"Students Against Hippies in Trees"

On Monday, I opened "The Daily Californian," the student paper of UC Berkeley, and I was greeted by a picture of a fellow I had just met on Friday at a welcoming party held by the Metta Center (a center for spreading education about non-violence). In the picture, he is just standing next to a tree, and cops are swarming him. He had been sitting in a tree on campus for the past couple weeks, trying to raise awareness about the undemocratic nature of the UC Board of Reagents. He was arrested on Friday around 2:15 and I met him around 4 at the party. He introduced himself as "Fresh," and I talked to him for awhile about the Democratizing the Reagents campaign. Pretty interesting stuff, he had alot of the same complaints that Brown students have, and is organizing around issues that sds is organizing around.
It is nice to see that even in places where sds does not exist yet, there are people organizing around some of the central issues which sds is doing across the nation. I am planning on contacting some of the other organizers of the campaign and tell them about sds, with the hope that they will hook into the sds network to help their cause (as well as maybe become an sds chapter :-) ).
But what I found hilarious about the article in the Daily Californian was that there is actually a group called "Students Against Hippies in Trees." And they showed up to protest the protest. Gotta love counter-protests, they are always kind of funny, especially when they have ridiculous names like that.
The thing that still boggles my mind is why the University cares that Fresh was in a tree for two weeks. It is not like the Oak Grove tree sit where they wanted to build something on the site. They had no designs on cutting down the tree that Fresh was in, so why did they make such a big deal about it? If they had just ignored him, his protest probably would have slowly trailed off and ended unceremoniously. But instead, they invested a tremendous amount of time, energy and symbolic investment into Fresh's protest. When he came down, it was in front of 150 people and he was arrested on the spot. Now that is an awesome climax for a protest, and bound to get plenty of attention, which is what he was after. If the administration had ignored him, I doubt he would have made it into the press very much. It is only because they responded that he even made a splash. It reminds me of that part in Harry Potter where Dumbledore is explaining to Harry that the only reason the Prophecy would come true is because Voldemort put worth into it and let it affect his actions. He sewed the seeds of his own undoing by putting faith in the truthfulness of that prophecy. Indeed, the prophecy is self-fulfilling, as long as he believed in it. The same is true of this protest. The administration believed that this protest would have an affect, and consequently, they reacted strongly to it. Strong enough to try, in the words of Fresh, a "sneak ninja attack" at night, and ban him from campus for a week when he came down. If they had just ignored him, I doubt anyone would have showed up to see the drama of a confrontation (there would not have been one if the administration had ignored him). Nor would the press have cause to write an article where there was no tension (they are annoying like that). The administration could have defused the tension of the situation by ignoring him.
All in all, this just shows the strength of non-violence. When your opponent strikes out, it only makes you stronger and your message more prominent. And while I am not sure how effective sitting in a tree for two weeks is toward democratizing the reagents (aside from getting press to the issue)... it sure makes for a good story.