Mario Savio and The Free Speech Movement

“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.”

-The famous words of Mario Savio, the passionate and eloquent champion of the Free Speech Movement

Hearing him speak sends shivers down any political activist’s spine, seeing him at Sproul Hall or seeing him stand on the police car- it’s proof that people can change things, that sometimes we can beat the system. The Free Speech Movement was a shining moment in American history, and a shining moment in political advocacy. 

Mario Savio 

The Beginning

During the summer of 1964, Mario Savio and many other students who would become part of the Free Speech Movement joined a program called Freedom Summer and helped African Americans register to vote, and taught young African Americans at a freedom school.

So, when they went back to Berkeley they wanted to continue to help with civil rights and other political issues, but much to their dismay, all on-campus political activity and fundraising had been banned.

Naturally, this made Savio very angry and he said, “Are we on the side of the civil rights movement? Or have we gotten back to the comfort and security of Berkeley, California, and can we forget the sharecroppers whom we worked with just a few weeks back? Well we couldn’t forget.”

Jackie Goldberg and her brother Art led a group called United Front that defied the new policy. On September 29, they set up tables and refused to leave. The next day five of the protesters were ordered to appear for disciplinary hearings that afternoon. Mario Savio led 500 students to Sproul Hall and demanded that they be punished as well. The leaders of this march and the original five students were suspended.  

Jack Weinberg and the Police Car

On October 1, 1964 Jack Weinberg, a former student, was manning a table for CORE (Congress of Racial Equality). When he didn’t show his student card he was put in a police car. Someone in the crowd shouted “Sit down!” and the students surrounded the car and deflated the ties, keeping it from moving. For 32 hours, the car was held hostage (Weinberg and his police escort still inside it) and students stood on top of the car to give impassioned speeches to the crowd. They removed their shoes before doing so, so they wouldn’t damage the car.