A Series of Tubes

So I borrowed a digital camera so that I could take my own pictures instead of grabbing other people’s pictures off the web. Here are Some of the pictures of the tree sit as it is today:

This is a picture of Mclaughlin Drive looking east from the engineering buildings. As you can see there is a banner hanging above. As you can also see that banner is a tangled up mess. The tree sitters underestimated mother natures ability to royally tangle a hanging sign. I was able to read the sign on the left earlier in the week in its untangled state. It read 4/22 and 5/1. I’m not positive but I’m pretty sure that these two dates are references to the anti military recruiting protest on april 22nd and 5/1 is in reference to the upcoming immigrant rights march and rally on the first of may.

I have a friend who participated in tent University at UCSC in 2005. He was dissilusioned with the process of tent University because the protest became a sponge for any greivance that any member could come up with. He was there to protest military recruiters, others were there for issues ranging from the UCSC budgeting process, increased fees, closing of departments, lack of educational programs, housing, lack of community at the University… You get the idea. They protested everything, and because there was no focus, there was no progress as a result of the protest. It’s pretty much official that the current tree sitters could essentially call their current encampment “Tent University 2: this time we’re in trees”. The first tent University ended in UCSC with police strangling the participants in order to get them to leave (as a cautionary note the link shows a pretty intense confrontation with police officers choking students). The pictures below can be clicked on for a closer view:

The signs that I talked about earlier are still there. The University has added a notice underneath that contains a court document stating that certain tree sitters are not allowed to camp, eat, be near etc. the parking lot. If I were the University I would not have posted the court document. It shows that they are proud of their attempt to financially bankrupt their own students. It will be near impossible for the two sides to come to an agreement when the University makes financial assaults on its students.

This is a picture of one of the platforms from below. There are at least two platforms that i could see. I think there is a third but I didn’t look very close.

Here is a picture of the parking lot below with signs and a platform overhead. The picture below is a little closer look at one of the platforms and of the signs hanging. As you can see the wind did a number on the signs, making most of them unreadable. One of them reads “save upper campus”.