From crazy white boys to arson on holy ground (op-ed)

In 1963 Jack Weinberg was a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. He joined Berkeley’s chapter of CORE. (Congress of Racial Equality) Now, this crazy white boy spent the summer of ‘63 traveling through the south meeting with civil rights groups. He returned to Berkeley, withdrew from grad school, and became head of Campus CORE.

Mario Savio, another crazy white boy, spent the summer of ‘63 in Mexico working with a Catholic relief organization. His parents moved to Los Angeles and that fall Savio enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley.

Early in 1964 Savio was arrested for demonstrating against the San Francisco Hotel Association for excluding blacks from non-menial jobs. While Savio was in his cell another jailed demonstrator asked him if he was going to Mississippi to help in the Freedom Project. Savio spent the summer of ’64 in Mississippi. He helped register blacks to vote and taught at a freedom school for black children. These activities, organized by CORE and SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee) became known as Freedom Summer.

Savio returned to Berkeley with plans to raise funds for SNCC, but the school banned all political activity and fundraising on campus.

One month into Berkeley’s fall semester there was a commotion.

Savio and other students heard a former grad student set up a CORE table to distribute civil rights information and was in a confrontation with campus police.

When Savio and dozens of other students arrived at Sproul Hall, Jack Weinberg was placed inside of a police car.

Dozens of more students arrived until hundreds surrounded the police car that held Weinburg. Someone in the crowd shouted, “Sit down!” and students sat to prevent the police car from transporting Weinburg to jail.

Then Mario Savio took off his shoes, climbed on top of the police car and demanded the university to lift their ban on political activity and acknowledge the students' rights to free speech and academic freedom. Savio’s speech emboldened the crowd for what became a 32 hour stand off with the administration.

That day the Free Speech Movement began.

That December Savio delivered his famous speech against “the operation of the machine” from the steps of Sproul Hall, and in 1997 the university named the steps after Mario Savio.

Recently, Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza hosted another confrontation concerning free speech. A Republican student group invited Brietbart’s gay conservative editor to speak and protesters gathered to prevent his campus appearance.

A woman with a megaphone told a mob: This is not about free speech, these are not people interested in genuine debate, they hide behind that hypocritically to try to shut up and put in their places women, Muslims, minorities, and other oppressed groups. What they are really trying to do is assert their power, threaten us, intimidate us, rape us, and kill us.

Eventually, violence erupted, fires were set, people were attacked, the speaking event was canceled, and Berkeley was left with $100,000 in property damage.

President Trump tweeted: If UC Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with different points of view -- NO FEDERAL FUNDS.

But the university did nothing wrong.

The university rejected all requests to cancel the event. So the protesters demonstrated to prevent the speech, but the property destruction was a retaliatory act against the administration for not canceling the speech in the first place. (Or not caving in to their anti-free speech demands)

After this incident an inscription should be added to the Mario Savio’s Steps plaque, it should be required reading for future protesters at Berkeley, and it should say, “Sit down, take off your shoes, you’re on holy ground.”

First published in New Pittsburgh Courier 2/15/17