In 1964 I was 16 years old. I heard about Mario Savio in the early 1960s and the "Free Speech" Movement at UC Berkeley and watched it unfold on TV in Glendale, California where I was in high school then. begin quote from wikipedia under the heading "Mario Savio"
At that time it was about the right to be able to swear in public on that university campus. But it was actually much more than that. For if one cannot FULLY express themselves, often one cannot get to the root of what is bothering them. Any psychologist or psychiatrist understands this. But this is not only true for one person, it is also true for a whole society of people. So, by being able to scream about what was wrong and ask important questions that were then being supressed within educated people worldwide, terrifying questions were asked, good and bad answers were created and eventually the whole world moved forward towards where we are now.
Many questions regarding human rights, black rights, white rights, men and women's rights, Chicano rights, native American rights. The changes brought to society though they were long in coming (thousands of years) changed everything and often turned father against son and mother against daughter during those times. Many of my generation (baby boomers) broke away from all their relatives and never looked back. Many died in Viet Nam or went crazy on drugs but somehow the social revolution of the 1960s and 1970s never has ended. Today we see it continuing worldwide in the Jasmine Revolution in the middle east which is now moving throughout Africa and Asia at this time. And no amount of guns will stop this social revolution this time because of all the people banding together. I'm afraid there will be a lot of blood for a long time worldwide before we see the end of all this and where it brings us. But the social revolution of the 1960s in the U.S. starting in UC Berkeley and moving all over the U.S. and then Europe and then all around the world prevented World War III and a nuclear holocaust. It is continuing to prevent world annihilation today. All of us educated enough knew that this revolution was the only alternative at that time to Earth's nuclear annihilation. This is why it is still going on today in new forms. Even the PC, the Internet and much of the software is an evolution of this same revolution that has now spread worldwide for human rights for everyone. And it will never end until everyone on earth actually has their human rights recognized.
As an American I can look back to Boston and the Boston Tea Party where the Early American Revolution really got going. Even the Tea Party segment of the now Republican Party takes it's name from the original Boston Tea Party in the early part of the American Revolution for Independence from England at that time. I don't necessarily agree with the new Tea Party but I know that they are sincere in what they are trying to accomplish. Social revolutions worldwide are always messy and often bloody. We are just very lucky here in the U.S. that we have democratic institutions that we usually don't have to resort to bloody revolutions like most other countries do when changes need to occur. Usually here, there are a few wounded or dead demonstrators to create positive change whereas in other countries sometimes thousands to millions sometimes die trying to create the same changes for their countries. I guess England and the U.S. were able to figure out humans rights and the rule of law quicker than most other countries did. Many countries are still learning the terrible lessons that go along with creating REAL human rights for their people ongoing.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that what is happening now in the Jasmine revolution likely will span the globe once again like the social revolutions of the 1700s and the 1960s did once again. And in a way they are only a continuation of the ongoing struggle for humans rights that has existed in one form or another universally since the dawn of mankind on Earth.
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