california history - California Historical Society

this state.” On June 20, Reagan thwarted thespirit of compromise at a meeting of the Regents,which rejected the new plan by a vote of 18–6and endorsed Reagan’s position by approving,16–7, a resolution to construct married-studentapartments “as expeditiously as possible.” 57Reagan had emerged victorious in the battle forPeople’s Park. His assertion of university propertyrights was politically popular on state andnational levels with voters who had grown wearyof campus disruptions. William J. McGill noted:“Whenever Governor Reagan attacked the Universityof California, his popularity zoomed.” Reagan,with his antipark position, endeared himselfto his mentor, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, andto the conservative wing of the Republican Party,whose support ultimately took him all the way tothe White House. Reagan definitely got what hewanted from People’s Park. 58Epilogue: SurvivalOn the local scene, Berkeley radicals, who hadproclaimed in a pro-park leaflet “We need thepark to live and grow and eventually we need allof Berkeley,” also got what they wanted. Madiganand Reagan, by overreacting to People’s Park,destroyed conservative influence in Berkeley,paving the way for a radical takeover. In the1971 Berkeley elections, radicals won four seatson the City Council and controlled the mayor’soffice under Warren Wideman. Chancellor Heynsresigned the same year. One year later, a groupof activists tore down the hated fence that hehad constructed. The park was reclaimed, albeitwithout the imaginative architectural designs thathad marked the original project. However, thenew park was no longer limited to the northeastcorner of the lot, since all three acres were nowliberated as open space. 59People’s Park has survived the interveningdecades, despite periodic threats from the university.In 1979, the university tried to lay claimto a no-cost parking lot on the park’s westernend and turn it into a fee lot for students andfaculty. Protesters tore up the asphalt, pitchedtents, and maintained a twenty-four-hour vigil.The university surrendered, and park defenderstransformed the section into an organic gardeningarea that thrives today. Throughout the firsthalf of the 1980s, the university simply sniped atuser attempts to develop the park. For example,after allowing the construction of a wooden bandstand,the People’s Stage, in 1978, the universitybanned amplified music two years later. Whenpark users planted trees and installed benches,campus police uprooted and removed them. 60People’s Park again emerged at the forefrontof controversy in 1989. When Chancellor IraMichael Heyman complained that the park wasa haven for drug dealers and the homeless, theuniversity announced plans to build a 200-beddormitory on the site. Mayor Loni Hancock,one of four radicals elected to the Berkeley CityCouncil in 1971, blocked its construction, and awar of words ensued that ended with the signingof an accord between the university and thecity in October 1989. The university shelved itsplans for dormitory construction and agreed that“People’s Park should be retained as open space.”Veteran activists, though, were dismayed that theuniversity still claimed “a portion of the space” tobe “developed and maintained by the Universityfor informal recreation use (e.g.: volleyball andbasketball).” 61Their fears were confirmed on July 31, 1991,when bulldozers arrived to build sand volleyballcourts at the southern end of the park. Constructionof the volleyball courts coincided with theenforcement by campus police of the park’s10 p.m. curfew, preventing the homeless fromsleeping in the park. Protesters rioted for twelvedays. The underlying issues of this conflict,however, went far beyond volleyball courts. DonMitchell, a professor of geography at the Universityof Syracuse, has described the 1991 People’s7