Urban-Farm Activists Occupy Another UC Tract in Albany

Urban-farm advocates from Occupy the Farm Saturday carried out their announced plan to occupy and farm part of the currently unused UC land next to University Village in Albany.

Chanting and accompanied by the beat of a hand drum, nearly 100 activists with banners and tools marched about 1:20 p.m. from their gathering point at Albany City Hall and headed south on San Pablo Avenue. The went a block and turned right onto Monroe Street into the university-owned complex that includes University Village student family housing, Little League fields and the Gill Tract agricultural research field and facilities.

The same organization staged a three-week occupation and crop-planting a year ago on the Gill Tract agricultural research field, which is near the site occupied today. They were eventually evicted by campus authorities. 

Saturday's occupation took place on an empty plot that once contained World War II barracks on the north side of Monroe where UC plans commercial development whose anchor tenant will be a grocery store. The latest UC plan calls for a Sprouts Farmers Market on the site.

UC police stood by and issued periodic warnings through a bullhorn that the activists were trespassing and were subject to being arrested and prosecuted. The police did not appear preparing for imminent arrests.

"We're out here right now strictly for public safety," said UC Police Lt. Lee Harris.

The activists – joined by three goats, two chickens and a rabbit – pulled weeds and planted seedlings of several crops, including lettuce, cucumber, zuchinni and Red Russian kale in warm spring sunshine.

Their mood seemed mostly festive and upbeat. A couple of them heckled police. Some of them seemed intent on camping at the site, as they had last year. Two large banners erected next to the field said, "Sprout Farms / Not Grocery $tore$" and "Resist Monoculture."

Also on hand were protesters of the protesters. Eight Albany residents rode bikes around the area with signs carrying messages that included "Albany Cyclist 4 Development" and "We Say No to Occupy!"

Albany residents Barbara Chambers and Marsha Skinner stood at the corner of San Pablo and Marin Avenue with counter-protest signs showing the international symbol for something forbidden – a red circle with diagonal line across the center – applied to Occupy the Farm.

Standing next to them when the activists were still gathered at City Hall was Albany resident Jackie Hermes-Fletcher, handing out flyers in support of the occupation and its goal to transform the Gill Tract into an urban farm as a resource for the community and educational opportunity for school kids.

Lesley Haddock, an undergraduate in the College of Natural Resources at Cal and a spokeswoman for Occupy the Farm, said the land could be used by university officials "to put themselves on the cutting edge of urban agricultural research... The research that they're doing now is not actually serving the public interest."

Preston Jordan, who helped organize the bicycle counter-protest, said in a comment on Patch that occupation supporters who say have been providing "misinformation" in their assdertion that the site that was occupied today has been "prime agricultural soil." The activists ignored "the worker barracks, later student housing, that occupied the site for decades and decades" and the city's approval of the parcel for development, he said.  

University researchers use a portion of the Gill Tract, which sits on the south side of Marin Avenue, between San Pablo and Jackson Street, for crop experiments in coordination with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Western Regional Research Center, located nearby at 800 Buchanan St. near Interstate 80.

The Occupy activists and campus officials don't agree on whether the plot that was occupied Saturday is part of the Gill Tract, a term that has been loosely applied to mean different things by various people at various times. The university now says the currently occupied plot is not part of the Gill Tract, while the occupiers say it is.

Occupy spokeswoman Haddock said the group is "making a statement about this land as one plot. We want to preserve all of the undeveloped Gill Tract for urban farming and participatory research."

In a statement Friday, UC Berkeley Associate Vice Chancellor Claire Holmes said the Occupy group's characterization of the plot as part of the Gill Tract is "misinformation," adding, "This area adjacent to the Gill Tract is an area slated for mixed use redevelopment. It is a site that was occupied by WWII-era barracks and has not been a farm for at least 70 years."

Many years ago, the Gill tract included the crop-growing field, the area occupied Saturday by Occupy the Farm and much more. It was the entire 108-acre tract that UC purchased in 1928 from the Gill family, which operated a nursery at the site. During World War II, much of the site housed barracks that were converted to graduate student family housing after the war that became known as University Village. The converted barracks were later replaced by more modern buildings for housing. 

The term "Gill Tract" in more recent years has been used sometimes to mean just the actively cultivated field next to Marin Avenue east of Jackon Street and sometimes to a larger section of the former Gill property that extends south nearly to Monroe Street. 

If you have photos, additional information or comments related to today's actions, please feel welcome to post them here.

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