October 1: The Free Speech Movement

The Berkeley Free Speech Movement began on this date in 1964 when Jack Weinberg, an alumnus of the University of California at Berkeley, was arrested for violating new campus rules forbidding solicitation for “off-campus political and social action.” Weinberg, who had a long record of civil rights activism, went limp and was carried to a cop car, but then Mario Savio (not Jewish) climbed atop the car and aroused his fellow students to protest. They surrounded the car, deflated its tires, and kept it there for 32 hours. Among the Jewish leaders of the student protest movement that emerged were Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, and Art and Jackie Goldberg (a brother and sister; she went on to be a founder of the LGBT Caucus of the California State Legislature). Months later, the new acting chancellor of the university, Martin Meyerson, restored the right of students to organize on campus — and the Free Speech Movement morphed into the Vietnam Day Committee, led by Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, and Stew Albert, among others.

“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 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.” —Mario Savio