The famous words of Mario Savio during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the
1960s have been ringing in my head -- for several years now!
"There's a time 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 on 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!"
3 comments:
Thank you very much for posting these words of Mario Saavo. I need to take them with me today, to a meeting of similar importance...the meeting is about today's education in the United States. It's being undermined currently by both those in power over education and those who should be representing the teachers...the unions. I see them together as the "farmers and the pigs" from George Orwell's "Animal Farm".
I first heard Mario's words when I was 16 and a high school student actively involved in ending the Vietnam war (or as actively involved as any high school student could be at that time). If you would, Thivai Abhor, please write back to me.
Hi Elin48,
You are welcome, I'm glad to hear that they inspire you in your struggle for education... I'm a professor/activist and similarly saddened by the destruction of the educational system in the USA.
I think Orwell's novel 1984 (concept of "Newspeak") and "The Politics of Language" will serve you better in dealing with the platitudes of bureaucrats who claim to be dealing with the educational mess while continuing to defund, hamper, if not outright sabotage, efforts to revitalize American education.
I'm an advocate of autonomous citizen/community/collective education outside of the system (my anarchist perspective) as the best method for real change.
Don't let it tear you apart and find activities that will revitalize you--we need you in the struggle :)
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