By Paul Krassner

SCENE OF THE CRIME To participate in the 40th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, I flew to Berkeley, the epicenter of political correctness. Ironically, a slogan that became associated with the FSM—"Don't trust anyone over 30"—would today be considered ageist. It was coined by Jack Weinberg, a graduate student at UC-Berkeley who was arrested in Sproul Plaza for handing out leaflets about civil rights, in violation of a campus ban on political activities.
Weinberg was placed in a campus-police car, which was spontaneously surrounded by 3000 students. The vehicle couldn't be driven anywhere, having inadvertently become the centerpiece of a 32-hour protest. Several students climbed on top to speak, first removing their shoes. The roof was soon dented, though demonstrators would later pay to fix the damages. Two months later, 21-year-old philosophy student Mario Savio delivered a passionate plea from the steps in front of Sproul Hall, the administration building.
"There is a time," he told an audience of 4000, "when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."
Nearly 800 students were inspired to occupy Sproul Hall with a sit-in that would resonate on campuses across the country. They were handcuffed and taken away the next day in the largest arrest of students in U.S. history. Timothy Leary once told me, "Such demonstrations play right onto the game boards of the administration and the police alike. The students could shake up the establishment much more if they would just stay in their rooms and change their nervous systems."
"It's not a case of either-or," I argued. "They can protest and explore their 13-billion-cell minds simultaneously."
In fact, during the mass imprisonment, a Bible soaked in an LSD solution easily made its way into the cells. The students just ate those pages up, getting high on Deuteronomy, tripping out on Exodus.
Now, four decades later, there were 3000 people gathered around a campus-police car in Sproul Plaza once again, only this time it was provided by the campus police. A make-shift ramp led to a wooden platform cushioned by foam rubber that organizers placed on top of the car. A photo of Jack Weinberg's face was taped to the rear window. Ê
And although the San Francisco FBI office had once put Mario Savio on the Reserve Index, a secret list of people to be detained without judicial warrant in the event of a national emergency, in 1997, a year after Savio's death, the steps in front of Sproul Hall were named the "Mario Savio Steps."
I guess those are signs of progress. o