Timber

It's Fall, and that means it's time for the leaves to start dropping from the trees. Up in Berkeley, there's more than just leaves. Hippies are starting to fall from the grove of oaks and redwoods located just outside the University of California stadium. Twenty-one months after activists climbed into the trees to protest the university's plan to raze them and build a one hundred and forty million dollar sports training center, crews began cutting down trees next to UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium.
The four remaining protesters, wearing black ski masks in ninety-degree weather, hit one of the arborists between the eyes with a bottle from their perch. That didn't keep the guy from getting back to work chopping and trimming. The trees will come down now. After nearly two years of legal wrangling and hand-wringing on the university's part, the state Court of Appeals denied a request for a new injunction by two community groups making a last-ditch effort to stop construction of the training center.
But this is Berkeley, right? Birthplace of the Free Speech movement? Once upon a time, perhaps, but students have not been a large part of the protest to save the trees. Most of the activists are older, unemployed individuals who have promoted the "save the oaks" campaign for the last two years while also using the grove as a gathering place to promote other social justice and environmental causes. And there were also plenty of steadfast tree supporters, such as Ayr aka Erik Eisenberg, who was arrested and led away in handcuffs late Friday, and Dumpster Muffin, who said Friday was a "sad day."
For the University, it was a day of relief. The cost for security fences and personnel over the duration of the protest reached three hundred thousand dollars back in April. And now four masked desperadoes make their stand in the lone redwood left in the grove. "We're going to give them a couple of days to let the reality sink in, and hopefully they'll see that, with the trees gone, their protest is completely pointless," said university spokesman Dan Mogulof. Then again, it takes a long time for reality to sink into the sap inside the tree, or hanging from it.