[Editor's Note: Follow Albany Patch on Twitter for updates. See all the background on Occupy the Farm on Albany Patch.] On May 15, James Mink wrote on Albany Patch about the frustration of trying – across thousands of comments on multiple threads – “to put an issue to bed successfully.” To help address that need, below is a FAQ to enable PATCH’ers to find substantiated facts easily. Much of the cited information is on the City of Albany’s website. Feedback and suggestions to this FAQ are welcome: The goals are accuracy and objectivity.  1)     What and where is the Gill Tract?  Land currently…

[Editor's Note: James Mink shared this letter to the City Council related to two agenda items set for Monday. Albany Patch welcomes guest columns and letters to the editor. Email albany@patch.com with your contribution.] Dear Council members, Because I will be unable to attend the City Council meeting next Monday, May 21 due to a prior commitment, I wanted to write to you with my thoughts regarding proposed Resolution No. 2012-34, which is listed as Item No. 8-1 on the Agenda. Resolution No. 2012-34 would have the Council urge the University “to establish a space on the Gill Tract where the …

There has been a lot of discussion on The Patch about whether Albany welcomes or rejects the Occupy the Farm protest. I'd like a place where we Albanyans can actually just weigh in. I propose this space as a safe place to say whether you support the Farm of the Occupy the Farm movement, or whether you'd like the Farm to dismantle and leave for good.  I hereby promise to respect Albany residents who disagree with me. I hope others will follow this lead. Mostly I'm just curious. I don't think we have any real power in this forum to keep or change anything, as the real powers lie elsewhere. (…

Follow Albany Patch on Twitter for updates. More information is available via #occupythefarm on Twitter. See all the background on Occupy the Farm on Albany Patch. The first round of Occupy Albany mostly wasn’t about fat cats on Wall Street or police or banks in some town’s downtown. It wasn’t even about foreclosed homes. On April 22, a group of urban farmers and decaffeinated anarchists hopped a cyclone fence and took up residence on some of the last few acres of good farmlands in the Each Bay. They renamed the lot “The Farm,” set up camp, and started tilling the ground. Their website refers…

[Editor's Note: This story was updated May 17.] Follow Albany Patch on Twitter for updates. More information is available via #occupythefarm on Twitter. See all the background on Occupy the Farm on Albany Patch. An Alameda County Superior Court judge in Hayward issued a temporary restraining order Wednesday against defendants named in a lawsuit brought by the University of California against protesters who took over university-owned land in Albany last month. Judge David Hunter’s ruling prohibits the defendants from entering, occupying or farming on the Gill Tract themselves, or helping …

Read more on Albany Patch about the Gill Tract occupation. This story was updated at 11:55 p.m., and again on May 17 at 1:15 p.m. About 80 members and supporters of Occupy the Farm gathered in front of the Albany Community Center on Tuesday evening before marching to the Gill Tract and chanting. They left sunflowers on the Gill Tract fence, then departed for another rally in Oakland. Occupy the Farm activists took over the UC Berkeley-owned research field April 22 and tended their own garden there, until University of California police removed them Monday morning, arresting nine people. One …

Please share your ongoing photographs and videos of the Gill Tract activity here. Click the "Keep me posted" button below for an update when we publish future stories on this topic. Read more here. Learn about the proposed Whole Foods and senior housing development here.

Follow Albany Patch on Twitter for updates. More information is available via #occupythefarm on Twitter. See all the background on Occupy the Farm on Albany Patch. This story was posted at 9:25 a.m. Monday and updated at 10:50 p.m. University of California police arrested nine people Monday morning in a raid designed to end the occupation of the Gill Tract and allow the university to begin research preparations this week, officials said.  One young man, who appears to be in his late teens or early 20s, remained on the property as of 9:44 a.m. about 15 feet up in a tree, said University of …

The Gill Tract Farmers Collective has broken down camp and moved it off the plot of Class I agricultural soil and outside the gates of the Gill Tract. The only thing standing in the way of the Gill Tract scientists from conducting their research is UC's own barricades and police.* Last week current Gill Tract scientists Miguel Altieri and Sarah Hake and former Gill Tract scientist and professor emeritus Andrew Gutierrez attempted to access the land. They were denied access by a UCPD officer who stated the only person authorized entrance was the dean of UC's College of Natural Resources, Keith…

A private meeting convened by representatives of the University of California at Berkeley, about the future of the Gill Tract, took place Saturday morning without participation by Occupy the Farm.  Two members of Occupy the Farm, which took over a university-owned research field in April, were invited to attend the meeting if they complied with several conditions, including returning control of the land to the university by 10 a.m. Saturday. A member of Occupy the Farm said just before 11 a.m. that the group would remove its encampments, but would not return the land to UC control.  The group…

[Editor's Note: Gopal Dayaneni of Occupy the Farm shared these statements, during a phone conversation with us, just before 11 a.m. Albany Patch is heading into the meeting hosted by the university about the future of urban farming and research at the Gill Tract, and will provide more information afterward.]  We are removing the encampments. We don't need the encampment to assert the right and responsibility to tend the crops. We don't need to camp here .... We're leaving all the things that are appropriate to farming. We've been discussing it over the last day or so. We made that decision …

The University of California at Berkeley released a new statement at 12:39 p.m. Friday about activities at the Gill Tract. It has been reprinted below in full after a short summary. (See all our past coverage here.) According to the statement, signed by George Breslauer, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, and John Wilton Vice Chancellor of administration and finance, a planning meeting has been set for Saturday morning to "tackle the details of how the Gill Tract will be shared by our researchers and urban agriculture, and how the effort will be supported, coordinated and sustained under …

In the University Village in Albany, I live within a stone’s throw of the Gill Tract, and for the past three weeks, I have had a front-row seat to the escalating conflict between the Occupy the Farm movement and the University of California, Berkeley. I’ve watched it unfold from two vantage points: as a member of the University Village community and as a graduate student whose own research is intimately tied to rights and citizenship. And from my dual vantage points, I have grown increasingly worried about the coming collision between the University of California Police Department and the …

Occupy The Farm is an incredible model that is demonstrating how quickly a social intervention can improve communities in need. In only two weeks, they have established a full-fledged farm on urban farmland which will be producing food for thousands of people within weeks. The social enhancement that this occupy action has brought the neighborhood, bringing people together in mutual service, is what Cal should be studying. What a gift to all of us these activists have brought! If the regents plan to evict Occupy The Farm, they must preserve the immense, valuable farm that local volunteers …

Wednesday was already set to be a busy day at Ocean View Elementary School, with standardized STAR testing and a walk-and-roll-to-school event. And then came the helicopters, hovering overhead until just before the morning kindergarteners’ 8:20 a.m. arrival. CBS confirmed that one of the helicopters was theirs and said they thought the other belonged to KTVU. Members of the media descended on the site Wednesday to cover new police activity at the University of California-owned Gill Tract. Police locked a western entrance to the field, across from Ocean View, to limit access to the area by …

[Editor's Note: The University of California released the following statement at 1:35 p.m. on Wednesday. It appears below as it was released. The complaint appears with this story as a PDF. Those named include Gopal Dayaneni, Anya Kamenskaya, Devin Murphy, Stefanie Rawlings, Eric Larsen, David Grefarth, Russell Bates, Alejandra Cano, Vaden Dabney, Erik Eisenberg, Marika Iyer, Nathan Pitts, Gabrielle Silverman, Francisco Stierle, and "DOES 1 through 150." Another woman, Elizabeth Fairweather, initially was named in the suit, but she told Albany Patch she's studying abroad in Peru for the …

[Editor's Note: See the most up-to-date tweets and photographs on Twitter here via Albany Patch.] UPDATE: 2:18 p.m. Activists at Occupy the Farm said a group of supporters is planning to march from the North Berkeley BART station to the Gill Tract at 6 p.m. on Wednesday. At 1:35 p.m., the University of California filed a lawsuit against individuals and unnamed members described as being part of the Occupy the Farm activities. Learn more here. UPDATE, 12:06 p.m. Just before noon, a group of 20-30 activists convened a strategy session at the Gill Tract. There was somewhat of a lull in the …

I have been an enthusiastic home vegetable gardener here in Albany since 1987. In the last few years I have planted apricot, fig, persimmon, pomegranate and mandarin orange trees. Unfortunately, my strawberry patch seems mostly to be nourishing the local squirrel. My vegetable garden includes kale, spinach, arugula, sugar snap peas, cucumbers and three kinds of tomatoes. My herb garden has parsley, rosemary, oregano, thyme and six kinds of basil. Today I picked up a five-gallon bucket of coffee grounds from Peet’s Coffee to use as a good nitrogen source for my compost bin. I have done all …

University officials responded to Monday's letter from Occupy the Farm activists with "disappointment and dismay," according to a new statement released just before 4 p.m. Tuesday.  The university said a "win-win-win" result would be achieved only if the activists who took over UC-owned agricultural land in April abandon their encampment and cede control of the land back to the university.  If these two steps are undertaken, said the university, the water to the site will be turned back on, and officials will begin a "detailed conversation and planning" process about how to sustain urban …

On April 22, hundreds of activists, community members, students and local farmers occupied a portion of the Gill Tract, the 5-acre piece of land directly across from the University Village in Albany. This occupation was not spontaneous; it took months of planning that ranged from organizing community support for the action, to growing over 15,000 starter plants that could be planted on the land once occupied. The location of the land occupation was not random; it was deliberately chosen because of its high quality agricultural soil and the long history of attempts by community organizations …