Free Speech Movement Digital Archive

Logic Bomb writes: "Freedom of speech comes up quite a bit on Slashdot. How would you like to browse through a massive historical record of another modern free speech movment? According to an article from the San Francisco Chronicle, the archive located at UC Berkeley of records related to the 1964 Free Speech Movement has been digitized in its entirety and is available on the web for anyone to look at. It comes to over 35,000 pages of documents, not to mention digitized version of fliers and photographs. Much of the Slashdot readership, including myself, was born long after this amazing period in history ended. Archives such as this one allow those currently fighting for free speech to make connections to the past and even garner ideas to reuse. Read the article, then browse the archive."

Comments

Re:woohoo!

[bonzoesc]

Too bad the requirement that your speech be reasonably correct if not opinionated disqualifies you.

Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate

Try to get a broad view of history.

[Tech187]

It's fine to explore this era of history, and great that Berkeley has done a comprehensive job of covering one side of the story so well. But it's important to remember there are always two sides of the issue. For a point of view from someone who was on the side of the 'rebels' during this period, but who has had a lot of second thoughts, read some of these well thought out perspectives on the history of this movement. I was a 'student radical' at the U of Minnesota in the late 70's. I even called the U of M Board of Regents 'Motherfuckers' once on a bullhorn. I've changed my opinion, and now think I was a damn fool back then. Make sure you look at both sides and don't get involved in foolish adventurism.

Re:Try to get a broad view of history.

[Tech187]

Horowizt delivers a message completely free of Racism. The racists these days are the people trying to garner special privledges and renumeration for certain people based on their race.

Take off your blinders. Get a clue.

Re:Try to get a broad view of history.

[groove10]

Blinders? It is you my friend who is blind to the plight of African Americans and other minority groups. Do you think theere is equality in this country? Take your blinders off and look around. How many blacks do you see working in your IT department at whatever company you work for? Not very many I bet. You should think about the reasons why this has occured.

Re:Try to get a broad view of history.

[blair1q]

The beginning of the FSM at Berkeley was righteous.

But it quickly turned into a faddish, party-like, power-mad atmosphere.

Mario Savio and the people he led were protesting a legitimate problem caused by the Berkeley administration.

By the time it was being copied on campuses across America, it had become the "make up an excuse to go protest, get high, get laid, get your jollies" movement. A combination of hero worship, beatnik ethics, and youthful experimentation run amok.

It might have been fun, but it wasn't very constructive.

But then, maybe we should bring it back, because college students now riot when the women's basketball team loses a national championship game. They're obviously not being distracted well enough by chemicals, politics, and the acquisition of knowledge, to keep them from being mobbish and violent for completely stupid reasons...

--Blair
"Four bored in O-hi-o."

Re:Try to get a broad view of history.

[blair1q]

someone goes to Purdue...

I ruled out Purdue when they recruited me to be a Teaching Assistant...while I was in high school...

--Blair

Another interesting link

[Tiroth]

The FSM veterans maintain their own extensive Web site at www.fsm-a.org/.

Freedom of speech

[Apotsy]

The "free speech movement"? Yes, free speech started in Berkeley in the 1960s. Nobody ever talked about it before then.

And, as for those people who pushed to have freedom of speech written into the US Constitution in the late 1700s, who's heard of 'em?

berkeley

[Anonymous Admin]

hrmmmmm. berkeley, unix, free speech, lsd think they may be somehow related?

Looking for pictures... failing

[DoorFrame]

I've been poking around that site and I'm having trouble figuring out how to get to any photographs on scanned images. It seemed at first like it would be easy, but I seem to be failing miserably. Anyone have any success finding anything graphical?

--

Re:Looking for pictures... failing

[DoorFrame]

Hmm, ok. I found this. Good, but I want more. Are photographs really too much to ask for?

--

Panty raid as expression of free speech?

[DoorFrame]

Don't really know, but I just found this picture in the archive with the caption: "Barrington Hall Panty Raiders". Free speech never felt so good.

--

free speech as Berkeley is a joke

[RussP]

So-called free speech at Berkeley is a joke. Sure, you can say whatever you want, as long as your views are squarely to the left. Otherwise you get shouted down and threatened. Ask David Horowitz, a former prominent Berkeley sixties radical who is now an articulate conservative writer. He wrote a now-famous ad for the Berkeley paper on why reparations for slavery are a bad idea. Although his views are shared by something like 80% of the public, he was labeled a racist bigot by the newspaper, which was pressured into formally apologizing for the ad. It's a new McCarthyism, folks, and it's coming from the left this time.

Horowitz recently spoke at Berkeley (his alma mater), where the administration at first refused to guarantee his physical security despite threats of violence. At the event, a large group of protesters chanted communist slogans through a bullhorn (even Al Gore and Ralph Nader are too far to the right for them) and denounced Horowitz as a bigot. Find out what is going on in our so-called institutions of higher learning, folks. It is nothing short of chilling.

Re:free speech as Berkeley is a joke

[electricmonk]

The local authoritarian left-wing cult, the Spartacist League, hold a protest outside where they chant their usual bullshit. The Sparts are NOT a group that any sensible person supports. Other left groups avoid them like the plague.

LOL, they are still around!?

I may not even be old enough to be in college yet (I'm 16), but I remember my World History teacher (who went to Yale in the late 70's) telling my class a story about how one day, someone from their group came up to his door in an attempt at recruiting him. He described them as basically believing in the "workers" violently overthrowing authority by killing all those who are in charge. Kinda like Communists but more violent. Anyway, his roommate happened to be a Pol Sci major who, after being called to the door by my teacher, met with the woman and tore down, one by one, the woman's political ideals and claims. My teacher acutally thought it was kind of amusing. You're absolutely right, those people are part of the lunatic fringe.

Anyway, that's my $0.02.

Congratulations, you have been trolled

[localroger]

And rather cleverly, too. The original AC is lampooning the style of those pro-capitalism fanatics who have made such a religion out of the Law of Supply and Demand that they find anything outside of Capitalism unthinkably horrible and evil, no matter how reasonable or mild it might be.

He is also lampooning the current paranoia of the right wing which thinks the current mild criticisms launched (generally on op-ed pages and at protests) at their ideas are somehow comparable to the centuries-long armed suppression of Left thought, and that if these alien ideas triumph it will somehow mean the End of the World As We Know It (tm).