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| "HELIOS" UC Berkeley BP bio-fuel research facility sign |
The edge of today's message of course was the disaster in the Gulf, and during the speak out World Can't Wait spent a lot of mike time telling everyone about the work and the words of the Emergency Committee to Stop the Gulf Oil Disaster. Black sticky "oil" dripped all over the fence and posters, some protesters dipped their hands in it, and the (stuffed animals) wildlife specimens tied to the fence were covered in the goo as well. Community people were heard -- a lot of people stepped to the mike to voice their outrage and heartbreak at what BP and governmental handling have done to NOT solve the crisis and several talked about the need for the people, the public, to make demands and real solutions. The crowd chimed in with different stories exposing the criminal handling of the Gulf disaster -- how the clean-up is using prison labor, the terrible dangers of the use of dispersants. A woman health professional criticized the apathy of too much of the public in a world demanding urgent attention to urgent problems.
Then there was the particular outrage that right here in Berkeley, BP has bought its way into UC and will be doing private, and quite secret, research while availing itself of the resources and prestige of the public university. The $500 million gift BP gave to the University of California is turning into the new "Energy Biosciences Institute." Here, the BP-UC contract will bring BP onto the UC campus to work on genetically engineered agrofuels ("biofuels") and microbes for enhanced oil and coal production. This caused huge controversy back in 2007 with many professors and students in an uproar against it -- pointing at the "Faustian" corruption of science and research, the corporatization of the university, the dangers of this kind of biotech work -- but UC had gone ahead, and now the building is going up.
Community people spoke out about this, too. One woman who's been following the BP-Berkeley relationship all along raised some chilling concerns about the hazards of biotech research without sufficient safeguard systems (including when we happen to sit on a major earthquake faultline!) -- and she also predicted that BP's facility will by its nature be seen as a high-security site (security clearances? guards?), a strange situation indeed to introduce into campus life! Another activist brought up the juxtaposition of John Yoo still teaching at the Berkeley Law school, while BP is bringing its corporate science on campus (which will by the contract include letting BP scientists have the status of tenured faculty, teach classes, etc.)
Later that night hours after the rally, the chain link fence was still plastered with the "100 DAYS OF OUTRAGE!" posters and signs we'd left behind. Passerbys coming and going past it headed for nearby restaurants could be seen stopping to read the posters, pointing at the bulldozers and excavation -- probably most of those conversations were about BP and the devastation in the Gulf, BP and its biotech research coming to UC Berkeley...
http://www.breitbart.com/
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/
http://www.baynews9.com/
[NOTE: many many outlets ran the AP story or parts of it.]
[NOTE: locally TV news, it ran on Channel 2 10 PM but there's still no video link (someone has it Tivo’d) but I’m told it wasn’t that sharp a story though.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-research-20100801,0,4715162.story
http://www.mercurynews.com/
http://www.dailycal.org/
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/
http://cbs5.com/local/
http://www.fresnobee.com/2010/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/
http://www.npr.org/templates/
NOTE: LA Times article asks (7/30) Why no protest over UC?BP connection. Maybe we should follow up
http://articles.latimes.com/
Boy, did Berkeley get a lot of media or what !
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