Review of Berkeley in the Sixties (1990) by Ike C — 29 Aug 2007

What began as a free speech movement on campus amongst a predominately white and priveleged student body somehow became integrated with the larger social upheaval that was going on in the working classes of america, and then mostly crumbled for a variety of internal and external reasons.

the film does well to capture the time period and give an insider perspective on student organizing that can't really be found in many films, so it sort of piqued my interest as a student activist, as it should for anyone else who is into that sort of thing.

I visited berkeley for the first time not long after seeing this film and it felt like a totally different universe compared to what it was back then. I was kicked out of people's park for being there too late at night (god forbid I make contact with the homeless) and then fined a bunch of money for being a non-student in a "students-only area", even when I wasn't using any of the facilities or anything.

Most of the students were more concerned with typical college fare than the state of the world... not to say that's an incredibly awful thing, it's just not the berkeley it once was. It was sort of a humbling introduction to say the least.

Some of the later events in this film hint to how the UC system was systematically de-radicalized in the Reagan era. Still, there is hope for change nearly fifty years later. let's not mess it up.