Bay Area—North Beach and Haight-Ashbury—and also had belonged to a variety of antiwargroups, including Fair Play for Cuba Committee,VDC, and the War Resisters League. Lyon was amedical student, while Goldberg and Bardackewere both prominent political activists. 17Goldberg had worked for civil rights in Mississippiand had participated in the 1964 FreedomSummer voter registration project along withan estimated thirty to sixty UC Berkeley studentvolunteers. Back on campus that fall, these FreedomSummer veterans were confronted by theadministration’s order rescinding student organizations’rights to pass out information, recruitvolunteers, or solicit funds at the campus gates.Students organized the Free Speech Movement(FSM) to oppose these regulations, which finallywere revoked on December 18, 1964, followingtwo massive sit-in protests and a student strikethat won most teaching assistants’ support andofficial faculty backing. 18Goldberg served on the FSM steering committeeand in the spring of 1965 was its only principalmember to extend enthusiastic support to theorganization’s unofficial offshoot, the FilthySpeech Movement. This bizarre footnote to theFSM had begun when a student was arrested bypolice on the steps of the student union for wearinga sign that displayed one four-letter synonymfor sexual intercourse. In response, an “obscenity”rally was organized, with Goldberg as themajor speaker. Turnout was sparse; in the eyes ofthe vast majority of the faculty and students, theFilthy Speech Movement discredited the FSM.Goldberg, who earlier was sentenced to a 120-dayjail term and suspended from the university forhis involvement in the FSM, received an additionalthirty-day jail sentence and was expelledfrom the university for his support of the FilthySpeech Movement. 19Bardacke shared Goldberg’s commitment topolitical action; like Goldberg, his political activitieshad provoked the wrath of university officials.A former honors student and football player atHarvard, Bardacke had completed three yearsof graduate work in political science at Berkeleybefore his suspension stemming from his indictmentfor conspiracy as a member of the so-calledOakland 7. The group had been accused of plottingnew tactics, later termed “trashing,” duringStop the Draft Week, October 16–20, 1967, at theOakland Draft Induction Center. “Trashing” latertook on other meanings, including the WeatherUnderground’s symbolic bombing of the toiletat the Capitol in Washington, D.C., and burningcampus ROTC buildings. The Stop the DraftWeek methods, however, were milder—pushingunlocked cars, potted trees, and movable benchesinto intersections—but still represented an obviousbreak from past nonviolence in favor of disruptivestreet demonstrations. In describing theimpact of the Stop the Draft protest, Bardackerevealed his feelings about youth and America:“We said to America that at this moment in <strong>history</strong>we do not recognize the legitimacy of Americanpolitical authority. Our little anarchist partywas meant to convey the most political of messages:we consider ourselves political outlaws.The American government has the power to forceus to submit but we no longer believe that it hasthe authority to compel us to obey.” 20The other two important park planners, Big BillMiller and Super Joel Tornabene, were membersof Stew Albert’s hip-radical fusion. Miller hadbeen active in the Berkeley student movementsince FSM days, during which he was convictedof trespassing and resisting arrest for his role inthe December 2, 1964, Sproul Hall sit-in, fined$150, and given a one-year probation. He quicklybecame involved with the VDC and in 1966 wasarrested twice with Albert—initially for an Aprilantiwar march from Telegraph Avenue to CityHall and later for a November sit-in at the studentunion in protest of the university’s consentto use of the facility for naval recruitment while1<strong>California</strong> History • volume 88 number 1 2010
efusing permission to the VDC. On the hip sideof the hip-radical fusion, Miller owned The Store,a Telegraph Avenue business that specializedin selling drug paraphernalia. In April 1969, hecampaigned as a Yippie-style candidate for theBerkeley City Council with an election slogandesigned to appeal to the drug culture: “To get ahead, you have to vote for a head.” 21Tornabene sometimes claimed he had run awayas a teenager from an Arkansas boarding schoolor that he was the grandson of prominent ChicagoMafia boss Sam Giancana, but he actuallywas raised in a comfortable, middle-class Chicagosuburb. He had played a pivotal behindthe-scenesrole at the 1968 Democratic Partyconvention. In Lincoln Park for the Yippies’ “Festivalof Life,” designed to contrast with the “Conventionof Death,” he tried to park a flatbed truckto use as a platform for a rock band. When Chicagopolice denied the truck entrance to the park,the subsequent confrontation became the firstepisode of what an official government study, theWalker Report, later termed “a police riot.” 22Delacour, Schlesinger, Angelo, Glusman, Albert,Curtis, Read, Lyon, Goldberg, Bardacke, Miller,and Tornabene formed a diverse group of parkfounders who defy simple characterization as“culturally alienated” hippies or “politicallyactive” radicals. The Berkeley of the 1960sembraced hippies who were disenchanted withthe military draft and the Vietnam War alongsideradicals who were far more influenced byGroucho Marx and John Lennon than by KarlMarx and Vladimir Lenin. Political activists andthe counterculture coexisted, sometimes distinctlyapart, sometimes side by side, and sometimesthoroughly absorbed into the fused beliefsof hip-radicals. 23In April 1969, the park founders—labeled “streetpeople” and defined as “an amorphous assemblageof hippies, yippies, students, and othersfalling into no classification” by Time magazine—decided to issue a call for volunteers to help create“a cultural, political, freak-out and rap centerfor the Western world.” Their appeal appearedin the April 18 edition of the local radical undergroundnewspaper, the Berkeley Barb. The articlestressed a communal approach that rejectedleadership roles (“Nobody supervises, and thetrip belongs to whoever dreams”). Paul Glusman,though, later recalled that Michael Delacour’senergy and commitment to the People’s Parkproject provided the incentive to spur other parkbuilders into action: “Mike Delacour stood headand shoulders above everyone else in initiatingthe park. He said, ‘Let’s build a park on Sunday,’and nobody believed him. But on Saturday hehad a truck of grass sod parked in front of theMed [the Caffe Mediterraneum] and was scouringaround Berkeley for the shovels.” 24On the following day, Sunday, April 20, workbegan with the participation of a hundred ofthe so-called street people. According to RobertScheer in Ramparts magazine, Delacourwas again the central figure: “The people whocame to work were the type that resists ‘leaders’and much credit is given to Delacour for havingdeveloped a style of leadership that stressesexample, rather than exhortation. He simplyworked the hardest at different jobs.” WendySchlesinger wrote about “the tangible feeling ofaccomplishment” she derived from being partof “a sod chain” that unloaded and planted tentons of sod. After reflecting upon the diversecomposition of the “sod chain,” her satisfactiongrew even more profound: “Right in the middleof anarchist, polarized, confused Berkeley, peoplegot themselves together instantly, without anydirector. . . . No one of us, be she or he, big orsmall, could have unloaded the ten tons by himor herself. But, together an exhausting task wasturned into an exhilarating frolic.” 25At the end of their first day of effort, workers hadcleared an area in the northeast corner of Lot1875-2 and planted $300 worth of shrubs and1
- Page 3: california historyvolume 88 number
- Page 6 and 7: c o l l e c t i o n sAdmission tick
- Page 8 and 9: c o l l e c t i o n sBusiness cards
- Page 10 and 11: People’s Park:Birth and SurvivalB
- Page 12 and 13: even on existing dorms due to the h
- Page 14 and 15: The attraction, however, was fleeti
- Page 18 and 19: A hundred students, activists, and
- Page 20 and 21: are building a park on the land. We
- Page 22 and 23: and illegal drug use in the park. T
- Page 24: without even allowing Siegel to con
- Page 27 and 28: As Bloody Thursday came to a close,
- Page 29 and 30: this state.” On June 20, Reagan t
- Page 31 and 32: Denovo, her autopsy revealed a down
- Page 33 and 34: ation and encouragement, and shed n
- Page 35 and 36: the guardians of her children. The
- Page 37 and 38: mitted to visit Caroline in her new
- Page 39 and 40: Sojourner Truth gave what famously
- Page 41 and 42: After emancipation, she helped to o
- Page 43 and 44: This 1885 view captures the sparsel
- Page 45 and 46: But Caroline thought it imprudent t
- Page 47 and 48: The “Mother of Clubs”In Boston,
- Page 49 and 50: Caroline attended the September 189
- Page 51 and 52: ments, Seymour and Sibley earned pe
- Page 53 and 54: In this photograph, San Francisco s
- Page 55 and 56: n o t e s12People’s Park: Birth a
- Page 57 and 58: 1969; McGill, The Year of the Monke
- Page 59 and 60: that “thousands of the brightest
- Page 61 and 62: For Both Cross andFlag: Catholic Ac
- Page 63 and 64: d o n o r sThe California Historica
- Page 65 and 66: In Kind DonationsSandy Alderson, Sa
- Page 67:
Membership BenefitsJoin tHeCaliforn