California In Brief : BERKELEY : Berkeley’s Radical People’s Park Celebrates Its 21st Birthday
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Business was brisk, the music loud and the sunny scene spicy with the fumes of marijuana and broiling polish sausage Saturday at the 21st birthday of Berkeley’s top radical symbol, People’s Park.
It was a far cry from the dawn of May 15, 1969, when this vacant lot three blocks from the University of California campus erupted in a screaming, club-swinging riot in which one person died and more than 100 injured.
For more than a generation, People’s Park has represented to Berkeley’s assorted street people and longhairs a lasting victory over usually sacrosanct American private property rights.
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