A Series of Tubes

I post information about the treesitters from time to time.  This is one of those updates.  They are still up there.  The banners that they hung in the trees are twisted up by the wind and made unreadable by the elements.  Someone associated with the treesit set up a blog.

You can read a speech made on October 7th at the treesit outlining the treesitters current manifesto.  I think they would save everyone some time if they had just written the following:

As treesitters we believe in the following things.  First off, Europeans are jerks who killed the Native Americans that used to live in the area, the Ohlonean people.  As a group mostly comprised of descendants of white Europeans, we refuse to recognize the irony that we are attempting to speak on behalf of the Ohlonean people today.  We are going to stay in our tree until everyone agrees to turn back the clock of time about 500 years and put things back the way they were.

We don’t like things that sound technical because we don’t really know what they are, and therefore hate them.  These things include but are not limited to: biotechnology, nanotechnology and advanced computing.  (By the way, I hope you guys like this nifty blog I set up with wordpress.  I hear the servers for this website run Intel’s processors that are made with a 45 NANOmeter design giving me, a treesitter, access to the latest computing technology).  If we are not successful in rolling back the clock then at least we created this wonderful space for people to come together and have a dialog.  By dialog I really mean you can talk to us unless you are the University, anyone linked to the sciences, anyone who wants research to cure and treat diseases, or anyone that wants a rational discussion of the LRDP.  This treesit will probably fail but at least we are a huge pain in the ass, and when you get us out of these trees we promise to be a pain after we come down too.

-signed Owl, Raven, woodpecker, treebark or whatever part of nature I decided to name myself to make this whole treesitting endeavor lose its legitimacy in the eyes of the public

The “About Stop UCSC” section of the blog states:  Since November 2007, the UCSC tree-sit has thwarted plans to build a planned Biomedical facility. Supported by students, faculty, staff, and the Santa Cruz community, the tree-sit stands in direct opposition to UCSC expansion plans.

The thing is that according to the physical plant at UCSC, building is not scheduled to start this month.  The treesitters will have successfully delayed the start of construction next month.  Of course budget cuts will probably impact the construction of the biomedical facility more than the treesitters.

As for support…I’m sure you could find some small pockets of support from within the student body, faculty, staff, and community, the vast majority of people you talk to do not support the tree sit and instead see the comprimise agreement that the University came to with CLUE (the Coalition to Limit University Expansion) and the city council as a better way forward.  Yes the agreement is not perfect, but I’ll take it over the dogmatic demands of the treesitters.