Free Speech Movement 40th Anniversary Commemoration

FREE SPEECH MOVEMENT CELEBRATES 40TH ANNIVERSARY AT UC BERKELEY OCT. 5-10
Evoking Sproul Plaza Police Car Siege Highlights Patriot Act During Weeklong Event
September 30, 2004 (Berkeley, CA) -- Hundreds of activists from across the country who participated in the 1964 Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the event that inspired protests from Paris to Kent State and opened the floodgates of student political activism. Once jailed for defying the authorities, then honored worldwide, FSM activists are finally being welcomed back by UC Berkeley, where it all began.
With a week's worth of speeches, panels, and workshops, this commemoration will be the largest event ever to focus on the broad range of civil liberties under siege in the United States since the adoption of the Patriot Act.
The high point of the weeklong program will evoke the past during a rally in Sproul Plaza with guest speakers standing on top of a police car. Howard Dean, State Senator Jackie Goldberg, and others will honor the seminal victory of the FSM, and evoke students’ powers to take action, vote, and change the world. A dramatic event will also take place to focus attention on the Patriot Act and its infringement of free speech rights today.
The program includes 42 events, with presentations on the FSM, the black freedom struggle, and new strategies for social change. Panels and workshops will focus on civil liberties online, drug policies, the media, marriage equality, and more. Joining the FSMers will be students from UC Berkeley and other schools, and speakers from the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Center for Cognitive Liberties.
Coordinator Michael Rossman, author of "The Wedding Within The War" and "New Age Blues," and close friend of the FSM’s Mario Savio, who died in 1996, says, “We hope to inspire young activists to go beyond what we achieved. In a time when civil liberties are under attack, the way to commemorate a great victory of free speech is to speak freely about issues of the present.
"Over fifty cities." he adds, "have quietly passed resolutions against the Patriot Act, but we hope to send a signal of freedom across the entire nation.”

The calendar includes the Mario Savio Memorial Lecture by syndicated columnist Molly Ivins; New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh; political satirist Paul Krassner; comedians Scoop Nisker, Karen Ripley, and Stoney Burke; and musicians Ronnie Gilbert, Rachel Garlin, Barbara Dane, the Country Joe Band, and Ozomatli. Workshops and panels are scheduled with speakers Gavin Newsom, Mark Leno, Michael Lerner, Bettina Aptheker, Joan Blades, John Sellers , Annarata Mital, Jeff Perlstein, and Gloria la Riva.

For more information, see http://www.fsm-a.org/. To arrange interviews of FMSers and others, contact Joan Levinson at 510. 526.5075, jonel [at] berkeley.edu, or Sylvia Paull at 510-527-0450, whoisylvia [at] aol.com.