Today in Labor History October 1, 1964: The Free Speech Movement began on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, when activist Jack Weinberg was arrested for refusing to show his identification to the campus police while standing at an illegal political literature table. Thousands of students spontaneously surrounded the police car, which remained there for 32 hours, with Weinberg inside. Protesters used the car as a speaker's podium. The Free Speech Movement lasted for two years and was the first mass act of civil disobedience on an American college campus in the 1960s. Students were fighting for, and won, the right to have public political activities on campus, particularly in support of the Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam War Movements.
Famous for the Free Speech fight of the 1960s, UC Berkeley was also one of the birthplaces of the disability rights movement. If you haven’t seen the film Crip Camp yet, you should. It does a fantastic job portraying the history of this important civil rights movement.
Yet, today, the university is succumbing to pressure from the Trump administration and voluntarily handing over the names of over 150 professors and student for alleged antisemitism (i.e., for criticizing the Israeli Genocide in Gaza, or for showing solidarity with Palestine). Consequently, these individuals face job loss, expulsion (if they are students), doxxing by Zionist thugs, and even death threats.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #FreeSpeech #berkeley #police #MarioSavio #antiwar #vietnam #CivilRights #student #protest #CivilDisobedience #ableism #disability #genocide #gaza #censorship
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