From 1964...

[WillyT]

Mario Savio - Sit-in Address on the Steps of Sproul Hall
Delivered 2 December 1964, The University of California at Berkeley



<snip>

...

And that's what we have here. We have an autocracy which -- which runs this university. It's managed. We were told the following: If President Kerr actually tried to get something more liberal out of the Regents in his telephone conversation, why didn't he make some public statement to that effect? And the answer we received -- from a well-meaning liberal -- was the following: He said, "Would you ever imagine the manager of a firm making a statement publicly in opposition to his Board of Directors?" That's the answer.

Well I ask you to consider -- if this is a firm, and if the Board of Regents are the Board of Directors, and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I tell you something -- the faculty are a bunch of employees and we're the raw material! But we're a bunch of raw materials that don't mean to be -- have any process upon us. Don't mean to be made into any product! Don't mean -- Don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We're human beings!

And that -- that brings me to the second mode of civil disobedience. There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus -- and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it -- that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all!!

That doesn't mean -- I know it will be interpreted to mean, unfortunately, by the bigots who run The Examiner, for example -- That doesn't mean that you have to break anything. One thousand people sitting down some place, not letting anybody by, not anything happen, can stop any machine, including this machine! And it will stop!!

We're gonna do the following -- and the greater the number of people, the safer they'll be and the more effective it will be. We're going, once again, to march up to the 2nd floor of Sproul Hall. And we're gonna conduct our lives for awhile in the 2nd floor of Sproul Hall. We'll show movies, for example. We tried to get Un Chant d'Amour and shut them off. Unfortunately, that's tied up in the court because of a lot of squeamish moral mothers for a moral America and other people on the outside. The same people who get all their ideas out of the San Francisco Examiner. Sad, sad. But, Mr. Landau -- Mr. Landau has gotten us some other films.

Likewise, we'll do something -- we'll do something which hasn't occurred at this University in a good long time! We're going to have real classes up there! They're gonna be freedom schools conducted up there! We're going to have classes on 1st and 14th amendments!! We're gonna spend our time learning about the things this University is afraid that we know! We're going to learn about freedom up there, and we're going to learn by doing!!

<snip>

Link: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mariosaviosproulhallsitin.htm

:kick:

[haele]

1. And I was there. Well, I was 5, and my folks lived in student housing there.-

My dad used to take me to class with him because we didn't have a babysitter...
But I do remember sitting on my dad's shoulders (with my arm still in the cast from the famous washing-machine wringer episode) as he walked through the large crowd of students milling (and sitting) around listening to a guy with a megaphone, and the police along the periphery of the crowd.
My dad told me to remember what I was seeing. Not that I understood it at the time.

Haele

[WillyT]

2. Way Cool !!!

:bounce::toast::bounce:

:hi:

[Brother Buzz]

3. Get them out of there.

"Get them out of there. Throw them out. They are spoiled and don't deserve the education they are getting. They don't have a right to take advantage of our system of education." Candidate Reagan, 1966

[pinboy3niner]

4. The Right tried to paint them as "commies," directed by the Kremlin...

...leading to the often misunderstood (and not quoted verbatim): "We dont trust anyone over 30":

Credit where due. The phrasing "We don't trust anyone over thirty" came from Jack Weinberg, who was indeed among the leadership of the UC Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Jack was, in fact, the person arrested on Sproul Plaza for trespass on October 1, 1964, and the more or less spontaneous protest where we surrounded the police car in which he was held was the tipping-point event that led directly to all of the sit-ins and strike actions - and eventual victory - that followed.

The line was a throw-away intended as a dismissive to a reporter who was pestering Weinberg, trying to get him to confirm false rumors that the FSM was controlled by powerful Communists. The point was that the students were running things, young people, not a bunch of old men in the Kremlin, but an SF Chronicle reporter latched onto it and ran it as an attack on the American Establishment.

Other activists, including Jerry Rubin, Paul Krassner and Abbie Hoffman among many, in turn seized on it for just that purpose, using it repeatedly because it provoked such a virulent reaction by the Powerful. In that sense, I suppose, it could reasonably be called a "Yippie" catch-phrase.

Weinberg is, last I heard, still alive and still raising hell. Thanks be to him and to the new generation of "Robert Ericksons" for having the guts to stand up in person for truth and justice.

Posted by: Graham Firchlis | Nov 16, 2009 at 10:48 PM

http://www.bluestemprairie.com/bluestemprairie/2009/11/ruthiehendrycksfail.html

[Octafish]

5. We're going to learn about freedom up there, and we're going to learn by doing!!

KB&R

[felix_numinous]

6. K&R!!

Thank you for posting this.

[WillyT]

7. You Are Quite Welcome !!!

:hi: