Ever since the wall went up, everyone’s been offering ideas for knocking it down or getting over the top. Here’s a few ideas we’ve heard.
• We heard that some Burning Man artists already built a giant Trojan Horse Sculpture on top of a bulldozer for a recent burn and that it is stored at some industrial land in Richmond. During the upcoming Leap Day Action night protest (Feb. 29), we heard they’re going to bring it to Berkeley and drive it through the big metal gates of the wall!
• Someone said that what’s really going to happen is that on Earth Day, everyone’s going to bring buckets of compost and mulch to an event in downtown Berkeley, but then at the last moment they’ll all make their way to the Park, dump the buckets and form a big hill on Bowditch Street — Big enough to build a bigskateboard ramp and a slide.
• We heard that someone has figured out where all the rented security guards get their jackets and they’re going to bring a truckload to Berkeley — then at the Mardi Gras, everyone’s going to change into the jackets and rush the Park gates. The real security guards won’t be able to figure out what is going on and they’ll think it’s the relief shift so they’ll abandon their posts. Then people carrying guitar cases and other instrument cases seemingly on their way to a gig will unpack plasma torches, and cut through the fucking shipping container walls.
• Another comrade claims that stilt walkers from the Shen Yun performance group will suddenly appear at the BART station and use extra tall stilts to make it over the wall. Or perhaps they’ll be pole vaulters?
• Then there’s the tunnel-proponents — they’ve suggested it would be easy to tunnel under the wall. The police will have to check under all the floors of buildings within a block of the Park to stop them.
• The Lake Anza surfing term has suggested hiding a ladder cut up into pieces in their boards so they can get close without being detected — then snapping it back together and climbing over.
• There’s a lot of talk about creating distractions, disguises, pranks — dog walking parades, performance artists.
• Some people want to put LSD in the water, but others don’t want to waste perfectly good LSD on a bunch of Berkeley-bourgeois-uptight-squares!
• Someone else said that a volcano is going to erupt in the middle of the Park and melt the wall.
• On a more serious note, many people are plotting to occupy a number of important university buildings as a diversionary tactic. UC will have to bring police to dismantle the occupations, and then we’ll make our move to storm the gates. Or another version of this rumor is that we’ll trade the UC buildings hostage-style in exchange for the Park.
UC has said they will defend the wall 24/7 … forever? There’s cameras and lights and what look like loud speakers?
Will the wall be the only place in the Bay Area without graffiti or vandalism? It’s ironic that while UC students’ bikes are getting stolen, while people are getting mugged, while cars are getting broken into — the police can’t help — but there will always be enough police for the wall.
Has anyone ever attempted to build a $312 million building under armed guard? Will they send police to guard the cement trucks and the porta-potties? Will they do background checks for every subcontractor, every laborer, every delivery driver before they let them on the construction site? If the site ever becomes a dorm, is UC prepared to post armed guards around the perimeter 24/7 forever?