Documentary Excerpt Featuring Mario Savio (1968)

[Man]: Why fight for peace? [Narrator]: In the last eight years, a movement has grown up in America to dramatize the key issues of the 1960s, Vietnam and racism. In the public minds, these young people were associated with endless demonstrations, drugs, communism, and a blade with violence. These demonstrators reflected a national sense of unease that was brought to a climax by the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King. The Black Ghettos exploded in many cities, and more than 90,000 troops and police were deployed to restore order. The racial violence was preceded by the news of Johnson's refusal to run again for president and by the announcement of talks with North Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands applauded the peace moves and publicly mourned the late Dr. King. Members of anti-war and Black power movements pointed to what they call the hypocrisy of America and promised to continue the struggle for peace and racial justice that began years before. The movement, as they call it, began as a protest by middle-class youth who believed that their moral outrage was enough to force the integration of Mississippi.

A law was passed, but the activists saw a little change in the quality of Negroes' lives. The civil rights movement collapsed, and the activists turned their energy to anti-war protests and Black power. They claimed that they were now revolutionary, challenging the very axioms of American society. This film is about three veterans of Mississippi who have become key spokesmen for the new opposition activities. It traces their thought and action over the past year as they see themselves moving from demonstrations to political organizing. Stokely Carmichael speaks for Black power, David Harris for the nonviolent draft resistance, and Mario Sabio for the new radical politics. [Music] Who am I? Stand and wonder to wait. While the wheels of faith slowly grind my life away. Who am I?

There were some things that I loved one time, but the dreams are gone, that I thought were mine and hidden tears That once could fall now, burn inside at the fault of all. Years of waste, years of crime. [Narrator]: In 1964, Mario Savio returned from Mississippi to the Berkeley campus where he became the nation's most publicized descender. As leader of the free speech movement, Sabio articulated student demands to end restrictions on political activity and for educational reform. To force University of California President Clark Kerr to accept the demands, Sabio led some 800 students into the administration building for a sit-in. [Savio]: I asked you to consider if this is affirmed and if the Board of Regents are the Board of Directors and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I tell you something the faculty are a bunch of employees and where the raw materials, but we're a bunch of raw materials that don't mean to be have any process upon us, don't mean to be made into any product, don't mean don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the university, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone, or you would be.

[Narrator]: Sabio and his wife Suzanne were among the 800 arrested, Mario received the longest sentence four months in prison. [Savio]: When I'm involved in some political activity, oh, I really enjoy it and I throw myself into it, writing leaflets, speeches. It's a job to get done. But when I contemplate going into some other such activity, I realize that I hate politics in a very deep way. It really is an intrusion on other things that I'd like to do. I'd like to go back to school very much. We'd like to have ourselves a little cottage where we're sort of a little romantic and I guess a point maybe we'd like to raise some flowers and vegetables. It just isn't time.

With the oppression of Negroes in America and with the rest of us in more subtle ways and of Vietnamese, and of the people in other foreign countries who are the victims of the American empire, we really find that our consciences couldn't quite bear our receding into private life, personally more fulfilling lives if we could only forget the suffering people on whom we turned our backs. [Suzanne]: We have discussions every day about the war and about national politics... [Savio]: And it's very difficult not to think of the war. It's the biggest topic of conversation that we have every day. We turn on the radio, there's the war, the newspapers and there's the war. When we see people having fun all around us, having their barbecues going to the beach, then maybe it's hardest not to think of a war. It seems to me that it should be impossible to be a citizen of a country at war and be able to go to the movies. [Music] And now my friend, we meet again.