The Free Speech Movement

It was in the 1960s that the University of California Berkeley gained a nationwide reputation of leftist rebellion, activism and protest that - to a certain degree - survives to this very day. It all began in 1964 with what became known as The Free Speech Movement.

Early that year the University began enforcing a ban on information tables by all political groups other than the Democratic and Republican parties. Student groups of all sorts petitioned the university administration to change this policy, but to no avail. This was the same time that The African-American Civil Rights Movement in the Southern United States was in full swing. People of all ethnicities were using civil disobedience for voting and civil rights for black Americans. Students asking for permission to table on campus included those who previously went down to The South organizing and engaging in protests.

On October 1st students organized a noon rally to demand freedom of speech on campus. Before the rally started an information table was set up supporting civil rights in the South. Police came in and arrested former student Jack Weinberg for sitting at that table. By this point there was a large amount of students arriving for the planned rally.

There was a spontaneous and sudden reaction to Weinberg's arrest. Students surrounded the police car Weinberg was placed inside, refusing to let it take him to jail. Soon, more and more students showed up and students started to climb on top of the police car and use it as a podium for open discussions. The car - with Weinberg inside - was stuck there for 32 hours, with not less than 2,000 students guarding it at any single time. Finally, the university officials and police relented and freed Weinberg.

Over the next months students organized rallies, marches and petitions demand their First Amendment rights. The university responded with intimidation, threats and suspensions of those they considered to be leaders. On December 2nd, Following a massive rally around 1,000 students and supporters started a sit-in protest on all four floors of the Sproul Hall building. It was here that Mario Savio, the most well known student organizers of The Free Speech Movement gave his famous speech:

There is 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 tacitly 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 machines will be prevented from working at all.

The students occupied the building for most of the night, but by 3:30 a.m. the next morning police from Berkeley and surrounding cities entered the building and began making arrests. Occupiers had a choice to leave freely or be arrested. 814 stayed and were taken to jail in the following 12 hours. The following day saw a massive rally on campus and pickets throughout campus attempting to shutdown the university. Much of the faculty and teaching assistants honored the picket lines. Students asked labor groups to also honor the pickets. Though some individual union members did so, the official response was that this was not a dispute between labor and management and so was not recognized.

The following weeks saw massive rallies and demonstrations around campus and the university began to back down. Finally, on January 3rd, 1965 provisional rules were put in place allowing all types of student groups to table on campus. The UC Berkeley Free Speech Movement was victorious and a new generation of student activism had begun.

Today a wide variety of political and nonpolitical groups can be seen tabling or protesting on the UC Berkeley campus. The Free Speech Movement Cafe, located at the entrance to Moffitt Library, is named in honor of the movement. They serve mostly organic and fair trade options in hopes that today's students become conscious that their consumption choices can be a political decision.

In 1991 a Free Speech Monument was created to honor the events of 1964. The monument is a round piece of granite with a six-inch hole in the middle. The hole in the middle is meant to be an invisible beam that creates a space free from any laws of any nation. The inscription surrounding the hole reads "This soil and the air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity's jurisdiction." When the monument was offered as a gift to the university it was almost turned away. For two years the university gave reasons why the monument could not be accepted. Finally officials relented, but only if the Free Speech Movement was not mentioned. So technically, the monument is called "Column of Earth and Air." This monument is located in Sproul Plaza, the location where most of the 1960s rallies and protests began.