Transcribed Robert Reich’s Mario Savio Memorial Lecture from yesterday:
I’ll be short.
47 years ago, as you know, we were graced with the eloquence and the power of Mario Savio’s words from these steps. And they were words that echoed and ricocheted across America. Words about the importance and centrality of freedom of speech and assembly and freedom of expression and social justice. And those words continue to live on. In fact, the sentiments and words that Mario Savio expressed 47 years ago are relevant, if not more relevant today than they were then. Because today, unlike them, we have a few Supreme Court decisions that have said essentially that money is speech and corporations are people. When you think that money is speech and corporations are people, it becomes extraordinarily important to protect the First Amendment rights of ordinary Americans, of regular citizens, of students, of everybody else that doesn’t have the money and who is not a corporation. I believe if corporations are people, let Georgia and Texas execute them.
The First Amendment right to speech, that is not always convenient. It is not always inexpensive. It is sometimes messy. And because it’s sometimes inconvenient and sometimes expensive and sometimes messy, just like democracy, there is a temptation sometimes to want to contain it, to limit it. But it is more important than it has ever been that we all go out of our way, everyone of us—leaders, politicians, those of us who have authority, and those of us who do not have authority—it becomes doubly important that we honor the First Amendment and that we are willing and make ourselves willing to pay the price of freedom of speech and also indirectly—or, because freedom of speech is so related to democracy—directly the price of a democratic system of government.
In 1964 the issues that Berkeley students wanted to speak up about, the issues that actually underlay this Free Speech Movement, were issues having to do fundamentally with civil rights, the struggle for civil rights, the struggle for voting rights. Also the gathering storm of the Vietnam War and war in Southeast Asia. Also the grinding poverty that America was then experience in our cities and also in rural America. Well as you all know, although we have made some progress, many of these kinds of issues, issues of fundamental social justice, are still very much with us. And for that reason, it is doubly important that our democracy give people the opportunity to speak up about what must be done. Enable our democracy to function as it should function. Not with money. Not simply with privilege. But with the ability of people to join together and make their voices heard.
The issues today that Berkeley students want to speak up about—and I don’t want to be presumptuous, you have different issues. Some of you are extraordinarily dedicated and concerned about rising fees and tuitions so high in fact and coming so readily and quickly that they are making higher education unaffordable, unavailable to so many young people who are otherwise qualified. And that is a valid and deeply valid and important concern. Some of you are concerned also about the increasing concentration of wealth and income in our society. An increasing concentration that has meant that the top 400 richest Americans now own more of America than the bottom 150 million Americans. Now fundamentally—and let me try to connect some of these dots—fundamentally the problem with concentrated income and wealth, and fundamentally the problem with an education system that is no longer available to so many young people, and even a K-12 system that is letting so many people down, the fundamental problem is that we are losing equal opportunity in America. We are losing the moral foundation stone on which this country and our democracy are built.
Now there are some people out there who say we cannot afford education any longer. We cannot afford as a nation to provide social services to the poor. We cannot, some people say, any longer afford as a nation to provide the safety nets for the poor and the infirmed or for people who fall down for no fault of their own. Well how can that be true if we are now richer than we have ever been before? How can that be true that we cannot afford to do all sorts of things that we need to do for our people when we are the richest nation and continue to be the richest nation in the world?
And again, let me connect the dots, because over the last 3 decades, this economy has doubled in sized. But most Americans have not seen much gain. If you adjust for inflation, what you see is the median wage has barely risen. Where did all the money and resources go, class? They went to the top. And look it. Let’s be clear about this. We are not vilifying people because they are rich. The problem here is when so much income and wealth go to the top, political power and influence also go to the top. Particularly when, as I indicated to you, there are no longer any controls on the amount of money spent on politics. And I don’t want to pick on David and Charles Koch. Alright, I will. I mean they are emblematic of the problem. It is not wealth per se, it is irresponsible use of the wealth to undermine our democratic system. And today, unlike the time in which Mario Savio was here and talking—then the typical CEO in America was earning 30 times what the average worker was earning. Today, the typical CEO in America is earning more than 300 times what the average worker is earning. You see, again, the problem has to do with what that does to our democracy. It undermines our democracy. When all that money can come down from the wealthy, from the corporations, when there are no limits to the amount of money that can infect and undermine and corrupt our democracy, then what do we have left? What do we have left?
I want to tell you something. And that is how proud I am to be a member of this wonderful community. Not only is Berkeley, the University of California, Berkeley the best system and institution of public education in the world, but more importantly, it has for years, for decades, dedicated itself to the principles of free expression, of social justice, and of democracy. And implicitly, we understand the connections between all of those points. You must also and in fact I am sure you do, feel in your gut that the Occupy Movement—the Occupy Cal, Occupy Oakland, occupations going on all over this country—are ways in which people are beginning to respond to the crisis of our democracy. And I am so proud of you here today. Your dedication to these principles, your willingness to be patient, your willingness to spend hours in General Assembly, your willingness to put up with what you have already put up with, is already making a huge difference. You’re already succeeding.
Some of you may feel a little bit, “what are we doing here? What exactly is our goal?” I urge you to be patient with yourself. Because with regard to every major social movement of the last half century or more, it started with a sense of moral outrage. Things were wrong. And the actual coalescence of that moral outrage into specific demands or specific changes came later. The moral outrage was the beginning. The days of apathy are over, folks. Once this has begun, it cannot be stopped, and will not be stopped.And one final point, the summer before Mario Savio was here on these steps, he was down in Mississippi registering voters. That was Freedom Summer of 1964. If you can permit me a personal note: because I was always short for my age, and I was always very short—in fact when I was a little boy, I was even shorter—I was always getting beat up. There are always bullies. But you know what I did? I learned at an early age, the way to stop getting beat up is to make alliances with bigger guys who are older than I and also bigger than I was, and they protected me. They were my own protection racket. And one of the boys during the summers that I spent up in the mountains with my grandmother, one of the boys who was a protector of me, older than me, his name was Micky. And I grew very fond of Micky. And in that same summer of 1964, that same Freedom Summer, Micky – his full name was Michael Schwerner – Michael Schwerner and two other civil rights workers were down in Mississippi exactly the same time that Mario Savio was there, they were brutally tortured and murdered by racists who felt that they, my friend, my protector, and his two colleagues, were a threat to the status quo in Mississippi. Well when I heard that Micky Schwerner had been brutally murdered, that my protector from the bullies himself had been murdered by even bigger bullies, I sensed that something fundamental had to change. Not only in American society, but also in me. And all of you, right now, understand intuitively, that if we allowed America to continue in the direction it was going, with the wealth and the income and the power and the political potential for corruption that all of that represents, that the bullies would be in charge. And you know and you understand how important it is to fight the bullies. To protect the powerless. To make sure that the people without a voice have a voice. And for that reason—if there were no other reasons, though there are many others—I want to thank each and every one of you for what you are doing. Thank you.
