San Francisco Activists Liberate Park in Solidarity with Turkish Resistance 2nd June

On June 1st, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the mas­sive resis­tance in Turkey which began six days ago, Lib­er­ate the Land activists in San Fran­cis­co marched to a park space known as “Hayes Val­ley Farm” and began an occu­pa­tion. The piece of land is sched­uled to be turned into con­do­mini­ums, a devel­op­ment project which the pro­tes­tors plan to stop. Not only are they phys­i­cal­ly hold­ing the space with their bod­ies and mul­ti­ple treesits, the group is also plant­i­ng a “Free Farm” for the com­mu­ni­ty, shar­ing reg­u­lar meals, and hold­ing com­mu­ni­ty-build­ing and per­ma­cul­ture work­shops.

Par­tic­i­pants have renamed the space “Gezi Gar­dens” in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the cur­rent rebel­lion in Turkey, which began with the occu­pa­tion of Gezi park in Istan­bul. Pro­test­ers in Istan­bul began occu­py­ing Gezi park when devel­op­ers start­ed rip­ping up the trees to make way for a shop­ping mall. The insane police response sparked an upris­ing that has swept the coun­try. There have been oth­er sol­i­dar­i­ty demon­stra­tions all over the world, includ­ing the reoc­cu­pa­tion of Zuc­cot­ti park in New York City, the orig­i­nal home of Occu­py Wall Street.

Lib­er­ate the Land plans to occu­py indef­i­nite­ly, and has released a state­ment ask­ing oth­ers to join them:

Lib­er­ate the Land invites every­one to join this net­work in the days fol­low­ing today’s lib­er­a­tion, to plant food, cre­ate and pro­mote per­ma­cul­ture, host and attend work­shops, teach and take class­es, play and enjoy music, build, gath­er, exper­i­ment, play, learn, and be togeth­er.  A vibrant com­mu­ni­ty of plants and peo­ple are liv­ing on this land as of this first of June rather than the first lay­ers of con­crete foun­da­tion for con­do­mini­ums.  We invite our neigh­bors in Hayes Val­ley to join us in open dia­logue to fur­ther decide what Gezi Gar­dens will become.

Lib­er­ate the Land is bring­ing into dia­logue the con­cept of com­mon space, a clas­si­fi­ca­tion of space that goes out­side of the dichoto­my of pri­vate and pub­lic and instead places itself as the com­mons. The com­mons exist as the spaces owned and oper­at­ed nei­ther by gov­ern­ments and states, nor cor­po­ra­tions and pri­vate indi­vid­u­als. Instead, the com­mons are owned, or stew­ard­ed, by all peo­ple, with an under­stand­ing that the gifts of the earth are for all to enjoy and that peo­ple need land bases for grow­ing food, har­vest­ing med­i­c­i­nal plans, main­tain­ing healthy forests for build­ing mate­ri­als and fire­wood, wild­craft­ing plants for fab­rics, and host­ing wildlife habi­tat.

Read the rest of the state­ment here, and fol­low @LiberateLand on twit­ter for more updates on Gezi Gar­dens