Title: PEOPLE’S PARK
Photographer(s): AA.VV.
Writer(s): Alan Copeland, Nikki Arai
Designer(s):
Publisher(s): Ballantine Books, New York, U.S.A.
Year:1969
Print run:
Language(s): English
Pages:128
Size:23 x 23 cm
Binding: Softcover
Edition:
Print: Printed in U.S.A
Nation(s) and year(s) of Protest: U.S.A. ,1969
ISBN:
From the introduction of the book.
“Here, for a brief moment in time, people were together. All kinds of people who came together to build a park – a park for children and their mothers, for old people, for lovers, for everyone.”
In April 1969, a few Berkeley activists planted the first tree on a University of California-owned, abandoned city block on Telegraph Avenue. Hundreds of people from all over the city helped build the park as an expression of a politics of joy. The University was appalled, and warned that unauthorized use of the land would not be tolerated; and on May 15, which would soon be known as Bloody Thursday, a violent struggle erupted, involving thousands of people. Hundreds were arrested, martial law was declared, and the National Guard was ordered by then - Governor Ronald Reagan to crush the uprising and to occupy the entire city. The police fired shotguns against unarmed students. A military helicopter gassed the campus indiscriminately, causing schoolchildren miles away to vomit. One man died from his wounds. Another was blinded. The vicious overreaction by Reagan helped catapult him into national prominence.
The last images on the book is this banner fling in the air “Let a thousand parks bloom”