By: Lucas Fink By: Lucas Fink | August 12, 2022 | People, Lifestyle, Politics, Culture, Celebrity, Local, Community,
Like any proper college town, Berkeley bursts with coffee spots of all stripes. From off-campus board game cafes to on-campus Greek cafes offering paninis and dirty chais, Berkeley is truly a paradise for snobby coffee connoisseurs, obnoxious food/lifestyle vloggers, and procrastinating students alike. Once locale, though, stands above the rest in regards to both its popularity and historical significance.
The Free Speech Movement Cafe rests on prime real estate in the pulsing heart of the U.C. Berkeley campus - occupying the 3rd floor of Moffitt, Berkeley’s undergraduate library - and has since its 2000 opening become a student and faculty favorite thanks to its solidly strong espressos, protein-dense breakfast sandwiches, and picturesque outdoor seating. From afar, FSM Cafe appears rather indistinct, the exposed concrete and austere Brutalist architecture lending the building an air of modern callousness as opposed to socio-historical import.
In short, one wouldn’t guess the cafe was constructed to honor a movement and figure now central to the university’s (professed) ethos of forward-thinking politics and free and open discourse.
See also: How Berkeley's Third World Liberation Front Inspired A Relevant Fight For Academic Equity
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If you step closer, though, the pieces fall into place. Several bulletin boards adjacent to the cafe’s entrance showcase the front pages of the daily newspaper for various major cities around the globe, and museum-like plaques with mini-biographies on Mario Savio and brief histories of the Free Speech Movement adorn the interior. Who was Mario Savio? What was the Free Speech Movement? Did they just say they’re out of oat milk?
Mario Savio was born to a blue collar Catholic family in Queens, New York, and transferred from Queens College to U.C. Berkeley in 1963 to study philosophy. While Savio always harbored activist inclinations and anti-establishment sentiments, the 1964 summer he spent in Mississippi helping register Black voters cemented his political fervor.
The movement began upon Dean of Students Katherine Towle’s announcement prohibiting tabling on Sproul Plaza as well as any form of advocating for “off-campus political activity”. Sproul Plaza was, up to that point, a bastion for precisely those activities which Towle and the UC banned with that announcement. Predictably, then, the student body was far from content, and so began a month-long period of failed negotiations, sit-ins, and many student suspensions.
Tensions reached a fever pitch on October 1st, 1964 when graduate student Jack Weinberg was arrested for tabling peacefully on Sproul in defiance of Towle’s order. That same day, hundreds of students flocked to the plaza and surrounded the police car in which Weinberg was being held. For the next 36 hours, protestors give Weinberg food and water through the window of the police car while Mario Savio - standing on top of the car - demands his immediate release and that the UC cease the criminalization of on-campus political activity. After a tense day and a half, UC president Clark Kerr agrees to release Weinberg with the compromise that the students end their occupation of Sproul. Savio encourages the crowd to agree to the terms, and they do so.
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Savio and his fellow students, well aware the battle was far from over (Towle’s order still stood intact), coalesced and formally anointed themselves the Free Speech Movement on October 5th, 1964.
Despite repeated negotiations and demonstrations from Savio and the FSM, the university remained stalwart in their resistance to progress for the next month. On December 2nd, 1964, Savio ascended the Sproul Hall steps and delivered the now famed speech for which he and the movement became known; Joan Baez performed on the steps following his rousing oration.
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A bitter stalemate ensued for the next 6 days during which Savio and his many allies occupied Sproul Hall, the UC made mass arrests, and a student strike resulted in class cancellations.
Finally, after over 2 months, the Academic Senate voted on December 8th to endorse the FSM’s core demand that the UC cease regulating the content of on-campus political activity, allowing the university jurisdiction solely over the form, time, and place of said activity. After a follow-up agreement from the UC Board of Regents that the university will uphold protections guaranteed by the 1st Amendment, the many students and faculty of the FSM could finally repent and rejoice. U.C. Berkeley’s actions set a precedent which, over the next few years, most other U.S. college campuses follow.
Savio died from a heart attack in 1996 at age 53. He was by that time a beloved philosophy and math instructor at Sonoma State University.
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Do students cramming for exams while sipping a matcha latte from FSM Cafe now take for granted the freedoms for which Savio and the movement had to fight in the 60s? Fortunately, they don’t. Current students and Berkeley residents are now, utilizing the same tools Savio marshaled, rallying against the university’s attempt to raze People’s Park - the storied gathering space and countercultural sanctuary which ignited conflict in the 60s and 70s when the university tried to do the exact same thing they’re now trying. Thankfully, it seems students are ready to teach the university the same lesson, however many times it needs to hear it.
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Photography by: Bettmann/Getty Images