The city of Berkeley, California, is home to a large branch of the University of California, specifically the jewel of the UC System University of California, Berkeley. This college town is known for its extremely liberal radical politics, which at times has even included official positions on foreign policy. Berkeley was designated America's third-most liberal city.[1]
In January 2008, the Berkeley City Council declared that the Marines are "uninvited and unwelcome intruders" in Berkeley.
Other examples of liberal college towns include Santa Cruz, California; Madison, Wisconsin; Austin, Texas; and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, Berkeley is second only to Santa Cruz, for being famous for its drug culture, marijuana and methamphetamine drug abuse, old hippies, socialists and communists and rabid environmentalism.
It is the early 1960's birthplace of what the hippies call the "Free speech movement". Along with San Francisco's Haight-Asbury neighborhood, Berkeley is considered one of the most important birthplaces of the Hippy movement and its free love and Summer of Love.