Sitters surrendered

Finally they came down. After nearly two years the sitting outside the Memorial Stadium at UC Berkeley finally got to an end.
I got mixed feeling about this whole story and the outcome. On the one hand, the cause for which the tree people were fighting for is one I adhere too. The campus of Berkeley is so urban, that a little vegetation feels like a break in between the concrete. On the other hand, this sitting went on for too long, and I think a lot of people would agree with me that it went against the tree sitters.

I was living in the International House at Berkeley, right next to the Memorial Stadium, when the sitting started. I would walk by the Stadium and the tree sitters everyday to go to class. If you would have told me at the time that the sitting would last for two years, I wouldn't have believe you. At the beginning, there were only a few homeless people hanging out in there.
Then, the sitting crowd started to grow in early 2007 until they were around 15 to 20 people. At that point I began to question their protest. There was a lot of chalk writing on the sidewalk adjacent to the new community of tree sitters. A lot of it was about global warming and it seemed like those trees were the last trees on earth. I know it wasn't the only reason of the sitting, but please do not talk about global warming when only a few trees are at stake. When talking about global warming, talk about the Brazilian rain forest...

By the end of the school year, I just thought the whole protest was going too far for not much, and in other word was getting ridiculous. When I heard in september 2007 (I had moved from I-house) the people were still there and moreover were put behind fences, it just made me laugh.
The way the sitters persisted until the very last second was, to my opinion, annoying and laughable. Last monday, when all of the trees were being cut down, except for three, there were still 4 persons on one of the tree. And at that point, any reasonable person would accept the defeat and come down. But no, they still hung on those few top banches, with no provisions. It is only when the scaffolding was at reach of their feet that they finally came down to some sense.

Now I am just glad this all came to an end. One good thing that came up from the sitting, is that from now on, people of Berkeley could have their words on future urban plans of the campus.