In 1964, the Free Speech Movement put UC Berkeley at the forefront of student activism, creating a lasting legacy of protest and dissent. Forty-five years later, many current and former student organizers point to the Sept. 24 UC systemwide walkout, which drew thousands of students, faculty and staff, as a resurgence of that tradition.

The estimated 5,000 people who gathered on Sproul Plaza last Thursday was one of the largest groups to protest on campus in recent memory. While it is not the crowd of 7,000 that gathered on Dec. 2, 1964 outside Sproul Hall during the height of the Free Speech Movement, the student activists involved with the walkout see the beginnings of a potential movement.

"With this walkout I actually feel that Berkeley is living up to this image," said Ricardo Gomez, a student organizer of the walkout. "I think that excitement, the energy, the numbers, that it is something. That it could fall in line with this tradition of the Third World Liberation Strike or the FSM."

The Free Speech Movement developed in protest against university restrictions on tabling on Sproul Plaza, while the Third World Liberation Front came together in 1969 to create a separate ethnic studies college. The administration later lifted the restrictions on tabling and in the case of the latter created an ethnic studies department.

The Sept. 24 walkout was organized by students, faculty and staff to protest the UC administration's handling of the state budget cuts to public higher education, among other grievances. But with those parties still trying to decide what the next step will be, a clear end goal has yet to emerge.

Lynne Hollander Savio, who was married to Mario Savio-one of the Free Speech Movement's most well-known leaders-said she saw the walkout as a "resurgence" in activism.

"It's certainly important for Berkeley students to not focus so narrowly on their academic education that they forget their roles as citizens … in the larger community," she said.

However, she credits the Free Speech Movement's success in part to the cheap housing and tuition fees of the time. Students then had to work only part time and enjoyed the freedom to be more politically active. In contrast, today's scarce job market makes students more career-oriented and focused on their futures.

"They have less time, less energy and less ability to be concerned perhaps about other people and more focused on their own needs," she said.

Harvey Dong was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley during the Third World Liberation Front's movement to establish an ethnic studies college on campus in 1969. Now a lecturer in that department, Dong sees great opportunity in the developing movement.

"What's going on now is probably one of the biggest movements this campus has seen in a long time," Dong said. "That has a lot of potential because it's an issue that touches everybody on campus."

Both Dong and Savio credited the political climate that existed prior to their movements as crucial to the development of their movement.

The assassinations of Marin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy created a "crisis situation" that sparked the protests and strike of the Third World Liberation Front, Dong said.

"The civil rights movement was reaching a certain point ... there as a lot of anger and people seeking change. You could say today is a crisis situation as well," he said of the severe budget crisis and economic recession.

Meanwhile, Savio said that the UC Berkeley students who helped register black voters in Mississippi in the summer of 1964 opened up the campus to political activism. "This was really quite critical," Savio said. "There was already an enormous amount of civil rights activity on campus."

Gomez sees students becoming more active because of last year's election.

"I feel like as a whole people are getting more comfortable with the idea of being political and from that becoming more comfortable with the idea of becoming activists," he said.

Current and former organizers say the key to keep the movement growing is to act fast and mobilize succesfully with other people.

"We have numbers, we have energy, we just need to be able to mobilize it," said Blanca Misse, an organizer and GSI in the French department. "The energy is there, in two weeks it will not be."

Savio, who was pulled into the Free Speech Movement while seeing her fellow students take action on Sproul Plaza, thinks the current momentum is crucial.

"I learned as much, if not more, from participating in the FSM and the civil rights movement as I learned in my classes both in society, about myself and about other people," she said.

Tags: FREE SPEECH MOVEMENT, UC BERKELEY