In anticipation of the attempted sale of the downtown Berkeley Post Office as soon as Monday, peeps from First They Came for the Homeless, who have been Occupying in front of Staples for more than 100 days, moved to 2000 Allston Way. They were joined and supported by members of Berkeley Post Office Defenders.
Afternoon music was provided all afternoon by Dave Welsh and food by Ed Not Bombs.
First They Came for the Homeless arrived about 12:30 PM, after a rally sponsored by Save the Berkeley Post Office which saw more than 150 people on the steps of the Post Office listen as US Representative Barbara Lee and Jesse Arreguin (a Berkeley City Councilor who’s been fighting the sale) spoke of their continued resolve to stop the sale. Also Tony Rossman, a lawyer working pro-bono for the City on this matter, pledged to file a lawsuit ASAP to stop the sale.
All was copacetic until 11:00 PM, when Occupiers were visited by the Postal Police (and no, I’m not making this up, there are “Postal Police.”)
We are being asked to leave by 6 US Postal Police, 11:00PM. They did a head count of us occupiers. We could use more pic.twitter.com/hLHlkbd8fa
— Strike Debt Bay Area (@StrikeDebtBA) November 2, 2014
@Zouyanni @StrikeDebt Berkeley Post Office Defenders visited by USPS Police 11PM 6 of us 6 of them The1st warning pic.twitter.com/oUF7e3vHwV
— Strike Debt Bay Area (@StrikeDebtBA) November 2, 2014
The Occupiers would appreciate your company, both day and night!
A Statement From One of Those Present Last Night at 11:00 PM
I wasn’t completely asleep at 11:00PM last night when the beam from a flashlight came through the screen of my tent and hit me in the face. A USPS Police Inspector asked me to step out of my tent so we could talk. He handed me a photocopy of rules pertaining to trespassing on USPS property and asked me to dismantle my tent and leave. The other five of us who were sleeping on the loggia and steps of the Berkeley Post Office were confronted by Postal Policemen in the same way as me.
We – a few members of the Berkeley Post Office Defenders and First They Came for the Homeless – set up an encampment outside the Berkeley Post Office earlier that same day. We did this to insert our objecting bodies into the process whereby the Board of Governors, with the illegal collusion of CBRE, intend to sell our publicly owned post office to an as yet unknown private buyer.
The visit from the USPS Police last night wasn’t even a warning. They simply wanted to make sure that every one of us sleeping there knew we were violating Postal Service regulations. They had no guns or weapons of any kind that I could see, and – aside from badges and bullet-proof vests reading “POLICE / US POSTAL / INSPECTOR” they weren’t wearing uniforms. Instead they wore a variety of sport shirts, Dockers, blue jeans, and colorful athletic shoes. I think it’s reasonable to assume they were doing a head count of “trespassers” on public property. They may also have been looking for evidence of other kinds of illegal behavior. With their smartphones they took some pictures, which they may use to search for outstanding warrants on any of us.
Six people standing in the way of the sale of the Downtown Berkeley Post Office won’t be enough to slow down the sale, much less stop it. We need more people to hold onto what’s being stolen from all of us: a source of the wealth we hold in common, a component of our public infrastructure, a tool for resisting the ultimate triumph of wealth over collective will. With many more people in the encampment, the agents of regulation will have to develop a different and more cumbersome procedure to intimidate us. To win this small but potentially inspiring victory against a growing plutocracy, we need more people to stay with us on the steps of the post office.
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