Protests - Part 30

 Berkeley - Save the Trees

Nudity is nothing new at the University of California at Berkeley.  Above, a group of men from the UC Berkeley Summer School of Surveying having some naked fun at a swimming hole in the 1890s.

In 2007 a group of protesters stripped down for the camera in a grove of oak trees on the UC Berkeley campus.  The university planned to raze the grove to make room for an athletic training center building.

San Francisco photographer Jack Gescheidt organized the nude protest as part of his ongoing Tree Spirit Project in which he photographs naked people in and around trees.

After stripping, the protesters were photographed lying on the ground under the trees.

A few adventurous types climbed up into the trees.

Including this unashamed guy.

Then the protesters got dressed and left.  

The same project also included expending Berkeley's Memorial Stadium, which is located right over the Hayward Fault.  The Hayward Fault is not as famous as the San Andreas Fault, but it's just as dangerous, and it runs through heavily populated Oakland and Berkeley.  A judge granted a temporary injunction to halt the building plan because it did not adequately address the risks from the fault.

In addition to the nude protest, a tree sit-in was held for two years from Dec. 2006 to Sept. 2008.  But in Sept. 2008, the trees were finally cut down.

Another Berkeley nude tree protest happened on July 18, 2015.  50 to 75 people protested a FEMA plan to cut down eucalyptus trees in the East Bay area as part of a fire hazard abatement project. 

The Berkeley protest was held in a eucalyptus grove on the UC Berkeley campus, although these particular trees were not targeted by the FEMA plan.

This protest was also organized by Jack Gescheidt's Tree Spirit Project, and it basically consisted of tree hugging by nude men, women and children.

UC Berkeley holds other nude events, including an annual naked run, but I'll cover that later in my College Streaking series.