"Bettina Aptheker was a 20-year-old sophomore at UC Berkeley when she climbed on top of a police car, barefoot so she wouldn't damage it, and helped start the Free Speech Movement. "Power concedes nothing without a demand," she told a crowd gathered in Sproul Plaza on that October Thursday in 1964, quoting abolitionist Frederick Douglass. She was blinded by the lights of the television cameras, but the students roared back approval, and "their energy just sort of went through my whole body," she told me."
"Well-versed in those non-violent methods that were finally winning a bit of equality for Black Americans, hundreds of students sat down around the cruiser, remaining there more than 30 hours - while hecklers threw eggs and cigarette butts and police massed at the periphery - before the protesters successfully negotiated with the university to restore free speech on campus. History was made, and the Free Speech Movement born through the most American of traits - courage, passion and the invincibility of youth."
Bettina Aptheker was a 20-year-old UC Berkeley sophomore who climbed atop a police car barefoot and helped launch the Free Speech Movement. Administrators had recently imposed rules restricting political speech amid late McCarthy-era repression. After police arrested graduate student Jack Weinberg, hundreds of students, versed in civil-rights nonviolent tactics, sat around a cruiser for more than 30 hours despite hecklers and police presence. The protesters negotiated with the university and won restoration of campus free speech. The movement combined courage, passion, and youthful invincibility. Under proposed Trump-era standards, similar protesters could face arrest and lawful force.
Read at The Mercury News
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