The FSM

In September of 1964 I drove from the Palos Verdes peninsula to Berkeley to visit Susan Gilman. She was taking classes at the university, so I ended up killing time near Sather Gate. There, about noon, I saw the campus police arrest a dude named Jack Weinberg, who was definitely guilty of attempting to raise funds for CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality. Political fund-raising was forbidden on campus. 

I was present accidentally.

Weinberg went limp in protest, and the constabulary lugged him over to a black and white they had parked in the quad. They put him in the back seat. Jack Weinberg was, by the way, the young man who had invented the slogan about not trusting anyone over thirty. 

THE FREE SPEECH MOVEMENT

I watched. I didn't know what was happening, but a huge crowd immediately surrounded the police car. Soon a student named Mario Savio was standing on top of the black and white, addressing the other students. That struck me as interesting. What he was demanding was the release of Weinberg and free speech (including political speech) on the campus. Opposing these demands was the president of the University of California system, Clark Kerr, the father of the current Warriors basketball coach. 

Kerr and others met that day with representatives of the students and agreed to change the rules. 

Today, 56 years and many protests later, the American system remains in place. We remain an oligarchy with significant democratic aspects. The rich have gotten richer. We have army bases in fifty countries. But consider some changes since 1964.  

Today people of color vote in the South. There are women in the senate. In California it is no longer illegal for a man in a bar to ask another man out. It is no longer illegal to get an abortion or buy weed. A woman who needs a credit card no longer has to ask a man to sign on as her sponsor. 

Protests often fail. Protests will not topple Wall Street. But direct action helps at times. The system will make modest changes if enough people act. Actions matter.