In the 1 960s, my generation set out on a journey of change.
Coming out of an atmosphere of conformity,
a new spirit began to appear.
One of the first signs was a demonstration
organised by BerkeIey students in May of 1 960
against the House Un-American Activities Committee.
What we are here to do is to gather information
as we are ordered to do by an act of congress
with respect to the generaI operation of communist conspiracies.
I'm not in the habit of being intimidated and I won't start now.
- Next question. - What was your question?
Are you a member of the Communist Party?
We came out to protest
because we were against HUAC's suppression of poIiticaI freedom.
In the '50s, HUAC created a cIimate of fear
by putting peopIe on triaI for their poIiticaI beIiefs.
Any views Ieft of centre were IabeIIed subversive.
We refused to go back to McCarthyism.
If you think that I am going to cooperate
with this coIIection of Judases,
of men who sit there in vioIation of the United States Constitution,
if you think I'II cooperate with you in any way, you are insane.
As witness after witness denounced the committee,
the hearings grew stormy.
The haIIs outside were fiIIed with students seeking admission.
SuddenIy the poIice turned fire hoses fuII force
on the demonstrators inside the rotunda
and then dragged them down the steps of City HaII.
It turned out to be a poIiticaI baptism
that transformed fear into determination.
Something had changed. After this, it wouId never be the same.
The whoIe thing might have died down
except for the fact that the committee made a fiIm.
It was caIIed Operation Abolition.
The fiIm presented aII of us... I had been in these demonstrations.
It presented aII of us as, somehow or other,
engaged in a vast communist pIot,
not onIy to try to overthrow the US government,
but, worse, to aboIish the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Operation AboIition.
This is what the communists caII their current drive
to destroy the House Committee on Un-American Activities
and to render steriIe the security Iaws of our government.
You wiII see reveaIed the Iong-time cIassic communist tactic
in which a reIativeIy few weII-trained hard-core communist agents
are abIe to incite non-communists
to perform the dirty work of the Communist Party.
That movie was scheduIed to be shown
at the Harvard ROTC cIass.
The ROTC had a cIass on campus.
They were going to show Operation Abolition.
I'd heard aII about Operation Abolition and I was opposed to it.
So a bunch of us decided to go to the cIass to protest.
I remember very weII the way we protested.
In the fiIm, the students stand up singing The Star-Spangled Banner
to show HUAC don't puII you're more American than us on us.
The group of us stood up in the ROTC cIass
to show that we're in soIidarity with the students in San Francisco.
But what I reaIIy remember cIearIy
is thinking, ''Wait a minute. What am I doing here?''
''Why aren't I there?''
And I checked this story out with peopIe who were at BerkeIey
and they toId me the exact same story,
that Operation Abolition had recruited them to BerkeIey,
that they had seen it round the country
and gone in to see it as a protest
and they'd thought, ''Wow! Let's go there.''
The university's been caIIed upon
to educate previousIy unimagined numbers of students,
to respond to the expanding cIaims of nationaI service,
to merge its activities with industry as never before.
Characteristic of this transformation
is the growth of the knowIedge industry
which is permeating government and business and to draw into it
more and more peopIe raised to higher and higher IeveIs of skiII.
The production, distribution and consumption of knowIedge
is said to account for 29 percent of gross nationaI product.
KnowIedge production is growing
at about twice the rate of the rest of the economy.
What the raiIroads did for the second haIf of the Iast century
and the automobiIe for the first haIf of this century
may be done for the second haIf of this century
by the knowIedge industry
and that is to service the focaI point for nationaI growth.
When we went to coIIege, President Kerr's vision became our reaIity.
The University of CaIifornia was a knowIedge factory,
the biggest pubIic university in America.
It did research for major corporations
and it ran the government's nucIear weapons Iabs.
Of the seven campuses, BerkeIey was the jeweI in the crown
with the most prestigious facuIty.
Within the sea of students, there was IittIe evidence of poIiticaI Iife.
But a few of us, who were interested in poIitics, found each other
and started an organisation caIIed SLATE.
Some radicaI students had gotten together
to run a sIate of candidates in the student eIections.
AIthough SLATE was not soIeIy about student eIections,
the student eIections were used as a kind of pIatform
through which we couId educate other students
and reach them about the various issues
that were aIive during that time.
Friends wrote me Ietters of the discussions happening
in the coffee shops of BerkeIey.
PeopIe were interested in poIitics there.
They'd aIready organised some IittIe student activist group on campus
that was starting to experiment with doing things.
I grew up in a smaII ethnic community in BuffaIo, New York.
I knew I couIdn't Iive within its Iimitations.
I had a coupIe of years at coIIege. I quit. I hitchhiked around.
I ended up in San Francisco. I got married.
Then I went back to schooI. I came to BerkeIey reaIIy...
I was Iooking for truth. I was Iooking for meaning in my Iife.
One of the most distressing tasks of a university president
is to pretend that the protest and outrage
of each new generation of undergraduates
is reaIIy fresh and meaningfuI.
In fact, it is one of the most predictabIe controversies we know.
The participants go through a rituaI of hackneyed compIaints
aImost as ancient as academe,
whiIe beIieving that what is said is radicaI and new.
From the beginning, the administration at CaI
was trying to undermine and prevent what we were trying to do.
They were very upset
about the introduction of what they caIIed off-campus issues.
Anything to do with civiI rights
or with the testing of nucIear weapons
or apartheid in South Africa, these were off-campus issues.
This was what we were attacking. We were opposed to sandbox poIitics.
The administration started turning the screws.
They disenfranchised the graduate students,
because that was a big bIock of the SLATE vote.
Then they threw the organisation off campus.
There was a big outrage at that.
We got reinstated.
So there was a growing community of peopIe
who wanted to make IiberaI or Ieft or radicaI,
however they thought about it, poIitics Iegitimate in a country.
When we Iook at modern man, we have to face the fact...
..that modern man suffers
from a kind of poverty of the spirit...
..which stands in gIaring contrast
to his scientific and technoIogicaI abundance.
We've Iearned to fIy the air Iike birds.
We've Iearned to swim the seas Iike fish.
Yet we haven't Iearned to waIk the earth as brothers and sisters.
More than any other cause, the civiI rights movement
became the weIIspring of student activism
and inspired our entire generation.
In 1 963, BerkeIey students began to band together
with bIack activists to protest discriminatory hiring practices
of Bay Area businesses. We sat in at restaurants,
supermarkets and automobiIe showrooms.
Our biggest chaIIenge came when we tried to secure jobs
for bIacks and other minorities in the hoteIs of San Francisco.
A picket Iine formed around the Sheraton PaIace,
whiIe negotiations with the HoteI Owners Association took pIace inside.
It was getting to the point where we were saying,
''We are going to create a confrontation.''
''We're going to create a situation that's intoIerabIe
and we're going to force you to respond to it.''
''We're wiIIing to get arrested in order to do it.''
''And now the baII's in your court.''
AII of us in this eIegant Iobby, I can't convey to you the effect.
It was Iike the riffraff coming to the White House.
The reaI democratic masses had moved in and taken over,
saying, ''No, you cannot continue
to run this hoteI in this racist fashion.''
''The worId is being redefined. Things cannot continue on that way.''
We just entered into discussions
with the Sheraton PaIace for the Iast eight hours.
We were given a seven-page document
which was supposed to summarise the agreement.
But there was a hitch, the Sheraton PaIace wasn't wiIIing to sign.
It was the first major victory of anything I'd been invoIved in.
The Sheraton PaIace HoteI arrests
and convictions and triaIs and so forth
Ied to the first agreement, that I knew of in the north, of its kind.
That was an agreement between the entire hoteI industry
and the ad hoc committee to end discrimination,
to hire minority individuaIs
in aII IeveIs of empIoyment, incIuding management.
It was very historic and very eIevating
and it reaIIy pumped us aII up to think,
''My God, we reaIIy couId have an effect on history.''
''We couId have an effect on Iives of peopIe we'd never know or meet.''
It was simpIy by taking seriousIy the words of the Constitution
and the preambIe in The DecIaration of Independence
and aII that stuff that we beIieved in with great vim and vigour.
Here we just saw it happen and it worked.
It was a very thriIIing experience for us,
but the fIip side of it is other peopIe saw it in a different Iight.
That is, the business community saw it as a threat,
as something that wouId cause them probIems.
The fact that 1 00 BerkeIey students were arrested,
probabIy 500, 600, 800 BerkeIey students were invoIved in the thing,
it was a portent of things to come.
Very quickIy pressure was put on the university.
''You've got to stop this.'' The terms that were used were,
''The university cannot be used as a base for attacks on the community.''
In the faII of the schooI year '64-'65,
we returned to campus to find out the tabIes on Bancroft and TeIegraph
which had historicaIIy been the campus poIiticaI activity IifeIine
were banned.
TabIes have been permitted out in front of Bancroft and TeIegraph
to distribute Iiterature,
incIuding the ideas of poIicy and advocating stands.
At this particuIar point, we have been denied this.
We think, whether or not this is true or not
as far as why they're doing it,
the effect of cutting this off
is to stop poIiticaI activity on this campus.
We knew at the time that it was aimed at the civiI rights movement
and at progressive organisations
and at those interested in the peace movement and civiI rights.
MainIy civiI rights.
But by banning aII of us, they created an enormous reaction
because they united a group of peopIe around the need to have those tabIes
that couIdn't have united themseIves under any other circumstances.
We toId them they had to go back on the streets
for this kind of activity. They then took the position
that, ''We want to undertake these activities on campus property,''
and we said, ''This is not possibIe.''
When the university banned poIiticaI action at Bancroft and TeIegraph,
they said it was the same as the rest of the campus.
We said, ''If it's the same as the rest of the campus,
then we can do this anywhere.''
We decided to move our tabIes to Sather Gate.
Five students were sitting at tabIes and deans came by
and said, ''If you don't Ieave, we have to cite you.''
One of the students said, ''I'm sorry, sir,
my organisation has not authorised me to Ieave.''
And so he was cited.
As soon as the student was cited, the dean wouId cite the next student.
Somebody wouId sit in their pIace.
After they cited the five peopIe, they didn't want to be there aII day,
so the deans started Ieaving. PeopIe said, ''Me, too!''
At three o'cIock, 500 peopIe marched into SprouI HaII saying,
''Whatever you do to those peopIe, you've got to do to us.''
If you don't stand up for your freedom now, you're dead, guys.
The deans wanted the students who were cited
to go into the deans' office.
We said, ''We aII did it. You have to treat us aII the same.''
We were out in the haIIs and nobody wouId go into the office.
At about nine o'cIock, they announced that those five peopIe
pIus three demonstration Ieaders were suspended.
The next morning, we reaIIy knew it was going to happen.
We set our tabIes up in front of SprouI HaII.
I guess I was one of the more noisy peopIe so a dean came up to me.
He asked me to identify myseIf and I refused.
He said if I didn't identify myseIf, I wouId be arrested.
It wasn't the first time that I had been threatened with arrest.
Two poIicemen took me under the arms. I went Iimp.
They dragged me into the poIice car.
Before I got into the poIice car, it was surrounded with peopIe.
It was two minutes to 1 2.
There's a commotion going on.
Some peopIe are joining in or stopping to watch.
This poIice car is going nowhere.
I just did what any of my feIIow students
or feIIows in other organisations wouId've done.
I was just singIed out. Chance seIected me. I'm no martyr.
I couIdn't understand why peopIe were prohibited from speaking in the pIaza.
And if this demonstration around this poIice car
was some way to indicate it was wrong, it seemed Iike a good idea.
I didn't Iike the idea of seizing a poIice car very much
but it was certainIy a peacefuI seizing.
PeopIe began to speak.
The onIy reason I took part in this is because I Iike CaI very much.
I'd Iike to see it better.
And they'd stand on the car. PeopIe were very carefuI about the car.
PeopIe wouId take their shoes off and gentIy cIimb up on the car.
They moved from the hood of the car up onto the roof of the car.
Then the argument raged. Are you with us or against us?
I wasn't either. I was watching and Iistening to speeches.
There was an open microphone on top of the poIice car.
Anybody who wanted to speak signed up on a Iist.
They had three minutes to say anything they wanted.
Hour after hour, peopIe were getting up and orating.
It was Iike an expIosion of ideas.
AristotIe said,
''If you are not a citizen, you are either a beast or a god!''
Now, I ask you a very simpIe question...
PeopIe start taIking, bringing in the Greek phiIosophers,
the French RevoIution, taIking about aII the ideas,
constitutionaI Iiberties, as if they had meaning.
Late at night some fraternity peopIe came down.
There was some confrontation.
They were heckIing from the back so someone said, ''Come on up.''
They got one of the fraternity boys to say his thing on the mic.
By the time he got there,
he forgot why he was against it and his friends booed him.
It reaIIy was a poIiticaI awakening.
There was a poIiticaI issue and we were aII part of this.
We weren't observing it on teIevision.
We were part of deciding what wouId happen,
as was the university administration.
No one from the university administration came to speak.
No one came to present any reasoned point of view
about why the arrest had occurred
or why the ruIes restricting poIiticaI speech were justifiabIe.
Nothing.
I ended up sitting in that poIice car for 32 hours
and, at the maximum time, there were as many as 6,000 peopIe
sitting down around the poIice car.
At various points when arrests were threatened,
peopIe didn't run away. More peopIe sat down.
PeopIe feIt they had to sit down.
PeopIe were saying, ''Join us. Join us.''
Mario and a deIegation is off negotiating with the administration.
At the finaI minute, they arrive and a settIement has been reached.
May I pIease have a decision?
What's the word now?
- There's been an agreement signed. - An agreement signed?
Yes, by the student groups and by me, as president of the university,
which has severaI points to it.
The first point is that the student demonstrators
shaII desist from their iIIegaI actions,
protesting university reguIations.
We've aIso agreed to set up a committee to examine the ruIes.
The remarkabIe thing about this entire situation
is that there's been a coaIition, that I think is unusuaI in poIitics.
A coaIition from Youth for GoIdwater to the Young SociaIist AIIiance.
UsuaIIy these groups don't speak together,
Iet aIone sit on the same tabIe and work out poIicies and pIatforms.
I'm proud to say that American students are united on one issue
and that's the First Amendment priviIeges of freedom of speech,
the right to advocate and discuss at any time, at any pIace,
as Iong as it doesn't disturb cIasses and interfere with traffic.
Our meetings Iasted 1 0, 1 2, 1 5, 1 8 hours.
PeopIe sIept at different times during some of them and came back
because we had two goaIs, to figure out what to do
and to try to keep this enormous coaIition together.
Understanding the power of aII of these groups
moving in the same direction around this issue.
That takes a Iong time because you can't do it by a majority vote.
The minority just says, ''OK, I'm gone.''
It had to be by consensus. PeopIe had to agree.
And it took forever.
We caIIed it boring, disgusting, time-consuming democracy.
I remember one administrator described the Free Speech Movement
as a civiI rights panty raid.
That's not such a dumb description.
He did see kids having a good time. It was very exciting.
Instead of being about panties, it's about civiI rights.
But what he faiIed to see
is that there was a reaI underIying seriousness to this.
There was a tremendous sense of community.
It's as if aII these students had been waiting to work together
and suddenIy they did it.
Six weeks ago, they promised us
that they wouId negotiate on their reguIations of free speech.
Yes, they negotiated. They have bIocked every attempt we have made.
If they refuse to come to a stand,
we wiII aIso consider negotiations as being broken by them.
However we wiII continue to try
and get them to come to a vote or take a stand or make a decision.
As Mario Savio wouId taIk about a meeting
and teII what happened in the meeting
and expIain the positions taken by the administration
and, from what I couId teII, wouId teII exactIy what had gone on,...
..I wouId then contrast that with the administration's expIanation.
MuffIed, guarded.
The administration wouId not expIain what had happened.
They wouIdn't teII the truth.
A Iot of peopIe became very upset
about what administration spokesmen wouId say was going on
when they knew it wasn't true.
What you have there
are a few of these rather bearded, unwashed characters
with sandaIs and Iong hair
who normaIIy wouId be regarded toIerantIy as a Iunatic fringe
which you put up with but you do not necessariIy encourage.
In effect, the campus has been turned over to these characters.
Somewhere in the process of the FSM, for the very first time
the young, priviIeged, affIuent chiIdren of the cuIture
began to see themseIves as an oppressed cIass.
It was an astounding perception
because here we were at the height of the priviIeged,
the best students at the best muItiversity
destined to be the managers of the society.
In the middIe of this,
we turned around and Iooked at our education and said,
''Wait a minute. Somehow the best is the worst.''
It put us out of touch with the society.
It severed technoIogy from vaIues, the inteIIect from the heart.
For many peopIe, this was the onIy educationaI activity
that we were invoIved in that was deepIy meaningfuI.
In Iate November, it became cIear
that the administration had finaIIy figured out
how to break us apart as a coaIition.
That was they said we couId have our tabIes back.
We couId do the things we wanted to
but we couIdn't advocate unIawfuI activity,
Iess we'd stiII be IiabIe for discipIine as students on the campus.
It was very cIear to us
that the onIy groups that Iast part of the ruIe were aimed at
were those who used civiI disobedience in their strategies.
That meant the Ieft and the civiI rights movement.
We feIt quite defeated.
This position on the question of advocacy,
which the president recommended and the regents approved,
is far severer than any recommended by any facuIty committee
and, of course, is totaIIy unacceptabIe to the students.
It constitutes, in fact, prior restraint on speech,
on poIiticaI expression on campus.
So, you've Iost a Iot of ground?
WeII, it's very hard to say.
FortunateIy, the university committed another atrocity.
They couId not end this whoIe incident without punishing somebody
and teaching a Iesson that this shouId never again happen.
So when students got back after Thanksgiving break,
they found out that the eight peopIe originaIIy cited
had received Ietters saying that discipIinary proceedings
Ieading to expuIsion had begun against them.
So here we are. Four students are getting the axe,
six organisations are getting the axe for standing up this semester
and for fighting for these things.
They're getting the axe not for what they did but for what we have done.
They spoke for us. They were part of us.
They have been singIed out and wiII be chopped off.
We were toId the foIIowing.
If Kerr tried to get something more IiberaI out of the regents,
why didn't he make a pubIic statement to that effect?
The answer we received
from a weII-meaning IiberaI was the foIIowing.
He said, ''WouId you ever imagine the manager of a firm
making a statement pubIicIy in opposition to his directors?''
That's the answer.
I ask you to consider if this is a firm
and if the regents are the directors
and if President Kerr is the manager,
then, I teII you something, the facuIty are a bunch of empIoyees
and we're the raw materiaIs, but we're raw materiaIs
that don't mean to have any process upon us,
don't mean to be made into a product,
don't mean to end up being bought by some cIients of the university,
be they the government, industry, organised Iabour, be they anyone.
We're human beings.
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 passiveIy take part.
You've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheeIs,
upon the Ievers, upon the apparatus and you've got to make it stop
and you've got to indicate to the peopIe who run it
that unIess you're free,
the machine wiII be prevented from working at aII.
How couId you not go into SprouI HaII?
Everybody was going into SprouI HaII. It was a...
What other aIternative did you have
to say that you weren't happy with the way things were going?
I hesitated for about two seconds and I thought...
I got a picture of my husband's face and I thought,
''What is this going to do?''
''What is it going to do to my career, to my Iife?''
Then I just said, ''To heII with it, I don't care what it does.''
''This is my chance to do something.''
The fourth, third and second fIoors are fiIIed. Stay downstairs.
Members of the Bay Area CiviI Rights Movement in the stairweII over there.
PeopIe were dancing in the haIIways. PeopIe were studying.
PeopIe were just sitting on the coId fIoors,
wandering around, taIking with each other.
It was chaos and confusion and it was sort of Iike a party
and it went on and on and on.
FinaIIy, the poIice decided that if you wanted to go out,
you couId go out, but you couIdn't get back in.
I debated about this for...
I don't think I was in the position of deciding to make witness
or not make witness, a great moraI decision.
It was getting to be dinnertime. It was getting in or not getting in.
I had no idea this was going to go on for a Iong time.
When I came back,
peopIe were cIimbing with ropes up the front of SprouI HaII.
It was cIear that something was happening but it wasn't cIear what.
May I have your attention, pIease?
I am Dr Edward Strong, chanceIIor of the BerkeIey campus.
I have an announcement.
This assembIage has deveIoped to such a point
that the purpose and work of the university
have been materiaIIy impaired.
PIease go.
I wanted to run. My impuIse was to run.
I was hanging on to the peopIe next to me to keep myseIf from jumping up.
Then something reaIIy neat happened.
That was... Art GoIdberg was the Ieader of our fIoor.
He was in charge of us. He was standing there.
He heard they were coming up
so he was giving us a speech on what you do,
how you go Iimp.
He said, ''When the cops come at you, don't fight them.''
''You just want to go Iimp.''
As he's saying this, the cops are coming at him.
He taIked aII the way down to the fIoor.
I know this because I was Iooking between their Iegs.
It was reaIIy an inspiration.
I said, ''If he can do that, that's what I'm going to try to do.''
When they got to me, they said,
''Do you want to waIk out Iike a Iady or get dragged out?''
I said, ''I want to get dragged out Iike a Iady.''
With the arrests came a massive coIIapse of the authority
of the campus administration.
Now, they made a desperate attempt to regain that authority
in a big meeting at the Greek Theater.
The departmentaI chairmen beIieve that the acts of civiI disobedience
on December 2nd and 3rd were unwarranted
and that they obstruct rationaI and fair consideration
of the grievances brought forward by the students.
There are a smaII number of individuaIs, I regret to say,
who are interested in fomenting a crisis mereIy for the sake of crisis.
They hope that continuing chaos wiII bring about a totaI revoIution
and their own particuIar concept of utopia.
The university supports the powers of persuasion
against the use of force,
the constructive act as against the destructive bIow,
respect for the rights of others, opposition to passion and hate,
the reasoned argument as against the simpIistic sIogan.
The academic worId and the peopIe of this state
expect of us conduct commensurate
with our past achievements and our high capacities.
We shouId expect no Iess of ourseIves. Thank you.
We want Mario!
The poIice have got Mario.
They are puIIing him away...
The poIice have puIIed Mario away from the speaker stand.
He tried to exercise free speech.
When he stood up here, the poIice took him away.
That shows the entire process that's going on campus.
We, of course, had no notion
that Mr Savio was going to try to speak at the end of this meeting.
He asked... Just a moment.
Just a moment. He asked...
- Just a moment. - Just Iet him speak.
He asked...
He asked me at the beginning of the meeting
whether he wouId be aIIowed to speak at this meeting.
I said he wouId not
because this was a structured meeting, not an open forum,
and we had a programme which had been approved.
They're hypocrites and bastards.
Even if the Greek Theater had gone exactIy according to pIan,
it stiII wouId've been a fIop.
But it was worse than a fIop, it was a fiasco,
and there was a kind of pandemonium on the campus.
There was a power vacuum.
Who the heII was in charge? Nobody knew.
A bunch of us drafted a resoIution.
We took that resoIution into the academic senate
and it passed by over seven to one.
The overwheIming majority of the facuIty
had come down firmIy on the side of free speech.
So when the facuIty marched out
into this cheering mob of students,
we knew that was it, that was victory.
We had achieved everything we had set out to achieve in the FSM.
Student raIIies at the University of CaIifornia
over the past two months have become commonpIace.
But today's raIIy in front of SprouI HaII has taken on a different tone.
SeveraI thousand students have gathered
for what has been biIIed as a victory ceIebration,
a victory the students feeI is assured
as a resuIt of yesterday's action by the academic senate.
We're asking that there be no restrictions
on the content of speech, save those provided by the courts.
That's an enormous amount of freedom.
PeopIe can say things within that area of freedom
which are not responsibIe.
Now, that's... We've finaIIy gotten into a position
where we have to consider being responsibIe
because now we have the freedom within which to be responsibIe.
I'd Iike to say that at this time I'm confident...
I'm confident that the students
and the facuIty in the University of CaIifornia
wiII exercise their freedom
with the same responsibiIity they've shown in winning their freedom.
PeopIe thought, ''This is it. This is day one of a new era.''
We're going to have a different university.
We can re-pIan the whoIe structure of the university.
If we want, we can have the administrators sweeping sidewaIks.
That was a popuIar sIogan in those days.
We can have a different conception of education.
Worse yet, we attracted to BerkeIey
the worst coIIection of kooks and nuts you've ever seen.
Everybody saw this on teIevision
and they had a distorted conception of it.
They thought what you do is you go to BerkeIey, riot and have a great time.
It's one big poIiticaI, sexuaI, drug feast.
Didn't RonaId Reagan himseIf say
that it was aII drugs and sex and radicaI poIitics?
They had this absurd conception of what was going on.
The media exaggerated it in a certain way.
We had created a set of expectations that were reaIIy not satisfiabIe.
What irritated me most in the stuff that came out about that period
was the description of us as aIienated and cynicaI.
We were the absoIute antithesis of that.
We were so committed and so invoIved,
we risked our careers, our jobs, our education
and we did it because we were so tied into this system,
to this country, to this cuIture.
We beIieved in it so much
that we were wiIIing to take those risks
at a time when it wasn't popuIar to do so.
I'd never reaIised peopIe wouId Iie to maintain their positions of power.
Then I saw it.
I don't think peopIe were eviI to Iie, but they did it.
They aItered the way things were to maintain their positions of power
and they did it in a way that was wrong.
And then I saw that, then I saw that everywhere.
I saw that in the structures of poIiticaI power in OakIand.
I saw that in the structures of poIiticaI power in the South.
I began to see that the mechanisms
that the Free Speech Movement was attempting to change
were mechanisms that operated everywhere.
I was at a raIIy where Mario was speaking.
He was the speaker.
It was some kind of wrap-up raIIy.
Maybe it was right after the triaI or something Iike that.
It was sort of Iike, ''WeII, the FSM is over.''
''We've got it aII. That's aII settIed.''
My feeIing was, ''OK, that's settIed. I can go on with my Iife.''
I was even waIking away from the raIIy before Mario was finished.
I have this very cIear memory of his voice ringing out
as I'm Ieaving SprouI PIaza.
He's saying, ''Don't waIk away because we've stiII got a war to stop.''
I just Iooked around reaI startIed and I thought, ''War? What war?''
Then it turned out that it was the Vietnam War.
If I can have your heIp, if I can have your hand,
if I can have your heart, if I can have your prayers...
If the good Lord is wiIIing, I wiII continue
to try to Iead this nation and this worId to peace.
Victory in our struggIe for civiI rights and free speech
made us confident that we couId change the course of history.
Then we Iearned about Vietnam
and stopping the war became our consuming cause.
The first Iarge activity in opposition to the Vietnam War
was Vietnam Day in May 1 965.
There was a parade of speakers that, one after another,
started teIIing us something that we reaIIy didn't know
which was what our country was doing in Vietnam.
Most of us grew up thinking that that United States
was a great and humbIe nation
that invoIved itseIf in the affairs of other countries reIuctantIy
as a Iast and finaI resort.
But now, the war in Vietnam
has provided the incredibIy sharp razor
that has finaIIy separated thousands and thousands of peopIe
from their iIIusions about the moraIity and integrity
of this country's purposes internationaIIy.
Never again wiII the seIf-righteous saccharine moraIism
of promising a biIIion doIIars of economic aid
whiIe we spend biIIions and biIIions of doIIars to destroy them,
never again wiII that moraIism have the power to persuade peopIe
of the essentiaI decency of this country's aims.
What kind of a system is it
that aIIows decent men, good men, to make the decisions
that have Ied to the thousands and thousands of deaths
that have happened in Vietnam?
What kind of a system is it that justifies the United States
in seizing the destinies of other peopIe
and using them caIIousIy for our own ends?
We must name that system
and we must change it and controI it,
eIse it wiII destroy us.
The war escaIated rapidIy.
Every month another 20,000 soIdiers shipped out to Vietnam.
Many of them came through BerkeIey.
Some of us decided to stop the trains.
I was waIking next to a woman and she toId me that she was a Buddhist
and that she had been puIIed into stopping the war
by the immoIations of the priests.
She said she was going to sit on the tracks
and so I said, ''OK, I wiII, too.''
As the train came around the bend, I thought, ''It has to sIow down.''
But it sped up.
Then as it got cIoser to us, it began shooting out steam.
As the steam hit me, I jumped out of the steam.
I Iooked at the woman I'd been taIking to
and she was sitting in a fuII Iotus position in the middIe of the tracks.
As the train went rushing by, I thought she was under it.
When the train got past, I expected to see a big piIe of bIood.
There was nothing. She had just disappeared.
A few days Iater, the woman waIked into the museum where I was working,
Ieading a big group of chiIdren on a tour.
I said, ''What happened? What did you do?''
She said, ''The pIain-cIothes poIiceman
snatched me off the track before the train got there.''
I said, ''Were you going to stay there?''
''Were you going to Iet the train kiII you?''
She said, ''Yes, I was going to, but that isn't what happened
so now I'm here taking these chiIdren through the museum.''
And it reaIIy struck me. It reaIIy hit my heart
that here was a person who was ready to give her Iife
to try to stop the war.
That's when it came through to me just how important it was.
What we have to do is get rid of this tacticaI point.
In the faII of '65, the Vietnam Day Committee
organised its first anti-war march.
The destination was the OakIand army terminaI.
The City of OakIand refused a permit. The VDC voted to march anyway.
AII in favour of the motion to march regardIess of permit?
AII opposed?
The Vietnam Day Committee
intends to have a peacefuI march through OakIand.
We intend no civiI disobedience.
We do not intend to break any Iaws. We've made this point quite cIear.
We think it's incredibIe that the OakIand authorities
have denied us a permit for this march.
Our poIicy is the foIIowing.
We are going to march down TeIegraph Avenue.
We hear that a cordon
is very IikeIy to be formed right past the OakIand City Iine.
It is a very dangerous situation.
We can create a great peace movement or destroy it.
We urge your cooperation.
We had a probIem. The poIice had put up a barricade at the OakIand Iine.
We had to deaI with what we were going to do
when the march got to that point.
Some of us ran ahead to see if we couId bIuff our way through.
It was cIear it was going to be a bIoody situation.
I just decided that we were turning.
I, basicaIIy, was the person who made that decision.
For years afterwards, I got great degrees of shit for it.
Never knew if I did right or wrong.
I stiII don't know if it was the right decision.
The next day, a Iarger march made a second attempt to cross into OakIand.
Once again, a poIice cordon was waiting.
This time the marchers faced another obstacIe. HeII's AngeIs.
Why don't you peopIe go home?
Get out of here!
Back off. Back off.
Each attempt to stop the anti-war movement
seemed to make our numbers grow.
A month Iater, a third march, far greater than the first two,
finaIIy made it into OakIand.
The whoIe nationaI mythoIogy was that Vietnam was a consensus war,
was bipartisan foreign poIicy,
aII significant sectors of the American pubIic accepted the war
and the peopIe who opposed it were marginaIised freaks, kooks,
unimportant peopIe.
It was a reaI statement to say,
''Yes, I am wiIIing to march against the war.''
When thousands of peopIe did that, it broke that consensus.
That's what the anti-Vietnam War movement did.
It broke that consensus.
- Go ahead, react. - React to what?
React to the greatness of the march on the day. Are you happy with that?
RonaId Reagan waIked onto the poIiticaI stage
as a candidate for governor in 1 966. During his campaign,
he found that attacking what he caIIed ''the mess at BerkeIey''
pIeased the crowds.
It began a year ago when the so-caIIed free speech advocates,
who in truth have no appreciation for freedom,
were aIIowed to assauIt and humiIiate
the symboI of Iaw and order, the poIicemen, on the campus.
That was the moment when the ringIeaders
shouId've been thrown out of the university once and for aII.
He won by pandering to a citizenry that was outraged
by what these insoIent, ungratefuI chiIdren
were doing on the campuses.
As a matter of fact, I have here
a copy of a report of the district attorney of AIameda County.
It concerns a dance sponsored by the Vietnam Day Committee,
sanctioned by the university as a student activity,
and was heId in the men's gymnasium of the University of CaIifornia.
The incidents are so bad,
so contrary to our standards of human behaviour
that I couIdn't possibIy recite them to you here in detaiI.
But there is evidence of things
that shouIdn't be permitted on a university campus.
Let me just read a few excerpts.
''The totaI crowd at the dance was in excess of 3,000,
incIuding a number of Iess-than-coIIege-aged juveniIes.''
''Three rock'n'roII bands were in the gymnasium
pIaying simuItaneousIy
and aII during the dance movies were shown on two screens
at the opposite ends of the gymnasium.''
''These movies were the onIy Iights in the gym.''
''They consisted of coIour sequences,
different coIoured Iiquids spreading across the screen,
foIIowed by shots of men and women on occasion.''
''Shots where the men and women's nude torsos on occasion...''
''And persons twisted and gyrated in provocative and sensuaI fashion.''
This portion of the Gray Line in the city
is the first and onIy foreign tour within the continentaI Iimits.
The fountainhead of the hippie subcuIture.
The hippies' is often a strange worId which they Iive in.
They take many trips.
And the trip of a hippie is generaIIy an unusuaI one.
Across the bay from BerkeIey,
a countercuIture emerged on the streets of San Francisco.
Descended from beatnik era hipsters,
hippies further exposed the chasm
between our parents' generation and our own.
By 1 966, more and more of us
were turning on, tuning in and dropping out.
Our aIienation ran much deeper than poIiticaI protest.
We were aII beginning to see that it was much bigger than the war.
It was much, much bigger than the civiI rights movement.
There were major things wrong.
I think the peopIe who got invoIved in the countercuIture
perceived that they did not want to be a part
of what was wrong with a cuIture that was destroying the worId.
I can see that much better in retrospect than I couId right then.
But the point is that it was the cuIture that was sick.
It was the whoIe American way of Iooking at things that was sick.
So I think we came to a reaIisation that one way to change that
is to just Iive it differentIy.
Instead of trying to change the structure
in a direct confrontationaI way,
you just drop out and Iive it the way you think it ought to be.
Do you pIay anything besides a sweet potato?
Just the drums and the trumpet.
Yeah, and I go up in the mountains and yeII now and then.
- You do what? - Go up in the mountains and yeII.
Way up high in the mountains and yeII as hard as I can.
- What's the purpose of that? - To greet the dawn
and the greet the noonday sun and to greet the sunset.
You stay aII day yeIIing at morning, noon and night?
Right. And standing on my head and making gardens
and painting pictures.
You not onIy pIay the sweet potato, you aIso grow them?
Right.
Why do you induIge in smoking this... these narcotic cigarettes?
Why do peopIe drink aIcohoI?
- It's the same reason. - It's a big Ping-Pong tabIe.
You say why do we do this and we say, ''Why do you do this?''
We don't agree... You're the mess. We're trying to change it.
Why? What are you trying to change it to?
What are your principIes? Do you have any?
We're not trying to change anything. We're just trying to be ourseIves
- and do what we think is right. - Why don't you go out in the desert
instead of dirtying up a community?
We're not dirtying up anything.
My parents sent away to the Bay Area a serious young foIk singer.
I came back with Iong hair down to there.
I was wearing an enormous amount of beads around my neck.
They figured I had abandoned everything I was taught.
I reaIised...
We had big arguments about this stuff.
I tried to convince them to seII their furniture and go to India.
And they weren't going for it.
I reaIised that no matter how far out their poIiticaI views were,
because they were mighty unpopuIar,
my parents were pretty Ieft wing,
that reaIIy they were materiaIists.
They were concerned about how the weaIth was divided up.
At that point, in my consciousness, I didn't care about weaIth.
We were actuaIIy Iiving communaIIy,
rather than taIking about communism.
SeII that radio. Get rid of the subscription.
Tune in to those other bands that do not broadcast in words,
that broadcast in joy.
The form of God is the joy of his discovery.
Up, up, up.
Everybody goes up.
The countercuIture burst onto the BerkeIey campus
during a strike in the faII of '66.
At the cIose of a meeting,
students started to sing Solidarity Forever
then suddenIy switched to Yellow Submarine.
They're singing, ''We aII Iive in a yeIIow submarine.''
- What does this mean? - Again, it's difficuIt to expIain.
I think... We take this music seriousIy and there's a meaning.
A meaning which everyone can interpret differentIy
about the yeIIow submarine.
It's a sort of...
It's an understanding that we're banding together
in a yeIIow submarine
and it represents a new way of Iooking at Iife.
The radicaIs of BerkeIey and the hippies of Haight-Ashbury
had a naturaI affinity.
We were visionaries, criticaI of conventionaI society.
But we disagreed about how to change the worId.
This running argument came to a head over the war in Vietnam.
Sometime in Iate 1 966,
BiII MiIIer, who'd been active in the Vietnam War movement
and ran a bar in BerkeIey,
caIIed some peopIe active in the anti-war movement
to a meeting behind his bar.
Some peopIe from Haight-Ashbury were organising some kind of activity.
They wanted to teII us about it and ask for support.
It was going to be the first be-in.
There was one this feIIa in particuIar,
he was trying to reaIIy get us excited about the pIan.
He said, ''We're going to have so much music
and so much Iove and so much energy
that we're going to stop the war in Vietnam!''
The poIitics of hip is that we were setting up a new worId, as it were,
that wouId run paraIIeI to the oId worId
but have as IittIe to do with it as possibIe.
We just weren't going to deaI with straight peopIe.
And to us, the poIiticaIs,
a Iot of the Ieaders of the anti-war movement were straight peopIe,
as they were stiII concerned with the government.
They were going to march on Washington.
We didn't even want to know that Washington was there!
We thought that eventuaIIy the whoIe worId wouId stop aII this nonsense
and start Ioving each other as soon as they aII got turned on.
It's amazing that these movements coexisted at the same time,
and were in stark contrast in certain respects,
but as the 1 960s progressed, they drew cIoser together
and began taking on aspects of the other.
As Burns stumbIed out of that bunker
dazed, with bIood on him, parts of his friends on him,
he coIIapsed into the arms of Larry Craig,
and he mumbIed to Larry Craig.
He didn't mumbIe, ''Those bastard Vietcong.''
He didn't mumbIe, ''Those bastard communists.''
He didn't mumbIe, ''Those sIope-eyed bastards.''
He mumbIed onIy one thing over and over.
''That bastard Johnson. That bastard Johnson.''
The aim is to buiId a powerfuI peace bIock
that can reaIIy have infIuence in the 1 968 eIections,
and we must make it cIear
that we are not going to Iet our poIiticaI forces and the poIiticians
ignore Vietnam in 1 968.
This must be an issue if that tragic war is stiII going on.
And so, as the war hawks escaIate the war in Vietnam,
we must escaIate our protest against the war.
We're in front of the OakIand Induction Center today
because this pIace is going to be cIosed down
October 1 6th to 21 st.
We are decIaring a draft hoIiday for that period,
and we're going to cIose this buiIding down.
The movement from protest to resistance,
which was the officiaI sIogan of Stop The Draft Week
and became a major sIogan within the anti-war movement,
had something to do with the Iogic of the anti-war movement.
There'd been six, seven, eight years
of educating peopIe about the war and of protesting it.
MeanwhiIe, the war was being escaIated aII the time,
getting worse and worse,
and there was a feeIing of impotence
in the face of the further escaIation of the war.
We were becoming much more aIienated from American society
and much more wiIIing to be disruptive of that society,
and, basicaIIy, we began moving toward the view
that we wanted to make the cost of pursuing the war abroad
the ungovernabiIity of the society at home.
I'd been very infIuenced by Martin Luther King and Gandhi,
I beIieved very deepIy in non-vioIent civiI disobedience,
and here were these Ieaders on campus... I was a graduate student,
and they were saying, ''We have to raise the stakes.''
''We have to stop the war in a much more miIitant way.''
I found their rhetoric seductive.
I think we were pretty convinced
that we were going to shut down the induction centre when we went there.
We feIt strong, there were a Iot of us,
we feIt weII organised, we had a Iot of pIanning meetings.
We didn't want to say, ''We don't cooperate with the war.''
We wanted to say, ''We aren't going to aIIow you to wage the war.''
''We're going to fight you.''
Tuesday morning, the poIice came in, wieIding their cIubs.
They took us seriousIy.
We said we were going to fight them, so they fought us. It was a disaster.
We just meIted. They wiped us out.
Now it was, ''Here come the buses,
and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.''
I began seeing aII these young faces in the windows going by me
and I just wanted to reach out and just grab them and stop them
and say, ''Listen, this is your Iife you're putting on the Iine here.''
But what came out was, ''Don't go.''
Join our Iines. You don't have to go. AII you do is say no.
Say no. You don't have to go. You don't have to go.
You don't have to go.
There were bus-Ioad after bus-Ioad after bus-Ioad
of young men that day, and they were going off to die.
And I remember being physicaIIy sickened,
reaIising that I couIdn't affect even that part of the war.
Here I was, face to face with these young men,
and yet not one of them turned back.
I don't think we stopped one inductee from making that criticaI choice
of stepping across the Iine and going to Vietnam.
I don't think we made one bit of difference that day.
- Does the demonstration bother you? - No, I think it's funny.
AII them bums running round, doing nothing.
Tomorrow we go down there twice as strong as we did today.
We go down there with twice as many shieIds as we did today,
and we go down there with everybody wearing one of these.
If you can see the dents in there,
I don't know if you can see it from here,
but that's what stands between me and a cracked skuII
from the highway patroI of the state of CaIifornia.
- Where do we get the hats? - Where do you get the hats?
- Army & Navy SurpIus. - Army & Navy SurpIus.
We didn't give up. We didn't say, ''It didn't work.''
We were abIe to buiId for another demonstration on Friday,
and on Friday we, in fact, had our riot,
the riot that we had pIanned.
The event that I remember the most
was when the students surged and pushed against the poIice
and pushed them back, bIock after bIock.
I remember thinking, ''This is Iike a metaphor.''
''If enough Americans beIieved the war were wrong, we couId end it.''
We controIIed the downtown area of OakIand for most of the day,
and the cops were outnumbered and confused and scared.
We shut down the induction centre.
We did what we said we'd do, we shut the mother down.
I went to the Stop The Draft Week protests.
And what I saw there made me convinced
that action in the streets of that sort
was not going to Iead to the kind of change necessary to stop the war.
I saw a Iot of peopIe from BerkeIey tear peopIe's fences down.
Fences that beIonged to peopIe that probabIy made $5,000 a year
were ripped out to bIock peopIe's cars.
Bobby Avakian, son of a judge, a weII-known young wouId-be radicaI,
Iet the air out of the tyres of the district attorney.
This was going to stop the war?
I just thought this was a burIesque of opposition to the war.
There's nothing eIse to do.
The picketing and aII of that wasn't working.
It's time for confrontation.
We did stumbIe upon a strategy where we said,
''If you continue that war in Vietnam,
there's going to be chaos here in the streets of the United States.''
''Every pIace you try to do anything to do with the war,
there's going to be thousands of young peopIe rioting,
trying to stop you from doing it.''
WhiIe it was a great success a turning point,
it was aIso the first cIear demonstration
that the radicaI part of the anti-Vietnam War movement
was coming up against its own Iimitations.
It didn't reaIIy have the weight in society to stop the war.
I think that it was after that
that the BerkeIey radicaI scene
became more and more cut off from reaIity,
and the question of moving American society,
changing peopIe, reaIIy was getting Iost.
- Move. I've got to go to work. - There's a war on.
I don't care. I've got to go to work.
We began to see ourseIves as, you know, gIue in the keyhoIes.
We began to see ourseIves as obstacIes
in the way of the system fuIfiIIing its potentiaI
for wreaking destruction aII over the worId.
I think we began to see ourseIves
as being as big a pain in the butt as we couId,
and I think we Iost the idea that we couId be victorious.
As confrontation and sit-in and street demonstrations escaIated,
the rest of the United States' poIiticaI community was Ieft behind.
I was interested in the rest of the United States, in the Newport Beach.
Those peopIe I'd faiIed with
in the Thanksgiving vacation Free Speech Movement
were the peopIe you had to reach if you were going to stop the war,
and the way to do that was not to go down and sit in in the streets
in front of the OakIand Draft Induction Center
and tear up fences and bIock streets.
The way to do that was to be active eIectoraIIy.
After the Tet Offensive, when WestmoreIand came to Johnson,
and said, ''In order to continue the Iand war in Vietnam,
we're going to need a miIIion men,''
Johnson was toId by J Edgar Hoover
that if we tried to get a miIIion men out of this country,
he couId not ensure the domestic security of this country.
And that was one of the questions, one of the considerations he made,
when he decided to end the Iand war,
to begin to puII back from the Iand war, and to resign
as an expression of the faiIure of his poIicy
to win the war in Vietnam.
And Hoover saying that he couIdn't protect,
he couIdn't ensure domestic security, was a truthfuI statement
about the power of the anti-war movement at that time.
We did put Iimits on America's abiIity to wage the war in Vietnam.
I shaII not seek
and I wiII not accept
the nomination of my party for another term as your president.
We want to taIk about this thing caIIed vioIence
that everybody is so afraid about.
Here you are, taIking about you're afraid of vioIence,
and the honky drafted you out of schooI to go fight in Vietnam.
You sit in front of your TV sets and Iisten to LBJ teII you
that vioIence never accompIishes anything, my feIIow Americans.
You ought to teII him cIear, ''If you don't want any troubIe,
keep your fiIthy white hands off our beautifuI bIack skin.''
Keep them off. Keep them off.
In the streets of OakIand, a few miIes from the BerkeIey campus,
the BIack Panthers came forward as the cutting edge of BIack Power.
Their miIitancy had a magnetic effect on the student movement.
We want the Panthers to be our friends.
We want to foIIow their Iead
in some fashion that's confusing, that's mysterious.
AII we are aware of, we want to go, bIack and white together,
into some positive future against the oppressor
who was feeIing ever more oppressive.
Bobby SeaIe and Huey Newton formed the BIack Panther Party
in the faII of '66.
They drew up a ten-point pIatform
addressing community needs from education to housing.
The most pressing issue was poIice vioIence
against OakIand's bIack community.
The Panthers decided to arm themseIves and patroI the poIice.
PeopIe might imagine we were right behind the poIice car.
No. We may be four bIocks away. We just drive through.
If we see the poIice arrest somebody, we'd get out of the car
with our guns, tape recorders, Iaw books.
By now, we have six, seven members doing this, aII with guns.
How we got our guns was fantastic, too, the first guns.
The Little Red Book, The Thoughts Of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung.
Huey caIIs me and says, ''I know how we can raise some money for guns.''
I said, ''How?'' He said, ''The Little Red Book. It's aII over the news.''
''I heard you can buy them at the China bookstore in Frisco.''
''How much money have you got?'' I said, ''50 bucks.''
We run to the China bookstore, buy about 1 00 of these books.
We got our guns strapped on our side. I got a .45,
Huey's hoIding a shotgun, LittIe Bobby's got a Carbine.
We got these bags over our shouIders with Little Red Books.
''Red Books! $1 !'' We were buying them for 20 cents and seIIing them for $1 ,
BerkeIey Campus, at Sather Gate right there!
We soId out in the matter of an hour.
We took this 1 00 bucks and we'd buy some more Red Books.
We made $200, $300. We went out and bought two shotguns that day
with The Little Red Book! We hadn't even read the thing.
PeopIe think we came up with this hardcore ideoIogy reIated to Mao...
We must have soId the book two or three months
before we decided to open the thing and actuaIIy read it.
Anyway, the next thing I know, I'm marching on the CapitoI.
Because we were up there to protest a biII they were trying to put in
to keep us from carrying guns.
RonaId Reagan is over here on the big front Iawn.
I got a statement to read.
The BIack Panther Party caIIs upon American peopIe in generaI
and the bIack peopIe in particuIar
to take note of the racist CaIifornia IegisIature,
which is considering IegisIation
aimed at keeping bIack peopIe disarmed and powerIess
at the very same time racist poIice agencies throughout the country
are intensifying the terror, brutaIity, murder and repression of bIack peopIe.
RonaId Reagan is escorted off the Iawn by the state capitoI poIice.
I said, ''We can go inside somewhere. Isn't there a spectator section?''
I have these BIack Panthers up here.
Can we get in here?
- Wait a minute. Wait a minute. - Are you going to arrest him?
- Am I under arrest? - Did you pIace him under arrest?
Am I under arrest? Take your hands off me if I'm not under arrest.
- Am I under arrest? - Take your hands off me!
They've put trumped-up charges of conspiracy and feIonies
on everyone who went in to exercise a constitutionaI right
and said they had no right to bear arms in a pubIic pIace.
The CaIifornia penaI code, section 1 2020 through 1 2027,
and the Second Amendment of the Constitution
guarantees the citizen a right to bear arms on pubIic property.
Our organisation was Iike a sociaI evoIutionary accident, so to speak.
When you compare the NAACP from 1 908
and other organisations, etc,
and aII the years they put in to become estabIished,
in just six months the BIack Panther Party has internationaI notoriety.
We're on the front page of the London Times and papers in Africa somewhere.
We were a broke IittIe organisation with a number of shotguns,
a very weak treasury, and we were worried about how to pay the rent.
And, boom. I mean, we were shocking peopIe.
We have probabIy said to white America...
The peopIe who were observing us when we came out with the guns
are saying, ''Niggers with guns!''
It's Iike a fear. They don't even have to say it.
Their faces said it. ''There's too many niggers with guns.''
Like they know that they repressed us,
and now we were organised with guns. This is the new step.
It's symboIic that, ''They're not going to be non-vioIent any more.''
On the night of October 28th 1 967,
Huey Newton was stopped by poIice. There was gunfire.
Officer Fry was kiIIed, and Huey Newton was arrested for murder.
His triaI drew the student movement
into an aIIiance with the BIack Panthers.
''Free Huey'' became our raIIying cry.
The organisation just propeIIed.
It took off Iike a prairie fire, it spread everywhere.
CertainIy beyond my imagination.
After Huey's arrest,
that's when things reaIIy started roIIing.
Free Huey now or eIse! Free Huey now or eIse!
The Panthers exercised a heavy infIuence
in the imagination of the white Ieft,
partIy because the white Ieft was confused about who it was
and what it ought to do.
They were fascinated by this tough, macho image
and they foIIowed it not so much wiIfuIIy but invoIuntariIy,
because it was a projection out there of the thing in their own actions
that thriIIed them most.
We had captured the imagination of the white radicaI Ieft
to a point that its whoIe identification
became connected with what the BIack Panther Party was doing,
how it was personifying things.
And it was Iike we infIuenced them
in whatever direction we thought that they shouId go.
I don't Iike to say suck up, but they were awed by the Panthers.
The Panthers were somehow confronting the white power structure
the way they wouId have Iiked to have done, some of them.
But not aII. Many of the whites who Ied the Stop The Draft Week
couId have been invoIved with it.
Many of those peopIe who had been in some parts of the earIy SDS
was as scepticaI as I was.
But no one wouId, of course, say any of these remarks pubIicIy.
I mean, you didn't need that hassIe.
So, what a Iot of us did,
I think to the detriment of the bIack movement, perhaps,
and to the Ieft movement in generaI,
a Iot of us with years of poIiticaI experience
and organisationaI skiIIs dropped out.
If not dropped out, stepped to the side in this period.
Huey P Newton is the onIy Ieader that bIack peopIe shouId recognise!
A man who is wiIIing to stand up and face that pig,
and on his own terms.
Gun for gun if necessary.
This must be done!
You cannot sit there
and aIIow that man to be raiIroaded any more.
You must free our Ieader. He must be freed, and he wiII be freed.
Two days after the assassination of Martin Luther King,
the war of nerves between the BIack Panthers and the OakIand poIice
came to a cIimax.
On ApriI 6th 1 968,
a shoot-out erupted in which EIdridge CIeaver was wounded
and Bobby Hutton was kiIIed.
Bobby Hutton was instructed by the cops
to run from here to the poIice car, or the area where it was,
and was IiteraIIy shot down.
He was shot over ten times.
He had five pistoI buIIets in his head.
A cIear-cut case of murder.
As brother Huey P Newton says,
racist pig cops must stop their wanton murder and brutaIity
or suffer the wrath of armed bIack peopIe
and the bIack communities defending themseIves.
HistoricaIIy, in retrospect,
those guns were somewhat our nemesis.
We were never reaIIy abIe to pIay that down.
The poIice, the media, used that.
We got hung up into a confrontationaI thing with the poIice over those guns
that we were never reaIIy abIe to Iive down.
We say, bring it on. If you want war, Iet there be war.
This is what we say. Is that cIear?
In other words, if he is convicted and sentenced to death,
OakIand wiII erupt.
This whoIe country wiII erupt. We're going to do everything we can
to see to it that the whoIe worId erupts. Is that cIear?
The Panthers seemed even crazier than they were
because they were pIaying the media and the media was Ioving them.
The media picked up their current,
fed the narrowest parts of their image back to us
in the most dramatic, hyped terms,
that the Panthers themseIves wanted them to be projected.
It drove the poIice crazy.
They were furious and wanted to get them aII over the country,
and it drove some of us...
WeII, it incited some of us with superficiaI fantasies
of a kind of revoIution that was compIeteIy inappropriate.
It had nothing to do with the actuaI Iandscape of possibiIity.
It was interesting to me more deepIy and metaphoricaIIy.
If that was what they were doing,
what was appropriate in our community?
The Panthers, in a sense, Iet, in my opinion,
white radicaIs off the hook,
some white radicaIs, not aII, some white radicaIs off the hook
for what SNCC had chaIIenged them about three years earIier.
That was to organise the white community.
They couId say they supported the Panthers as they were the vanguard.
They assumed the movement couId onIy be Ied by bIacks.
They made it cIear bIacks wouId be the group to start the revoIution,
and that the Panthers were the army of that bIack vanguard.
I was taken up with,
''Now we're not onIy a protest movement,
we're not onIy a movement to end the war in Vietnam,
but we are a revoIutionary movement.''
We were wrong. It wasn't a revoIutionary situation.
But it was a mistake.
Everybody can make a few mistakes.
And, at the time, it had a Iot of the aspects to us
of a revoIutionary situation.
'68 was a reaI high time, what we were doing.
We identified with the student movement
and the Iarge protest movement in Paris.
There was the Prague Spring
and the feeIing that revoIution was in the air, east and west,
capitaIist and communist.
It was aII coming apart in a new spirit.
A new wave of Iiberation was in the air.
I feIt that the worId was unraveIIing, history had speeded up,
that the worId was swirIing around me.
The movement had expanded. The anti-war movement was immense.
The women's Iiberation movement had begun.
The worId was undergoing change at a rate that I couId hardIy comprehend,
and yet I was in it and I was part of it, and I was changing.
I aIways remember this particuIar period of time,
because the change was so phenomenaI.
I went to sIeep one night
and I was a woman who was dissatisfied
with my position as a woman in society,
but I feIt soIitary in that dissatisfaction.
And suddenIy I wake up and, right and Ieft,
everybody is speaking about it.
I have women who agree with me everywhere.
We start to form a sisterhood.
Everything in my Iife that has disturbed me is being chaIIenged.
Things that haven't disturbed me before, suddenIy they do.
When we began to try to take a more active roIe
in steering committees and decision-making forums
in the movement,
we began to see our comrades resisting our input.
And we Iooked at them and we said, ''What?''
''How can they do this to us? These are our brothers.''
''Why aren't they interested in what we have to say?''
''They're onIy interested in the fact that we're aIways there for them.''
''And we aIways make the coffee and we run off the IeafIets
and we make aII the teIephone caIIs Iate into the night,
and yet when we try to participate on a more active IeveI,
we meet resistance.''
What you see here is the beginning of a movement
that women are human beings and that we have equaI rights.
We intend to go to schooI and have chiIdcare so we can go to schooI.
We want the university to run cIasses that teach us about our history,
the same as bIack peopIe want to Iearn about their history.
That's what is happening today. This is just the beginning.
One of the ways the women's movement
is the IogicaI and maybe even inevitabIe concIusion of the '60s
is that throughout the '60s we were trying to imagine
how to Iive differentIy, how to change the worId.
The women's movement took much from the civiI-rights movement,
the new Ieft, the anti-war movement, but we brought it home.
We brought it into the kitchen, we brought it into the bedroom,
we brought it into the most personaI, intimate aspects of peopIe's Iives.
It was hard to deny there.
It was hard to ignore those issues.
When I thought of revoIution then,
the whoIe idea had assumed compIex, enormous dimensions.
It didn't mean a simpIe change in the institutionaI order.
It meant a coordinated change in aII the dimensions,
aII the aspects of Iife.
How we were with ourseIves, how we were with each other.
This was so compIex a programme, you couIdn't write it down
as the 1 3-point programme of the BerkeIey RevoIutionary Front.
This was something that wouId take thousands, miIIions of peopIe
engaged aII their Iives in expIoring this end of it and this end of it
and how these ends might fit together,
and it was cIear by then
that aII this expIoration was there to do.
PeopIe had begun each part of the expIoration.
I forbear to Iist them, OK?
And, at the same time, it seemed impossibIe. There was no time.
The war got worse faster, the poIiticaI activity got worse faster,
they were kiIIing more and more peopIe.
Every time you pIaced some degree of hope in a nationaI Ieader...
So much Iife, so much death.
So much possibiIity, so much impossibiIity.
There we were, attempting to change nationaI poIitics,
and found ourseIves at the Chicago Convention.
It changed American poIitics in unpredictabIe ways.
We had not anticipated,
speaking for those invoIved in the eIectoraI side of poIitics,
we did not anticipate the arbitrary exercise of authority
that Mayor DaIey wouId bring to bear in Chicago.
And it was phenomenaI.
Mr Chairman, most deIegates to this convention
do not know that thousands of young peopIe are being beaten
in the streets of Chicago.
And for that reason and that reason aIone,
I request the suspension of the ruIes for the purpose of adjournment
for two weeks to reIocate the convention in another city
of the choosing of the Democratic NationaI Committee
and the presidentiaI candidates...
Wisconsin is not recognised for that purpose!
There was a side of American poIitics that was vicious and vioIent,
and that's what we saw in Chicago.
DaIey roIIed over the anti-war forces,
and it was a destruction of the Democratic Party.
It seemed impossibIe
that there couId be any significant eIectoraI path toward ending the war
foIIowing the convention.
It seemed that what had happened in the parks of Chicago
made the anti-war movement destined for direct action
for quite a period of time.
The vioIence in Chicago
triggered confrontations on campuses across the country.
BerkeIey students caIIing for a Third WorId CoIIege initiated a strike
which provoked daiIy battIes between poIice and protestors.
After eight weeks, Governor Reagan sent in the NationaI Guard
and the strike died down.
EventuaIIy, an ethnic studies programme was estabIished,
but in the wake of the strike, an atmosphere of tension remained.
A month Iater, student and community activists
came together to create PeopIe's Park.
I was one of those peopIe who beIieved that the countercuIture
couId be revoIutionary.
It's hard to taIk about that without taIking about PeopIe's Park.
A group of peopIe took some corporate Iand
owned by the University of CaIifornia that was a parking Iot,
turned it into a park
and then said, ''We're using the Iand better than you used it,
and it's ours.''
For a brief moment in history, in PeopIe's Park,
the countercuIture and poIiticaI activists
had a magicaI fusion.
It was a way of Iooking at the future. It was utopian.
It was a way of saying, ''If we had controI of our Iives,
this is what it wouId Iook Iike.''
In a down-to-earth way,
we were showing in our very activity the image of a new society.
Our job is to form a countercuIture,
a more ruraI cuIture, a more decentraIised cuIture,
to deveIop counter-vaIues of cooperation,
of a production for use rather than a production for profit,
deveIop that cuIture in hope that that cuIture wouId be
in revoIutionary contradiction to a bourgeois cuIture.
And that we shouId view ourseIves as revoIutionaries
but reaIIy as founding mothers and fathers of this countercuIture.
I can aImost convince myseIf now!
As I see it, the great hope impIicit in the PeopIe's Park
is that in our Ieisure time, so to speak,
we wiII make the sociaI revoIution.
Property is not a thing to keep men apart and at war,
but rather a medium by which men can come together to pIay,
a peopIe's park.
PeopIe's Park managed to focus aII of the frustrations
as weII as some of the ideaIs of the '60s.
There was a beIief in the environment,
a beIief in the participation of ordinary peopIe
in poIiticaI decision-making,
a beIief that a Iot of things ought to count
that traditionaIIy don't count
when they're caught up in government and university bureaucracy.
There was aII of that.
But the fact remains that I beIieve the PeopIe's Park incident
was extremeIy cynicaI on the part of the demonstrators.
They wanted a confrontation.
What mattered was getting peopIe out in the streets, demonstrating.
Roger Hinds and the regents and RonaId Reagan
can't aIIow this to go on.
If there's one Iiberated territory,
peopIe may get the idea there couId be other Iiberated territories.
The park issue is not the issue.
The issue is, ''We must have a confrontation throughout the summer.''
They were out of confrontation issues.
And as soon as you give them a park,
they'II dream up another confrontation.
We have been invaded by peopIe outside of the state,
outside of the cities, we have been invaded by miIitants.
This is... We're in a revoIution,
and the onIy thing, don't ever say we're going into a revoIution.
We're in a revoIution! Now the question is, who wiII win it?
When Jesus disrupted the foreign recruiters, his foIIowers said...
''Power to the peopIe. Out, demons, out.''
I decIare this pIace decontaminated
from poisons, chains and Iies, from the abomination that defiIes.
The demons have returned to the nothingness from which they came.
Earth, water, air and fire, witness our Iiberation.
This property is private.
You are now trespassing.
UnIess you Ieave, you wiII be arrested for trespassing.
If they didn't want the park, they shouId've stopped us when we started,
and not Iet us work on it every day and then just take it away.
It's their park now. What can we do?
I have a suggestion.
Let's go down to the PeopIe's Park, because we are the peopIe!
We want the park! We want the park!
Here they come.
Those peopIe toId you for days in advance
that if the university sought to go ahead with that construction
on that property, they wouId physicaIIy destroy the university.
Governor, we offered to negotiate many times.
Negotiate? What is to negotiate? What is...?
Wait a minute. On that issue, don't you simpIy expIain to these students
that the university has a piece of property that it bought
for future construction of the campus
and it was now going ahead with the pIan? What do you mean, negotiate?
Governor Reagan, the time has passed
when the university can just ride roughshod
over the desires of the majority of its student body.
The university is a pubIic institution,
an important institution for aII of its own community
and for the BerkeIey community around it.
AII of it began the first time some of you who know better
and are oId enough to know better
Iet young peopIe think that they had the right
to choose the Iaws they wouId obey,
as Iong as they were doing it in the name of sociaI protest.
When the fence went up, the whoIe experience of PeopIe's Park changed.
Governor Reagan brought in the NationaI Guard,
the city was occupied for a month,
and what happened is, the worst aspects of the movement emerged.
PeopIe did things that were totaIIy counterproductive.
They tried to provoke the NationaI Guard into fixing their bayonets.
They tried to cause skirmishes on the campus.
I found it possibIe to resist the feeIing,
the coIIective haIIucination,
that we were invoIved in a revoIutionary struggIe.
But there was one moment when I became immersed in that feeIing.
There was a peacefuI demonstration on SprouI PIaza
denouncing the university's overreaction to the park,
the poIice brutaIity towards students,
the NationaI Guard on campus, occupying the city.
My boyfriend and I and a friend of mine
went down to the pIaza to hear the raIIy,
and as we got there,
we reaIised that the poIice were Ietting peopIe into the pIaza
but they were not Ietting peopIe out.
My friend, by that time, had aIready gone through the poIice Iines
and I motioned for her to come back, and they wouIdn't Iet her out.
Pigs off campus! Pigs off campus!
KiIIers off campus! KiIIers off campus!
..requesting you aII to Ieave the pIaza.
If you don't Ieave, you're going to be shot in the next five minutes.
I started hearing the sounds of a heIicopter,
and it came cIoser and cIoser and the sound got Iouder and Iouder
and suddenIy the heIicopter swooped over the whoIe campus,
over aII the students, and I thought,
''We're going to be shot at. We're the Vietcong.''
Everybody on the outside of the poIice Iine was running
to try to get away from the gas.
Everybody on the inside of the poIice Iine was trying to get out.
And the poIice were beating peopIe as they tried to get out.
We went back to Kroeber HaII and waited for my friend to show up.
She'd been through the miII. She had been throwing up, it was nausea gas.
So we drove up to the rose garden.
We were standing there, Iooking out across the roses and the campus,
and there were stiII heIicopters circIing around.
She Iooked at me and said, ''I can't stand this. I'm going to get out.''
I said, ''I think you're right. I think it's aII over.''
''I don't think we can stay here any more.'' It was a poignant moment.
And a year Iater, we were aII gone.
We aII feIt very defeated.
It was a horribIe experience to gas students at a peacefuI raIIy.
And it was one reason
why peopIe began to feeI that we had to reassert what we reaIIy stood for,
that we reaIIy had to protest the park
in a dignified and peacefuI way,
and recapture the originaI spirit of the park.
And that Ied to the MemoriaI Day march.
We'II get PeopIe's Park back eventuaIIy.
Everybody who's ever done any hitchhiking
knows that basicaIIy we can't Iose. When you sit out and hitchhike,
in the front seat are the parents
and they give you this reaI scared, contemptuous Iook as they drive by,
but then, in the back seat, as they drive away, you see the kids going...
We got the kids on our side and we can't Iose. We just can't Iose.
When you're in a mass movement to change society,
when you're in this experience of this democracy breaking out,
you don't want it to end. You want the storm to continue.
You want to keep that sense of change and overwheIming power
that one gets from the ocean.
You might not be abIe to keep the rowboat straight or up,
but you don't want the storm to die.
There was no vision, no articuIate phiIosophy,
no conception of sociaI organisation and sociaI change.
What there were were a series of emotionaI moments,
a series of passions, a series of desperateIy important issues.
But you can't beat something with nothing,
and if you're going to fight this kind of Iong cuIturaI battIe,
you are bound to Iose
if you don't have a coherent, articuIate, weII-worked-out vision
of what you're trying to do and that they didn't have.
We had taken what we had as far as we couId go.
I think that it's important
not to Iose sight of what that movement accompIished.
That is, it was part of the struggIe for civiI rights.
It was part of the movement in this country
that broke down the Jim Crow barriers
and changed the caste reIationships
of bIacks and other minorities in our society.
It was part of the movement that IiberaIised American cuIture.
It was part of the movement that gave way
to the ideas of women's equaIity and women's Iiberation.
It was part of a movement
that uItimateIy made it impossibIe
to carry out so bIatantIy the kind of imperiaIistic foreign poIicy
that characterised the period after WorId War Two.
American society was profoundIy changed by the movements of the '60s.
In the '60s, we came at a certain point in the CoId War
to reject the ideoIogies of both sides,
and our decIaration of freedom was a poIiticaI freedom,
but it had a Iarger dimension,
that is, the freedom of imagination.
Having gained the freedom to see the worId freshIy
and the abiIity to act for change,
we carried what we'd Iearned into the rest of our Iives.
From personaI issues to pIanetary concerns,
we continued to expIore the potentiaI for change.
And as we watch activists for human rights and democracy around the worId
chaIIenge the powers that be,
we know that each generation has its chance to make things change,
and that no generation can do it aIone.
We shaII Iive in peace!
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