It could be a new, clean—literally, clean—chapter of Berkeley history, as the University of California has moved to clear the trees in People’s Park, the area three blocks south of its flagship campus.

A landmark added to the U.S. Register of Historic Places in May, People’s Park has been an oozing sore on the face of Berkeley, California since 1969. Berkeley is a living cliché of a town. The 2.8-acre plot of land has been the site of a half-century-long battle of wills with scores of bystanders, most of them mentally unstable, as collateral damage.

The University of California acquired the plot in 1967 on the cheap using eminent domain. The school first wanted to build dormitories and offices, then a soccer field, but ran out of money. That’s when the local activists, most of them veterans of the Free Speech Movement, swooped in, quickly organizing a community. With freedom of speech on campus but a distant memory in woke America, People’s Park survives as the sole remnant of 1960s-Berkeley radicalism.

Because of its proximity to Berkley’s campus, the 2500 block of Haste Street was ideal for staging rallies. Following a neighborhood meeting to strategize takeover of the university land, activists marked the territory with a garden.