The mob we took to city hall was about half middle-class Black home owners. They'd dressed for the occasion. It was a sea of church hats and three piece suits. We also brought a bunch of hippies from People's Park, some unhoused vehicle dwellers based around the corner from the houses under threat. We brought a bunch of students from UCB (mostly Barrington Hall types), and some high school students from Berkeley High, a bunch of old leftists, a bunch of new leftists, a contingent of Queers (some also dressed for the occasion), a bunch of anarchist punks from San Francisco (including pretty much everybody in the Squatters Federation). Some clergy showed up too (also dressed for the occasion). Some union people showed up in T-shirts and hats identifying their unions. There were some upper middle-class architectural preservationists from the Berkeley hills. They were well known gadflies who perennially swarmed city council meetings whenever anybody in town started talking about tearing down any old buildings for any reason. Everybody in town called them "the little old ladies in tennis shoes". We also recruited the mayor's personal physician. She blanched when he got up to speak.
The spokesperson of the extremely well organized disabled community in Berkeley explained that not only would the cops have to arrest and process a couple hundred civil disobedients just to reach the houses in question, but also they'd first have to arrest a hundred and fifty people in chained together wheelchairs just to reach the civil disobedients. It would have made for some career-killing optics and the politicians knew it.
Members of an anarchist free food distro called the Belcher Street Food Project brought a couple cases of fresh fruit. The plan was to start a riot right then and there if the vote went the wrong way. Our first move was to be to pelt city council with fruit. They would then run out the door behind their dais and into a safe room. Then we'd have the building to ourselves until cops showed up. It would take them about half a minute to get there and a dead run from their main nest a hundred yards away. There were an awful lot of us that they'd have to deal with, a couple hundred at least. The chamber was standing room only. The hall outside was packed cheek to jowl, as were the stairs leading to the also packed first floor lobby. From there the crowd spilled out into the yard. Around back was a smaller group of hard core radicals in position to form a blocking force when the main body of cops showed up. They'd lose of course, but they'd buy us time to shore up our position in the council chambers. We'd lose eventually too of course but it would have been a glorious rumble and the worst optics imaginable for the politicians involved. And all for what? To throw a disabled women, her kid, and her nearest neighbors and their kids, out in the street. It was the very sort of thing up with which the people of Berkeley would not put. And we all knew it.
When it was my turn to speak I wasn't dressed for the occasion but I may as well have been. I was wearing my biker leathers and had in fact showed up on a motorcycle, as had a number of our friends. Hollywood and TV has convinced normies to be afraid of bikers. Sometimes I'd ham it up, just for effect. Normies are soooo gullible. When it was my turn to speak the mayor and I locked eyes. I could see the poker tell pulsing in her neck. I figure she must have thought she was talking to Mad Max. She was nervous as hell. They all were. Sweat was appearing on foreheads.
These Berkeley city politicos were all liberals. That's who ran Berkeley in those days. I understand the liberal mind. Orwell said it best, "Liberal: a power worshipper without power."
Putting a whammy on them was a piece of cake. I Mau-Maued the hell out of them. Back in New Haven had I lived upstairs from some Panthers for a while. They taught me the craft. It's not hard. You just have to make them understand who it is that they're talking to and how it makes them feel. If you're interested in how it works, check out *Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers*, by Tom Wolfe. Good read. Questionable politics. What a boojie. Good with words, though. Turns a good phrase now and then. No sentence fragments.
So I established the class nature of their colonialist land grab and reminded them how that sort of thing was working out all over the world. Then I allowed as how once the riot squad had dealt with the wheelchairs and gotten CDers out of the way it was going to take a SWAT team to get me out of the building, and how's that going to effect your careers next election?
Long story short: They proffered eviction. We proffered a riot. They backed down and agreed to negotiate. The mayor and I shook hands on it. Hers was shaking. I shook a bunch of hands that night. Most had sweaty palms. They were scared of us. Liberals? Feh. Sniveling cowards the lot of them.
So we agreed on a professional mediator. They City paid their bill. The Oceanview Committee drafted me to be half the negotiating team. I have no special negotiating skills but it didn't matter because we had two moles inside City Hall so we knew in advance exactly what they were going to say at the next negotiating session. We Mutt and Jeffed them. I played Mutt.
We kept the garden. We kept the three houses in question. The City, for the first time in fifteen years, started doing maintenance on them. There were a couple dozen abandoned houses surrounding them. The deal was, in exchange for us not rioting, the City wouldn't tear them down. They renovated them into duplexes and sold them to yuppies who then lived on the second floor while low income people got the first floor and Section 8 (a federal housing subsidy with a yearslong waiting list). That way the feds paid off the yuppies' mortgages, some poor people got nice places to live, the bureaucrats all got raises and everybody was happy.
They offered Herself and me a house but we didn't want to live across the street from a paint factory and breathe the cancerous fumes. We took $4000 dollars (in '80s money) each in "relocation money" and moved to Crockett. We gardened there, roses mostly. And then we moved to San Francisco where we have no place to garden but we do have rent control. Rent control is a two edged sword. It means we're paying about half the going rate. We can't afford to move to a place we could garden, so we're prisoners of real estate. We're here for life.
The garden in Oceanview will always be my favorite. It was an accomplishment. The soil was severely polluted. We had it tested. The lead was bad enough, but right across the street was a place that salvaged gold from dead electronics. They'd been sloppy with their cyanide at some point and it got into the ground water. The raised beds fixed that but entailed hauling pickups full of horseshit. We cut it with lawn clippings, and compost. Our compost pile was epic. We grew awesome veggies.
So anyway, that's my guerrilla gardening story. If you have access to some unused land, I suggest you try it yourself. You'll be glad you did. Gardening is it's own reward. Also, you'll be able to tell a story about it to someone someday. That's the best part.
