Thread by @leftinthebay

32 years ago, May 19 1989, thousands gathered in Berkeley to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the People's Park movement, leading to a riot in which anarchists and homeless clashed with police, and a number of Telegraph Ave businesses were smashed up, burned, and looted

Many participants had come to the Bay Area for an anarchist convention in San Francisco. They crossed the bay for a celebration of People's Park and a demonstration to "defend" Telegraph Ave, once a center of local radical activity, from rapid gentrification

The demonstration was led by black-clad anarchists who, in an early use of "black bloc" tactics in the United States, smashed shop windows and destroyed a Coca-Cola delivery truck. One police sergeant remarked: "They won. They proved they can take the streets by force"

While the rioters saw themselves in the lineage of earlier struggles over the park (they screened Newreel's 1969 People's Park film before the riot), they also signaled a new phase in those struggles, centering concerns over homelessness and gentrification
archive.org/details/cbpf_0…

The riot was also influenced by then-ongoing protests in China's Tiananmen Square, and "Beijing to Berkeley" was a prominent slogan of the night. The rioters not only confronted police, but also faced off with "white frat boys" who assembled to defend The Gap from looting