Annual Free Speech Day in California: Commemorates Free Speech Movement
The annual Free Speech Day, to be celebrated on October 1, was created by the California Legislature in September 1985 to commemorate the 1964 Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley.
October 1, 1964, is generally regarded as the beginning of the Free Speech Movement. On that day, Jack Weinberg was arrested for violating university rules on off-campus political activities, while other students surrounded the police car, preventing the police from removing him from campus.
The Free Speech Movement was the first major campus protest of the 1960s, and served as the inspiration for anti-Vietnam War protests that began after the U.S. escalated its military involvement in Vietnam in early 1965. Other important dates in the FSM include September 16, 1964, and December 2, 1964, when Mario Savio gave his famous speech denouncing “the machine.” Savio’s speech is considered one of the classic statements of the student political revolt of the 1960s.
Read the resolution: http://btstack.com/BTStackFreeSpeechDay.html
Watch the Free Speech Movement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28aPyBrP0Yc
Learn more: David Lance Goines, The Free Speech Movement: Coming of Age in the 1960s (1993)
Read the biography of Savio: Robert Cohen, Freedom’s Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s (2009)
Learn about the 100 Year fight for free speech in America: Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey Stone, The Free Speech Century (2018)