Activism: Remembering Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement

Louise Yarnell’s depiction of the world of the ’64 Free Speech Movement (UC Berkeley Activists of ’64 Return to Takeover Site,” Dec. 4) as one where even the slightest hint of nonconformity could bring taunts of “Commie” or “Red” is unmitigated hogwash. Certainly those nonconformists who actually endorsed Communism and socialism as the wave of the future earned those comments. But there were many different forms of nonconformity in those days and the catcalls Yarnell describes were generally reserved for those who deserved them.

Amusingly, the nonconformists did change much of the way today’s America views society. Among other things, it’s hard to stand out as a nonconformist in today’s immediate world where--as Democrat Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan points out--we have defined “deviancy down.”

And certainly it is wondrous, indeed, to watch the tenured professors who led the countrywide “Free Speech” Movement impose, in today’s world, the most restrictive and stifling of speech codes on our university campuses in the name of “political correctness.” But then the legacy of Mario Savio and his followers is historically one of evolving hypocrisy--Yarnell’s somewhat romanticized vision notwithstanding. These are the same folks, mind you, who accuse conservatives of living in the past while they celebrate what looks increasingly like lifetimes of adolescent self-indulgence misrepresented as “protest” and “activism.”

KIP DELLINGER

Santa Monica