Will Occupy find its voice?
A Crosscut reporter who covered the Berkeley drama of Dec. 2, 1964, that made Mario Savio a leader of a similar movement wonders about the prospects for today's activist movement.
Every year about this time, in California, they honor the founder of the Occupy Movement and his electrifying speech of 47 years ago. The Mario Savio Memorial Lecture happens on the steps of Sproul Hall at the University of California in Berkeley, where Savio incited students to take over the center of University authority on Dec. 2, 1964.
There are cross-generational links between what was born in Berkeley half a century ago and what’s happening today in Seattle, Portland and the rest of the country. The parallels are not perfect, but there are vital similarities.
“Occupying” was all about jobs and equity then, as it is today. The Berkeley movement grew out of the civil rights movement. During the year before Savio led the Sproul Hall occupation, students and other Bay Area activists had occupied a hotel, a drive-in restaurant, a supermarket grocery, and a newspaper, because their owners had refused to hire African-Americans.
The chaos on campus began two months before the Sproul Hall action. Silly and futile as it seems today, the University Board of Regents had directed Chancellor Clark Kerr to prohibit political speech, political signs, or leaflets on campus. University police arrested a student, Jack Weinberg, for leafleting at the campus gate on behalf of the Congress for Racial Equality, a nationwide organization demanding equal voting rights and job opportunities for blacks and whites.
Two police officers put Weinberg in a patrol car and started to move him across campus. A crowd of students surrounded the car, blocked it, and sat down. Savio climbed onto the roof with a bullhorn and urged his audience to stay where they were until authorities rescinded the arrest. They held the car, with the two policemen and Weinberg inside, for 32 hours.
The late news cameraman Paul Meeks and I covered the standoff for KNXT in Los Angeles, which fed the film to the CBS Network. (There's a photo from that event on a Berkeley publication's web site — scroll down to find the photo of Savio; I'm the one holding a microphone in front of him.) Our black and white television film was grainy and the action was bumpy, but millions watched. Only a year earlier, the network had lengthened its CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, from 15 minutes to half an hour. The added news time allowed what in TV were considered long-form stories, with representative bits of revolutionary rhetoric from the occupiers.
Radical and brazen as he was, Savio believed in civility. Look closely at the photo on the Berkeley site and you’ll notice that he had removed his shoes to avoid marking the police car. Throughout the sit-in, occupiers shared sandwiches with the police and their prisoner, Weinberg. They organized a “surround” area with male students to give the police and Weinberg some privacy during bladder breaks. The day passed, and a night, and part of the next day, and Savio announced an agreement with Chancellor Kerr. Weinberg would be booked and released without charge. Savio urged his listeners to go home quietly, and they did.
As the Free Speech Movement found its voice, thousands around the country took to the streets, fed up with what they perceived as a corrupt political-economic system that denied African-Americans their constitutional rights. They saw the country going ever deeper into a needless war in Vietnam. They found American style capitalism unfair and undemocratic. Some were uncertain of their goals and some joined the action for the fun of raising hell. But they helped end racial segregation and helped stop an impossible war.
It seems inevitable that governments pump energy into such causes by trying forcibly to repress them. The more the authorities crack down, the more the movement gains energy and traction. In 1969, a few years after Savio's speech, it was Gov. Ronald Reagan tear-gassing the University campus and adjacent Berkeley neighborhoods, including a hospital where the gas entered the air-conditioning system. This year it’s Seattle police pepper spraying an 84-year-old woman in the face; officers at the University of California-Davis spraying seated demonstrators; New York City police forcibly preventing journalists from photographing police actions at Zucotti Park.
Savio, in his Dec. 2, 1964, speech, which was delivered with the administration still refusing to lift its ban on political activity, described the University of California as a machine and incited the crowd of some 4,000 to “put your bodies upon the gears, and upon the wheels … and you’ve got to make it stop!”
The crowd moved into the building, past a handful of campus police, to occupy the second floor nerve center of the campus. Trying to hold the building, police lost their footing and wrestled with occupiers on the floor. It was loud, angry, and chaotic. Meeks and I were in the middle of it and so far as we could see, no one pulled a gun or swung a club, or deliberately destroyed anything.
However, reports reaching then-Gov. Pat Brown said students were trashing the office. Brown called in the California Highway Patrol. Some 730 were arrested, including Savio. They were released the following day. None of us who were there could have guessed what the next few years would bring.
By 1968 — historian Mark Kurlansky calls it “The Year that Rocked the World” — the rebellion-repression cycle had spun into violent clashes on campuses all across the world. In 1969, Berkeley activists occupied a vacant lot owned by the University, planted trees and named it “People’s Park.” Berkeley Police and Alameda County Sheriff’s officers used tear gas and shotguns to clear the area, killing an unarmed spectator with a shotgun blast.
By then, Savio had quit the Free Speech Movement, citing his disappointment over a growing separation between the FSM leadership and the students themselves. He won a scholarship to Oxford, married, divorced, married again, and moved to Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, to teach mathematics and physics at a local college. He died from a heart attack in 1996, at the age of 53.
Somewhere within its ranks, the Occupy Movement had better find a Mario Savio -- a brilliant young person with an unyielding passion for fairness and a superb command of the language, to incite and inspire non-violent change. It seems certain to happen, but it will take time, which the movement may not have. Sadly, public opinion in our time seems to form and vanish within a day or two of tweeting, Facebooking, and cable news headlines. Go a week without a spectacular event and you risk seeming no longer to be here.
Savio and his movement had time to develop. He and his companions did not parachute into Berkeley fully armored with fearlessness, organizing talent, and blazing rhetoric. They had paid their dues, formed their vision, and grown their nerve in the very dangerous — life-threateningly dangerous — voting rights struggles of Mississippi during the two summers before the nation began watching occupiers on the evening news.
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Comments:
Posted Thu, Dec 1, 9:39 a.m. Inappropriate
The fun thing about the 60s is that it is a Magic Mirror. Everyone gets to see what they want to see. According to the standard liberal individualistic calculus (expressed above) nothing happens on a social level until the formless inchoate ferment is shaped by the emergence of a leader. The intelligence of the leader is what creates and defines the movement.
But on the other end of the continuum are those of us who tend to see leaders as fungible, almost accidental phenomena. According to Woofer's Wave Theory of Social Change we are about to experience the Third Wave of a process that began in the mid-50s. At that time a few writers and artists (Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, et al) in a few urban centers (SF, NY, LA) declared symbolic war on the Old Order. They were a mere handful -- perhaps no more than a few hundred -- and came to be identified as the Beat Generation. The Old Order pushed back and easily submerged this First Wave.
Scroll down to the mid-60s and a Second Wave emerged, first riding the idealism of the civil rights movement and then the despair of the protests against the Vietnam War. This movement was more complex and much larger, with the cultural component eventually overwhelming the political (symbolized by Elder Ginsberg giving Jerry Rubin a hit of acid at the Be-In held in Golden Gate Park).
The Second Wave encompassed millions of people and played out over more than a decade before being finally rebuffed by the Reagan Counter-revolution. It also suffered fatally from the inherent weakness of failing to establish an economic base. Now comes the first inkling of the Third Wave. It will be focused specifically on economic power and, according to the progression of development, most likely huge enough to finally push the Old Order over the cliff.
Within this context leaders come and go -- largely on their ability to tune into the underlying dominant impulse and articulate its rationale at some key point in time. But the ultimate matrix of historical reality is the subterranean flow of group consciousness; leadership is secondary and interchangeable. Life on this planet has its own internal dynamic, one which the Old Order rejects and violates on a systemic basis. So the Old Order eventually will pass away. It's only a question of when. Plans and leaders can certainly smooth the path of transition but they are not fundamental requirements for change of this magnitude to occur.
Posted Thu, Dec 1, 9:55 a.m. Inappropriate
Todays Kids grew up being rewarded just for showing up; trophy's, uniforms with their names on them, everybody put on first-string team(if not the league was expanded to make sure everyone was playing), happy meals for winners and losers. Those kids have grown up and now are involved with Occupy Seattle. And they are doing what they have been taught, just show up. Actually getting the ball across the goal line is foreign. There is no understanding of the primacy of winning or in this case making a statement. i talk to small business owners who all say the same thing; the young adults expect to get a paycheck simply for showing up. Demanding work from them, specific tasks or list of tasks creates hurt feelings. Being called out on lack of achievement produces tears, usually more frequently from the boys. Stopping work to socialize or some other personal moment like texting is constant. So what we see is the Occupy movement doing the best they know how; showing up, then texting their
friends while waiting for the media to show them on camera.
Posted Thu, Dec 1, 10:10 a.m. Inappropriate
interesting historical piece. appropriate to the times. a few thoughts come to mind both historical and generational. Occupy has morphed into a Global protest movement. yet it is also contextual. local dynamics give rise to unique forms. the nature of 21st century society is globalized, so it must reflect that as well. thus the movement must enable a range of potential expressions, rather than become a reflection of charismatic leadership with a singular, unifying vision. Occupy is a platform. it operates in much the way Google operates. It puts out a basic working platform, allows autonomous entities to build off the platform, allow for customization and modification, etc. its not so much a leaderless movement as that it enables leaders to emerge. everyone is a potential leader.
The Occupy movement reflects a younger generations values and understanding of the world. today younger people don't embrace the ideology of "autonomous individualism"--the perception that success and failure is the product of individual labor, and in no way influenced by social support structures. Younger generations are less apt to embrace this ideology because it doesn't reflect their reality; Gen X will earn less than their parents on the whole, as will Millennials. Many of the support structures provided to previous generations have not been maintained, but instead been used as vehicles for individual profit. This movement is less about the individual and more about the social. The Occupy movement still must come to terms with expectations born of societies increasing reliance on debt. but they seem more apt to do so constructively than the current network of elected and unelected leaders chasing their tales in an attempt to maintain the facade of business as usual.
Posted Thu, Dec 1, 10:44 a.m. Inappropriate
The movement doesn't have a voice?
http://theseattlediaries.blogspot.com/
Posted Thu, Dec 1, 10:56 a.m. Inappropriate
Woofer:
I think you have described the real dynamics of large scale social change much better than those fixated on superheroes who magically appear and then galvanize and lead the masses. The Bastille would have been stormed whether it was a lowly guttersnipe or a poet who articulated that urge and historical inevitability.
But I think you dismiss the outcome of the second wave to easily when you characterize it as being rebuffed by the Reagan counter-revolution. There were many far reaching changes in social relations that younger people now take for granted and assume were always so. The shared view that racial and gender equality is the way things should be/are is the most obvious. More to the point, those changes set the stage for zeroing in on the next impediment to real human progress (not to be confused with cancerous consumerism and materialism), economic inequality.
I expect that with Occupy we'll see all of the leadership cycles that we saw with the second wave repeated. Leaders will appear who are brilliant and fall victim to their egos. Leaders will appear who have no real following but are elevated by the media. We'll see Robespierres, Haydens, Newtons, Dellingers - the full gamut of realized and unrealized human potential.
The media, being a creature of the current, will not be able to see these individuals as expressions of a wave of social change and will view them as "leaders" instead of "expressions of the times." But it will be interesting.
Posted Thu, Dec 1, 12:34 p.m. Inappropriate
The social change is already happening. My kids think nothing is strange about being openly gay/lesbians. They wonder what the fuss is all about with gay marriage. A few more dying seniors and that change will happen at the polls.
The Occupy movement has correctly identified the culprits for our current crisis. They don't fully understand the how, but they know the who. And since the 'who' are continuing to try and impoverish the rest of us, the mass of people will also eventually see the light.
The reign of corporations running government has also had the seeds of their destruction sown. The bestowing of "personhood" to corporations has passed the point of ridiculousness and the problems associated with it are also becoming obvious to all of us. Sooner or later there will be an amendment to the constitution to remove this.
Oh yeah, climate warmer deniers, who gives a care what they think? The science is clear and it's warming. The age of fossil fuels is ending and we are going to have to adjust. Whether there is a mass die off due to crop loss is not something I want but is within the range of possible futures. But clearly a reorganization of cities is highly likely unless science comes up with a better way to generate energy to acquire food.
Posted Thu, Dec 1, 12:38 p.m. Inappropriate
Odd headline. The one thing we know for sure about the Occupy movement is that it has a strong, clear, and broad voice. As an old new leftist who has lamented the last 30 years of conservative-caused decline and lack of strong voice in opposition, I heartily welcome this dynamic and hopeful movement.
Posted Thu, Dec 1, 10:56 p.m. Inappropriate
Steve, thanks for your comments. I didn't mean to imply that the interstitial withdrawal between waves takes us back to the starting point. Clearly it does not, in the many ways that you cited. It's more the "take two steps up the hill, then slide back one" model. Or perhaps more accurately an upward spiral -- the path circles back to a point parallel to its beginning but on a higher level.
I also expect that the mistakes made this time will not be the same as before -- less hubris and absolute certainty, more pragmatic experimentation and tolerance. There will be a greater maturity borne of hard lessons, plus a sobering and urgent sense of the extreme risks attendant to failure. In other words, not nearly so much fun as last time. We're no longer cavorting carefree in the Garden of Eden.
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