A Series of Tubes

The tree sitters issued the following statement with regards to the attack at a researcher’s house that occurred in late February:

To all those concerned,

As you may have heard, on February 24th, some kind of protest took
place at the home of a UCSC researcher who experiments on animals.
Hyped-up news articles and administrative messages on campus have led
some people to associate this protest with the Tree-Sit on Science
Hill. We wish to take this opportunity to make it clear that the
tree-sit is NOT affiliated.

The tree-sit uses civil disobedience as a way of drawing attention to
the issues of expansion, and physically preventing trees from being
cut down. While many of us are concerned with the University’s plan to
replace animal habitats with animal testing facilities, we are
focusing on the long term impacts that the university’s planned
construction will have on life in Santa Cruz and the forest in upper
campus.

Yours in resistance,
Science Hill tree-sit organizers and supporters

I had previously called on the tree sitters to distance themselves with people that pulled firealarms in the buildings around the tree sit as well as those that were spray painting buildings around the tree sit. Although no statement was made about those incidents the tree sitter’s distancing themselves from a violent and destructive attack is a positive step.  The UCSC response to date has been to try and sue some of the protestors.  Here is the most recent development in that case.