A protest against the Berkeley Property Owners Association’s celebration of the end of the city’s pandemic eviction moratorium on Tuesday night ended in fistfights and shoving matches, according to witnesses.
Nearly 100 protesters from the Berkeley Tenants Union and the Tenants and Neighborhood Councils assembled outside of the ironically named Freehouse Pub around 5 p.m. where around 40 landlords were gathering to fête the end of a policy that banned them from evicting tenants who couldn’t pay rent. As landlords entered the mixer, picketers chanted “See our might, see our power, landlords get no happy hour” and displayed signs reading “No peace for evictors.”
An hour into the protest, some picketers headed into the bar to deliver a cake to the BPOA members. Inscribed in black frosting among the funfetti sprinkles: “Hey landlords, get a real job!”
But there would be no cutting of the cake. Soon after entering the bar, the protest devolved into a physical fight.
Witnesses said that a male BPOA member slapped a female TANC member and pushed her, according to Berkeleyside, which broke the news of the party.
One protester shoved BPOA President Krista Gulbransen to the ground, BPOA spokesperson Becky Warren told this news organization. Protesters also began throwing food and standing on tables and chairs, and one protester punched an older BPOA member in the face, she said.
BPOA condemned the protesters for physically assaulting and threatening its members.
“Their tactics to escalate, intimidate and cause harm not only impacted our members, but also the restaurant workers and patrons who were dining at the restaurant,” the organization said in a statement posted to its Facebook page.
BPOA also called out the Berkeley police for its lack of action, claiming that they did not do anything to remove violent protesters.
“When there’s actual assaults and escalation of threats, we ask that our city get involved and make sure that people are held accountable,” Warren said.
Berkeley Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Berkeley was the last city in the country to remove its moratorium, which it did on Sept. 1.
“Some of the members have lost tens of thousands of dollars of rents,” Warren said. “These are not big corporations, some of them are senior citizens who have one or two rental units. It’s been a huge financial strain on them.”
But renters’ advocates like TANC called the event “out of touch with the realities of the housing crisis.”
Warren acknowledged the BPOA made a “mistake” characterizing the event as a celebration.
“There’s several of these small business members that are just relieved that the moratorium was released,” she said. “It’s not because they want to evict anyone. It’s because they would like renters to pay rent.”
Lukas Carbone, an organizer with TANC Berkeley, said that while it was “unfortunate” the protest ended in an altercation, it underscores the violence of evictions themselves.
“Our original intent was to send a message that we as tenants are not willing to accept these sort of evictions and the end of this eviction moratorium without any sort of resistance,” Carbone said. “Tenants have to fight and mobilize with each other against the landlord class.”