Talk:1960s Berkeley protests

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2022 and 13 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: KAMc98, Sh3nl0ng16, DAVID209h.

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 March 2019 and 12 June 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Bvalverde101.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 12:59, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

New comment June 2018

I'm writing a book on teacher training. This take on the event exactly fits my memory of it. The problem here, as in much Progressive history is citations and refs to other authors simply do not exist. The syntax can be improved here but factually and in terms of its significance going forward from 1964, this is accurate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Healing toolbox (talk • contribs) 19:16, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Let's be serious

This is a truly silly article. Since when are demonstrations "riots"? The article is nothing but a mish-mosh of activities that happened to take place in or near Berkeley over a period of a decade or more. The WP articles on the Free Speech Movement and SLATE, for example, document coherent and time-limited activities. That somehow this miscellany of events is linked by "antinomianism" and rock music is simply preposterous. It does not appear that this article has gained in coherence since it was reviewed for deletion in 2009. Does it still have any defenders? Dwalls (talk) 03:32, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

To my knowledge, there was only one riot in Berkeley during the 1960s: the People's Park riot of May 15, 1969 (see People's_Park_(Berkeley)#May_15.2C_1969:_.22Bloody_Thursday.22). And that riot is not even mentioned in this article. All of the events in this article were nothing more than protests. Therefore: I will (1) replace the occurrences of the word "riot" by the word "protest", and (2) rename the article from "Berkeley riots (1960s)" to "Berkeley protests (1960s)". Mksword (talk) 00:37, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

There is also a serious conflict in the section on the influence on/of the Black Panther Party: though founded in 1966, the Panthers are supposed to have participated in the Sheraton Palace demonstration of 1963. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.157.198.133 (talk) 11:55, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 24 April 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved as suggested to 1960s Berkeley protests Mike Cline (talk) 13:30, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

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Berkeley riots (1960s) → Berkeley protests (1960s) – Per a name change request above from editor Mksword. Apparently the only event close to a "riot" isn't even mentioned on the page (EDIT on May 4:, although it was a major series of events nicknamed "Bloody Thursday" in which someone was killed and another blinded. See BDD's comment below). These were sit-ins, stand-ins, milling about, peaceful marches, and a crowd that trapped a police car in the middle of it and were satisfied with the resulting nothingness. (EDIT on May 4:Except for "Bloody Thursday", which is not on this page,) Not a riot in sight. Randy Kryn 18:23, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

• Support It might be nice if all riots were like this. GregKaye 23:03, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

  (EDIT on May 4: See BDD's comment below, where he points to a link to "Bloody Tuesday", not yet on this page, in which someone was actually killed, so my apologies about my following original comment, I was unaware of those tragedies - or didn't remember them - at the time it was written) I just reread the page, and it's like a Jon Stewart sketch. You look at the title and think: "Riots in the streets! My God, I wonder how many were killed and injured!" Then you read the page and some college kids were sitting in on some buildings, probably singing and passing out food cooked by supporters over in the dorms. Or they wouldn't let a police car move with one of their friends sitting in the back seat. Or peaceful marches, or setting up a table to hand out pamphlets and sitting there. Like that. Not a riot on the page. I moved the "Key events" section higher on the page, so people can actually see what occurred after lead sections which emphasize "riot", "the riots" etc. Suppose they gave a riot and nobody came? Randy Kryn 23:33, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

• Support per nom. DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 10:13, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
• Comment, there were a series of events referred to as "Berkeley Riots", which this article appears to cover:

Gary Donaldson (2007). Modern America: A Documentary History of the Nation Since 1945. M.E. Sharpe. p. 184. ISBN 978-0-7656-1537-4.

Neil J. Smelser (1 January 1974). Public Higher Education in California. University of California Press. p. 229. ISBN 978-0-520-02510-3.

Adam Fortunate Eagle; Tim Findley; Vine Deloria (11 December 2014). Heart of the Rock: The Indian Invasion of Alcatraz. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 52. ISBN 978-0-8061-8699-3.

Nigel Calder (15 October 1971). Technopolis. Simon and Schuster. p. 123. ISBN 978-0-671-21062-5.

Ryan O'Connor (15 November 2014). The First Green Wave: Pollution Probe and the Origins of Environmental Activism in Ontario. UBC Press. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-7748-2811-6.

Without delving into this subject too much, the name appears to be the common name of the subject of this article during that period, even being used in a book published by the University of California Press.

That being said the specific riot mentioned in some of these sources to describe these riots appear to refer to the event called "bloody Thursday". Therefore, it appears "Berkeley Riots" might be an alternate name of this subject, and if a name change does occur the alternate name should be mentioned, as it appears that the riot term is less common in more recently published reliable sources.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 20:02, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Reading about 'Bloody Thursday' shows that a police riot occurred, and one person was actually killed, another blinded, by the police. This evolved out of a peaceful protest about the planned and ongoing destruction of a park, so the name change still holds (it was a protest which turned into something more when the authorities moved in with force). Randy Kryn 23:48, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

"Police riot" "peaceful protest", hopefully those terms don't get added to the article, as those sound like terms which would add POV to the article.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 17:39, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

RightCowLeftCoast, you say that "the name ... [is] used in a book published by the University of California Press." You don't mean in the title of a book, do you? I'm not finding any book published by any publisher whose title contains the phrase "Berkeley Riots". Mksword (talk) 06:05, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

• Comment -- I'll repeat here the comment that I entered in another section, above: To my knowledge, there was only one riot in Berkeley during the 1960s: the People's Park riot of May 15, 1969 (see People's_Park_(Berkeley)#May_15.2C_1969:_.22Bloody_Thursday.22). And that riot is not even mentioned in this article. All of the events in this article were nothing more than protests.
• Why not use WP:NATURAL disambiguation and go with 1960s Berkeley protests? --BDD (talk) 16:45, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

  Got back to this late, sorry for not dropping by. I did not remember that someone had actually been killed and another blinded in Berkeley, that's an important addition. Can someone write up a few paragraph summary of "Bloody Thursday" to add to this page? I'd do it but I don't know enough about the topic to do it justice, maybe I can assist in the people who polish it later. Thanks.Randy Kryn 21:04, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

• Support 1960s Berkeley protests per BDD and [[WP:NATURALDIS}}.--Cúchullain ^t/c 15:31, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.