Ten to 20 confused persons have been camping for more than a month on a Berkeley street median near a grove of trees where UC Berkeley intends to build a sports training center. And no one is doing anything about it.

The bizarre encampment includes tents, dogs, sleeping bags, banners and other debris along 100 feet of a divider on Piedmont Avenue. The campers say they are there 24 hours a day to “monitor illegal activity” on the part of the university, which they fear may knock down some trees in the path of the new sports training facility.

The university has been anxious to clear the squatters from the median before students come back for fall classes.

“We’re concerned about the safety and health of the students, faculty and staff, as well as the safety of community members driving and walking in the area,” said campus spokesman Dan Mogulof. “We’re also concerned about the safety of people sleeping on the median strip of a heavily trafficked street.”

The Berkeley City Council recently passed an ordinance prohibiting this kind of “camping.” But the new law makes enforcement a low priority after 10 p.m. if no one complains.

“We obviously don’t have the resources to enforce all the laws all the time,” said a city spokesman according to news reports. “But we’re closely monitoring the situation.”

One of the campers told the San Francisco Chronicle that he spends his time on the median doing yoga, listening to National Public Radio and drawing pictures.

“This has been a very profound and intense experience,” he said.

We suggest that the Berkeley police, who must also be spending their time doing yoga and listening to NPR while “monitoring the situation,” provide these campers with an even more profound and intense experience: being handcuffed, lead away to a squad car and placed in a jail cell.

Lessons for Teachers

The Los Rios College Federation of Teachers is afraid that California’s budget meltdown may result in cutbacks for themselves. So they launched a mobile billboard campaign against Assemblyman Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks; Sen. Dave Cox, R-Fair Oaks; and Assemblyman Alan Nakanishi, R-Lodi. “Close tax loopholes,” read the billboard, “Not schools, fire stations and health clinics.”

What made it personal for Niello is that the billboard resembled the license-plate holder of longtime local car dealer Niello Co., which he owns with his brother. After the dealership’s attorneys contacted the union to complain, organizers agreed to take down the offending sign.

“We were just surprised because we didn’t think it was a big deal,” said the president of the teachers’ union. “We didn’t realize we were infringing any copyright.”

Of course, they were not infringing “any copyright.” They were infringing a trademark. Copyrights protect the authors of literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works. Trademarks protect words or symbols used commercially to indicate the source of goods. The unionist/teachers might have understood the distinction if they had spent more time in the classroom and less time harassing local businessmen.

Five Strikes and Out

That San Francisco has been running a sanctuary for illegal aliens is old news. In 1985, then Mayor Dianne Feinstein designated the city a sanctuary. During the 90s, city officials expanded the sanctuary concept to begin shielding illegal alien juvenile offenders from federal arrest and deportation. But it has gotten a lot worse.

The San Francisco Chronicle has reported that Mayor Gavin Newsom gave grants of more than $650,000 to non-profit agencies to provide criminal illegal alien juveniles with free flights, immigration attorneys, housing and “arts and cultural affirmation activities.”

Now we learn, again from the Chronicle, that one illegal alien resident of San Francisco, 26-year-old El Salvadoran Marco Martinez, has been arrested five times in the past 18 months on drug trafficking charges before finally being turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. On his fourth arrest for selling crack cocaine, a judge sentenced Martinez to drug court, an alternative treatment program. This rehabilitation ended unsuccessfully when he was arrested two weeks later, again for selling crack. The judge kept him in jail and the sheriff notified ICE that he was in custody. A retired San Francisco police captain told the Chronicle that it was “common knowledge” throughout the department that “you were not to do anything with ICE or immigration and illegals whether or not they committed a crime – even to arrest them – because there will be the perception we are harassing illegals.”

The liberals who run San Francisco would sooner put drug dealers on the street than make an illegal alien feel unwelcome.