Robert Reich's speech
Nov. 16th, 2011 03:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrReich may be diminutive in stature (he's always been my secret choice to play Miles Vorkosigan if they ever cast the movie), but his ideas are huge. The UC Berkeley public policy professor and former U.S. Secretary of Labor is famously outspoken on issues of wealth and poverty (he teaches a class with that very title, after all), and has a keenly activist bent on the subject. He delivered the Mario Savio Memorial Lecture last night to a crowd of thousands who had gathered on the steps of Berkeley’s Sproul Hall to see him, to rally the thousands of students, alumni, and other occupiers stationed at Berkeley's Sproul Plaza, and you can hear the entire speech below, courtesy The Daily Californian.
The annual lecture—which honors the most prominent figure from Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement—was originally supposed to be held in a ballroom in the student union. But that changed after police were caught on video last Thursday beating students and professors who were refusing commands to disperse from the same area where some of the most famous events of the Free Speech Movement had took place almost 50 years ago. After Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau issued a statement saying the police had been “forced” to use their batons on the protestors—he has since said he hadn’t seen the video when he made that statement—faculty and student associations called for a general strike. And the decision was made to merge the lecture with the protests.
Reich argues that maldistribution of economic clout results in unbalanced political power. This, he says, is why the whole 99% vs. 1% thing is such a problem; because it's causing the upset of American democracy. Now close your eyes and picture yourself at the foot of the "Mario Savio steps":
For some very helpful context about the significance of the namesake of the lecture series, Mario Savio, see Rachel Maddow's show last night.
The annual lecture—which honors the most prominent figure from Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement—was originally supposed to be held in a ballroom in the student union. But that changed after police were caught on video last Thursday beating students and professors who were refusing commands to disperse from the same area where some of the most famous events of the Free Speech Movement had took place almost 50 years ago. After Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau issued a statement saying the police had been “forced” to use their batons on the protestors—he has since said he hadn’t seen the video when he made that statement—faculty and student associations called for a general strike. And the decision was made to merge the lecture with the protests.
Reich argues that maldistribution of economic clout results in unbalanced political power. This, he says, is why the whole 99% vs. 1% thing is such a problem; because it's causing the upset of American democracy. Now close your eyes and picture yourself at the foot of the "Mario Savio steps":
For some very helpful context about the significance of the namesake of the lecture series, Mario Savio, see Rachel Maddow's show last night.