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 […]
The Berkeley Property Owners Association (BPOA) found more than 100 angry protesters waiting for them when they rented out a room at a posh bar for their $20 a head celebration.