OAKLAND — Dan Siegel, the legal professional who led the “Bloody Thursday” protest at Folks’s Park that helped ignite a practice of activism in Berkeley, drawing scrutiny from the FBI and launching Siegel’s storied profession in Oakland’s courtrooms, died on July 2. He was 79.
A lifelong advocate for civil rights, Siegel was a UC Berkeley legislation scholar when he yelled “Let’s take the park!” to a crowd of 1000’s of protesters in 1969, setting off a conflict by which police killed one individual and despatched 128 others to the hospital.
Siegel, accused within the aftermath of inciting a riot, later had his license to apply legislation denied by the State Bar of California. He efficiently sued, taking the case to the state Supreme Courtroom and successful. The case set an necessary precedent for figuring out the “moral character” of attorneys.
It was that very notion of morality — remaining principled, each when difficult social establishments and serving in them — that the majority resonated with Siegel’s household, buddies and colleagues following his loss of life from most cancers.
An Oakland resident for the reason that Seventies, Siegel died on the native Kaiser hospital. He’s survived by his spouse and fellow legal professional, Anne Butterfield Wells, in addition to a son, Michael, and stepson, Christopher Scheer.
Identified for his fierce work ethic, Siegel took on instances that promised lengthy hours and prolonged paperwork, incomes a fame for being feared, revered and prepared to courageous a trial within the East Bay’s numerous courthouses.
“A lot of the times, it was the difficult cases other attorneys aren’t willing to take,” stated his colleague, Alan Yee, of the Oakland-based agency Siegel, Yee, Brunner and Mehta.
Siegel took on police departments, serving to to safe multi-million greenback settlements for Black Lives Matter protesters who have been met with a forceful police response through the 2020 demonstrations that adopted the homicide of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
He litigated breakthrough Title IX instances that prevented gender discrimination on college campuses. He additionally sought to reform authorities from the within, serving eight years on the Oakland faculty board and operating unsuccessfully in 2014 to be the town’s mayor.
Final month, he stood in Oakland’s Metropolis Corridor plaza on the “No Kings” rally that drew 1000’s protesting the Trump administration, the place he urged the crowds to not fall complacent within the face of white supremacy.
“I say our struggle is to create democracy — not bring it back,” he stated on a microphone on the June 14 rally, reflecting on the nation’s darkish legacy of Indigenous genocide and slavery. He went on to name for political unity between each the “good Democrats” and “bad Democrats.”
Scheer acknowledged within the speech his stepfather’s “radical” streak, which he stated first led his mom to fall for Siegel within the Seventies. However there was additionally Siegel’s pragmatic aspect, the sort that after had helped him construct bridges with teammates on Hamilton Faculty’s soccer workforce — even the conservative frat stars.
“Dan had this inexhaustible curiosity and intellectual energy,” Scheer stated in an interview. “It was classic ‘him’ to take on cases that were new and challenging for him. He never wanted to be stuck in some narrow niche.”
Daniel Mark Siegel was born on July 2, 1945, in The Bronx, New York, to working-class mother and father. The household later moved to a various neighborhood in Lengthy Island, which, together with a secular Jewish upbringing, first uncovered Siegel to progressive values.
He majored in faith and philosophy at Hamilton earlier than heading west to Berkeley for legislation faculty. There, he grew to become the president of a scholar physique enmeshed within the chaotic activism of the late Sixties, when then-Gov. Ronald Reagan’s administration was more and more cracking down on campus anti-war demonstrations.
“Bloody Thursday,” because it got here to be recognized, was set in movement when the mayor of Berkeley on the time ordered authorities to fence off Folks’s Park and take away playground tools and paintings put in by members of the general public.
Siegel’s name to “take the park” is now written into historical past books — a reminder of the varsity’s historical past of scholar activism amid more moderen clashes over the park’s future, and of lethal police responses that Siegel fought to reform within the ensuing many years.
At the same time as he grew to become embedded within the courtroom, Siegel by no means forgot he was preventing for the communities that had formed him, colleagues and members of the family recalled.
“The people my parents represented as lawyers were also our comrades, our brothers and sisters in arms,” stated Siegel’s son, Michael, who final November was elected to the town council in Austin, Texas. “We were working with them on the frontlines.”
Michael helped run his father’s profitable 1997 marketing campaign for the Oakland faculty board. As the varsity district entered state receivership as a result of monetary issues, Siegel steadfastly fought towards cuts to college jobs.
In 2011, Siegel publicly break up from the Oakland mayor he’d been advising, Jean Quan, over native legislation enforcement’s response to Occupy protesters. In a web based submit, he urged the general public to help the demonstrators and “not the 1% (or) its government facilitators.”
Three years later, Siegel ran to be mayor himself, garnering 18% of first-place votes in a crowded race received by Libby Schaaf. The lawyer’s focus remained within the courtroom, the place in 2014 he settled with the town on behalf of the household of Alan Blueford, who was killed by Oakland police a pair years earlier.
“Dan’s legacy of justice lives on in every life he touched and every victory he won for our community,” Mayor Barbara Lee, who stated she knew Siegel “for many years,” stated in a press release over the weekend.
Exterior work, Siegel was an avid reader and a thrill-seeker — heading out to adventures in Alaska along with his spouse, who noticed the couple “hiking with grizzly bears,” Scheer recalled.
However there have been at all times instances left to battle, together with one for demonstrators who have been arrested in entrance of Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s home for protesting Israel’s assault in Gaza. The following listening to had been scheduled for Friday.
“I think he definitely would like to have seen it through,” Walter Riley, the civil-rights legal professional partnering with Siegel in that case, stated Monday. Riley, whose spouse, Jennifer, befriended Siegel at UC Berkeley within the Sixties, stated his colleague was dedicated to ending no matter he began.
“Dan,” he stated, “was simply a very great ally in our struggles for justice.”
Initially Printed: July 7, 2025 at 4:30 PM PDT