evidenced by Zombie’s great work, the shirt certainly couldn’t have said “We have come to FARM”…
A thought occurred to me: This field has been used for many years as a university research lab, no? Did the occupiers take care to make sure (darn sure!) that the thousands of students that experimented here over the years took care to clean up after themselves and left no pathogenic organisms, toxins, or radioactive material behind to contaminate the occupiers? I have had many years dealing with students, both undergrads and graduates and they canNOT be relied upon in this regard. Were tests done to make sure the land is safe for the occupiers? Wouldn’t it be a hoot if they ended up glowing in the dark?
If they wanted to do something useful, they could have occupied “Peoples Park” and turned it into something productive.
It’s not all bad. After the children get bored and wander off to pursue the next idiocy some researcher will have the opportunity to write a paper along the lines of ‘Reclaiming Farmland After an Infestation of Sanctimonious A$$holes’.
From the SJ Murky News:
They sound like Republicans
I’d be interested in how they define “work” then. Will only the people that are doing actual farming be considered workers? Or will those doing child care and security also be considered workers in making the decisions? After all, as Zombie pointed out, the large majority of them had nothing to do with farming.
“We envision a future of food sovereignty”
So, they are going to pledge fealty to legumes or squash as their leige lord(s)?
I admit I’m being naive here, but from what I gather this isn’t public land, correct? This is University-owned property. So why can’t they have these filthy Occupiers turfed out by the cops? It’s one thing to “occupy” an ostensibly public open air space. It’s another thing entirely to occupy a piece of land deeded to a particular entity. And I would assume that the interference of these occupiers in federally- and/or state-funded research would justify SOME sort of criminal, or at the very least civil, charge.
Again, I realize I’m naive of the legalities in this situation. Anyone care to put some knowledge to me?
Of course the University could boot them out and have them all arrested; but the University is so spooked by the probability of getting bad press as a result, that they treat the Occupiers with kid gloves.
Ah, yes. Of course.
I would recommend they try swinging the PR the other way. “While these Occupiers playact at farming on our land, thousands of taxpayer dollars are being wasted as our experiments idle, wither, and are destroyed. Student loans our agriculture students have taken out for their education are accruing interest for no purpose. Grad students are having their Master’s and Doctoral degrees put at risk. Undergrads are having their Associate’s and Bachelor’s degrees put at risk. Professors are having their department put at risk. High school students who could use their experience at Gill Tract to springboard into a college program are having their futures put at risk.
“All because some spoiled children have decided they want to pretend to be farmers.
Forgive us if we have more respect for our students, staff, faculty, and the taxpayers in this state and across the country than to allow this handful of malcontents to continue squatting on private land.”
So many professors at Cal share the socialist mentality of the Occupiers it ironic to see them complaining when their property is seized.
This also shows the hilarity of having one group socialists telling another group of socialists to “Learn your place.”
I think this is a great project. It is a concrete reminder to others of what happens when these types of people take over. An utterly inspiration object lesson in the horrors of sovietization, Mao, Castro, the re-education camps of the Vietcong, Cambodia, Zimbabwe, Jim Jones — the list goes on and on and on.
Lock them in, give them loudspeakers, set up some video cameras, and come back in six months.
Hell, I’d donate to that.
I like this idea. If the Occupiers are going to ruin the agricultural research that the land was being used for, then turn it around and make the Occupiers the experiment. Call in the sociologists and psychologists and anthropologists (the sane ones, not the loonies like Nader) and watch how a society of childish imbeciles deteriorates in short order.
I really, honestly would love to get that on tape.
Three observations from the volunteer job board:
1. “Childcare” and “Art” are the same job. Does that reflect the trespassers lack of appreciation of art, or their lack of concern for children?
2. They apparently have a female “Corey” and a mail “Corey”. Apparently, neither Corey was sufficiently cool enough to merit a nickname like “Bear” or “Wildebeast”.
3. Security is also termed “Creepwatch”. Zombie, please, please try to get their definition of a “creep”.
One more general observation: I am genuinely surprised that everyone kept their clothes on.
“Childcare” and “Art” are the same job. Does that reflect the trespassers lack of appreciation of art, or their lack of concern for children?
I think it relates to their belief that children should be able to express themselves openly, not be constrained by things like “rules” and “restrictions.” Art is by it’s very nature a method of expression. So put the kids together with art and bingo! Occupy-friendly childcare with a heaping helping of indoctrination on the side!
Of course, these occupiers have probably never had to deal with children who aren’t interested in creating beautiful collages of organic materials that express the wonder and mystery of nature. They seem to think all kids will be perfectly content to sit still and do arts and crafts projects, when most children would get bored with that in about five minutes flat and be on their feet and running around before their guardians had even finished mixing the papier mache wallpaper paste.
In all seriousness, Occupy camps tend to attract molesters, rapists and mentally ill frustrated perverts. The Occupiers themselves acknowledge this in their meetings, and it is a frequent topic of discussion; they see it as unfair that the conservative blogosphere blames the frequent sexual crimes at Occupations on the Occupiers themselves, when in fact it is “outsiders” who join the movement as a pretext for being in close unpoliced proximity at night with a bunch of presumably loose women.
Almost every Occupation has evolved now to have a “creepwatch” squad, who monitor all the sleazy dudes in the encampment for misbehavior. As you may remember from one of my earlier reports, at Occupy Oakland it got so bad that they had to re-invent the harem, a sealed-off area with palace guards where are the women huddled to protect their honor from the innumerable “creeps” who prowled around like wolves.
Beware of sensative racial overtones due to the proximity of Ogawa Plaza to numerous halfway houses.
What’s absolutely amazing is that these folks cannot recognize the reasons for why civilization is the way that it is and why society does what it does. Utopianism depends upon an overly optimistic view of human nature, and Utopians are always surprised when people refuse to act ideally.
Hmmm. That looks oddly familiar. Let’s rearrange that just a bit:
Yep, thought so. That’s just standard leftist mantra, played out on a farm by a bunch of mal-educated, spoiled children, instead of in the Hallowed Halls of Congress by, uh, a bunch of mal-educated, spoiled children.
Hmmm. Is there any hope that an old idea called, “The Rule of Law” is starting to look a little better to them?
The University is reaping exactly what they’ve sowed.
So Occupy’s purpose is to keep farm land from being turned into commercial land. Except they pick land that is actually being kept as farm land, displacing the actual farmers (researchers & students).
Isn’t this the same thing they did when they occupied a house that was about to be foreclosed? They moved a family into a house that the owner was trying to renegotiate the mortgage on, and effectively displaced him.
http://m.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/ows_home_invasion_z9ApqDP6Q0boFviq8CjvAL
This is good for them. You can sit around meeting discussing philosophy and planning for revolution, or have a downtown rally where reporters outnumber protesters and really feel you are “doing something”.
Right now these people form a closed loop. It seems fun and meaningful because the feedback is all from the inside. They do not know they look silly because everyone else is doing the same thing.
A farm is something else. There will be no escaping reality a few months from now when the volunteers have moved on and the handful of plants are withering in the field.
All I can say is: Those poor plants. They’re all gonna die.
My 14 year old son has a plot in our backyard – maybe 15 x 40. I’ll predict he produces more from that plot than this misguided attempt at a protest.
Count on it!
When Stalin collectivized agriculture, forcing everyone to share the land, tools, etc. in common, the one thing that was done as a sop to those who resisted was that small private plots owned by individuals were tolerated.
That enabled members of the collective to farm their small private plots and grow things for themselves. While the amount of land involved was very small, it proved essential in keeping millions of Soviet citizens alive. While the amount of land was only on the order of 2 or 3% of all arable land, something like 30-35% of the citizens of the Soviet Union subsisted on crops grown on that land! That would make the difference between living and dying of starvation in years with poor crop yields.
It should also have made it blindingly obvious to everyone that private property was absolutely essential to the survival of the nation. Unfortunately, that message was not deemed acceptable until Gorbachev came to power….
I have come to despise the whole “liberal left” milieu with every fiber of my being. Useless pseudo-Marxist parasites, the lot of them.
– in Berkeley? Moooo! (h/t Mel Blanc ad)
Goin’ old school with the Bay Area knowledge.
I work on a horse ranch, not a crop-farm, but I can tell you how much work is involved in just what I do. Farming by hand, or even with hand-tools, is hard, back-breaking work. If these guys couldn’t manage the discipline to get into college, what makes them think they have what it takes to run a farm?
“I’m the hog farmer and airfield attendant. I’m doing quite well at producing ham and bacon, without the men from whom I used to buy it. But those men cannot produce airplanes without me – and, without me, they cannot even produce their ham and bacon.” – Dwight Sanders, [i]Atlas Shrugged[/i]
[
She smiled. "I know, this is a place where one employs nothing but aristocrats for the lousiest kind of jobs."
"They're all aristocrats, that's true," said Wyatt, "because they know that there's no such thing as a lousy job - only lousy men who don't care to do it."]
It’s only that hard and back-breaking when it’s full time. For true subsistence farmers, it’s only part time work because they only have to feed themselves and their immediate families. The story changes when they have to grow more and work full time to pay taxes or rents on top of that, or (as is probably the case for you) when they have to earn more to be able to get other necessities from a wider cash economy. True subsistence farmers end up poor because they aren’t able to get stuff from a wider cash economy, but they don’t end up over-worked.
The Occupoopers have enacted a new definition of “private property”;
“Private Property” is what the 1 percent takes from the hard work of the 99 percent and therefore is there for the taking by the bien passants
“Personal Property” is an i-Pad or i-Phone stolen from an Occupooper and it’s HIS/HER toy and you can’t have it.
I wonder if any of these idiots will learn how stupid they appear (and as a result, change into something more sensible)? If so, then this occupation will have produced at least some good.
What a NON story. I expect nothing less from Bezerkly U.
Marx: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. If only these hippies could have experienced Stalinist collectivisation.
I third the “fence ‘em in” suggestion. And, at least they’re pooping somewhere that has a use for manure.
Somehow, I can’t quite believe that they would stoop so low to actually use human manure in farming. Seems far too “hands on” to me. And these definitely don’t seem the type to get their hands dirty – literally!
But it IS a step up from pooping on cop cars.
I’d love to see video updates from time to time. I remember my corn-detasseling years; it was back-breaking work, starting at the crack of dawn. This is just hilarious that their latest demand is to do MANUAL LABOR! It’s exactly what I think they need.
On halloweeen they could grow some pumpkins and let the kids come in and play in the pumpkin patch.
That is exactly part of the plan — they did indeed plant a pumpkin patch, and plan to have a kids’ party there on Halloween. It’s part of the whole Occupy the Farm future!
I’m now taking bets on how likely it is that the Occupiers will stick it out for the next six months of unglamorous work to bring those pumpkins — and all the other crops — to fruition.
6 months? I would give them 6 weeks… once the media attention dies off, they aren’t going to want to stick around and risk having to work.
Gone before the end of May, Zombie. For $20, payable to the charity of your choice, if I lose.
Weed makes you stupid.
No water, no crop. That ground is already dry. They wind blowing off the bay all summer will make the place look like 1936 Oklahoma.
Maybe we will get lucky and they will all move on to Bakersfield.
As a tropical agronomist I have learned by experience that weeds and stupidity are difficult to combat.
Someone please explain why these people are not in handcuffs RIGHT NOW?
That’s been addressed in previous comments upthread.
When I first scanned through the pics, I thought that the 3rd scare crow pic was a stylishly dressed 0th Lady standing in solidarity with the great gardening efforts and their plan to eliminate the Great Food Desert of California.
Then I remembered that Mrs. Soetoro was still (again?) on vacation
I work in a plant biology lab at another large University I won’t name (in a different state.) We also maintain a large tract of land, similar to this, and a greenhouse for our research. Many of our grad students were going to Occupy in our city and supporting it. The Biology Dept here is just as Marxist and out of touch with reality as any Gender Studies Dept at Berkeley, I’m afraid. I would LAUGH to see something like this happen to our land and teach them a good lesson. It would definitely be chickens coming home to roost.
Having lived and gone to school in the Bay Area also, I am going to bet that at LEAST half the students and profs who do research at Gill Tract were sympathetic to Occupy (and may now be changing their minds!)
On the “magnificent manifesto” posted at the front gate, in the middle/bottom of the circle, is that a KKK clansman hood i see?
These Occupiers need a vacation from their hard work… how about a Holiday in Cambodia?
Well you’ll work harder
With a gun in your back
For a bowl of rice a day
Slave for soldiers
Till you starve
Then your head is skewered on a stake
Now you can go where people are one
Now you can go where they get things done
What you need, my son:.
Is a holiday in Cambodia
Where people dress in black
A holiday in Cambodia
Where you’ll kiss ass or crack
“trustafarian dropouts” First time I’ve heard that. I like it!
So many of those ageing KPFA Marxists speak fondly of their long lost youth spent harvesting sugar cane in Fidel’s Cuba. Now this new generation of “trustafarian dropout Marxists” no longer need visit that socialist paradise. Yep, can now do it at “Occupied Gill Tract”.
Need new lyrics for an iconic sixties song: “Here Comes the Sun/Dumb”
Let’s compare and contrast the narrative these idiots have with, say, the 4H:
“Let’s OCCUPY this Farm!”
Versus
“I pledge my Head to clearer thinking,
My Heart to greater loyalty
My Hands to larger service
and and my HEALTH to better living for my club, my community, my country and my world.”
Quite a difference, no?
Some simply observations that I thought of after reviewing this article:
1) “Organic” farms take more land to grow fewer crops, and create produce that is too expensive for the under classes
2) People shopping at “Health Food” stores, are the most unattractive and least healthy people I have ever seen
3) Hard-core lefties spend much time complaining about the paving over and polluting of the planet, yet most hard-core lefties live and congregate in major cities that are polluted and filthy
4) Leftists mock conservatives who live in the country (hicks) where pollution is minimal, and property tends to be well-maintained
In reading the entire back & forth in the comments (including the UC scientist, his wife & even his son trying to reason with the occupiers) to the article linked at “royally pissed off” I feel like some might be descending into madness but I’m afraid it may be us. More & more I feel like I’m in a Twilight Zone episode, watching what is unfolding and thinking it just can’t be & wondering why everyone around me hasn’t started screaming too.
Zombie, you weren’t kidding about the therapist and “happy endings” (second page, bottom photo). That phone number links to a page on “Sex counseling and coaching, sex education, and hypnotism offered by Dr. Amy Marsh, dba Nectar & Flame Consulting, San Francisco Bay Area.”
Here’s a bio: http://www.dramymarshsexologist.com/about.html . Among other fun facts, it says that she once conducted a “Semen Taste Survey for Carnal Nation column.”
Unbelievable.
It’s impossible to satirize these people. Whatever one can come up with to make fun of them, the reality is always ten times more bizarre.
Good catch.
“We take issue with the protesters’ approach to property rights. By their logic they should be able to seize what they want if, in their minds, they have a better idea of how to use it.”
–UC Berkely, on “Occupy the Farm.”
Congratulations on successfully passing your values to the next generation, UC Berkely. You have met the enemy and he is y’all.
On Communist May Day no less.
I’m not a farmer, at least not yet. But I would probably do such a better job than these morons. I spent eight hours on a farm once working. It is backbreaking work and extremely exhausting and this farm isn’t even a fully functioning farm, but rather just a research farm that produces a small amount of crop. I finished at 5:30, struggling staying awake for the hour long drive home, and was asleep by 7:15. However, I personally loved every single minute of it. I just do not see these protestors putting even remotely the amount of effort into farming that I did.
Eight hours, total?
Only eight hours because it was one shift. I work for a grocery store company and I had gotten the opportunity to spend a shift at their organic research farm. Heck, I’d love to spend more time, I absolutely loved every minute of it even though it was exhausting.
About that T-shirt:
Probably had a “doper moment”.
What the wearer/printer was probably trying to say was:
“WE HAVE COME TO FAR CARP YOUR WORLD”
What the university needs is a real farmer to turn up with a Massey Ferguson Combine Harvester to drive through and turn all that crap into mulch. All the farmer needs is an I am the 99% sign on his combine to make it okay with them, doesn’t he?
More great work from Zombie!
Thank you for risking your sanity yet again.
I don’t see what there is to object to. This is tame, “people’s park” nonsense: typical berserkly peaceful protestors. Not in the same league as;
Arson at a U.S. Department of Agriculture Building, Olympia, Washington, in (6/98)
Fire burns down a Boise Cascade timber management office (12/99)
Arson at Washington Horticultural Center in Seattle (05/01)
Fire at the Jefferson Poplar Farm in Clatskanie, Oregon (5/01)
etc.
This isn’t even violence in same league as ACT-UP’s terrorism in churches.
Nothing to see here. MoveOn.org to HopeAndChange.
Hmm, well this all worked out fine for Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, didn’t it? I mean apart from the manmade genocidal famines which killed 10′s of millions.
If their crop planting fails, they can always blame global warming
These idiots are not the same species as I or any of my family. If my skull was run over by a truck I would still make more sense than all of these cretins put together.
The rules for posting comments require that commenters make no ad hominem attacks. Yet the article itself is nothing but one long ad hominem diatribe.
There’s a difference between “ad hominem diatribe” and “accurate description of reality.”
Besides, the rules are for comments, not for articles.
I truly feel bad for the professors and graduate students doing legitimate research. It is difficult enough navigating the rigors and difficulties of graduate research. I would personally be livid if these Occupy clowns ruined my months of hard work.