These are from Wednesday, March 12th, lunctime, at the tree sit in the middle of the UC Berkeley campus (not to be confused with the main oak tree sit on the edge of campus). This has been going on for about two weeks. They've actually switched trees once, and there have apparently been some arrests. The tree supporters say they're all for supplying water to the tree sitter ("Fresh" later revealed to be Michael Schuck) but their own videos show protesters getting handcuffed after shoving police so there's a bit of misinformation going on.
Despite the difficulty in resupply, there's some infrastructure up there. And yes, that's poo in the bucket. I have this theory that the success of a tree sit is measured largely in how much poo it produces (because it means you had more people up more days supplied with more food).
The police have a pretty big protected area around the tree to make resupply difficult. For some reason there were dozens of 7th graders on campus, who were shouting questions at Fresh and getting answers.
They've assigned one lone cop to keep an eye on all of this.
And unrelated protesters set up nearby to get some reflected glory (there's always somebody on campus protesting something).
She spent a lot of time getting everything just right. I'm not sure exactly what her point was - only one person came up and talked to her - a blushing 7th grade boy.
Fresh is actually quite articulate and believes in his cause (which has basically been reduced to "raising awareness" that the UCs are run by, you know, adults and stuff instead of whatever the students want). This was the first time I saw him without some handlers on the ground answering questions. It was just him and he did ten times better than his organizers. The 7th grade girls were pretty much all in love.
He's also fairly media aware. (I was off to the side - that was directed at me).
Over on the adult side of the fence, folks asked the cop what the deal was.
Luckily if you like people watching at all it's not as boring as you would think.
So there you go - I think Fresh said this was day 15 and it doesn't seem to be getting resolved any time soon. They have removed all of the tree sitter junk from the original tree, so that's good news (it's a lovely tree) but basically Fresh seems healthy and happy to be there, and while the police have taken somewhat of a harder line than at the Oaks protest they aren't willing to force him down and maybe cause an injury.
Postscript:
These are from the next day - I was on campus and thought I'd get an overview shot. You see nobody's paying any attention and frankly without the barricade and the officer over on the left talking to the guy on the bicycle you would never know there was anything going on.
The day after that Fresh came down from the tree and was cited for trespassing and possibly illegal lodging (reports seem to differ). I'm going to guess a fine and no jail, but we'll see.
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