Neat article via The Ethicurian by Derrick Schneider of An Obsession with Food on the connection between Berkley and the “food revolution” movement towards a more natural diet in America. From small beginnings came much of the movement towards sustainable living, locally grown foods, organic gardening, etc, etc… as well as the beginnings of gourmet restaurants serving locally grown produce and such. Well worth a read (as I sit here eating my Cheez-its).
Berkeley’s food revolution began on a police car’s roof in Sproul Plaza on October 1, 1964. Three thousand students spontaneously trapped the cruiser that held fellow student Jack Weinberg after he deliberately violated new and capricious campus rules. The impromptu crowd listened as Mario Savio, a tall, curly-haired student with a worried look, climbed on top of the police car and spoke to the throng.
He didn’t talk about food. He didn’t talk about farmers. He talked about the university’s limits on free speech and the problems with modern education. But a new American cuisine stirred that day, built on the philosophy of Savio and his peers: You could only solve problems by going around the establishment, not by working within it.
The Free Speech Movement pushed Savio into the limelight, but his politics were more evolutionary than many recognized at the time. Berkeley became a magnet for left-wing activists during the early 60s. “Berkeley was where it was at if you wanted trouble,” says David Lance Goines, the activist and graphic designer who created the iconic Chez Panisse artwork and typography. The turbulent student body came to distrust the authority figures who dragged them from civil rights protests and imposed arbitrary rules on campus.
After the Free Speech Movement, students such as Alice Waters protested the government’s stance on Vietnam and civil rights. But the protests became riots when volunteers from the school and community tried to form People’s Park in 1969. Governor Reagan called in the National Guard to stop the peaceful conversion of UC land to a community park. The People’s Park protectors gushed down Telegraph Avenue, pursued by the tromp of boots, the whoosh of tear gas canisters, and the occasional bang of martyr-making gunshots. The town’s residents were outraged. Savio created 3000 activists; Reagan created ten times that many.
When the smell of tear gas dissipated from the paperbacks at Cody’s Books, and Guardsmen marched back to their homes and families, a thrumming energy filled the void. The activists had beat the establishment. The First Amendment protected political student groups on campus. The government was pulling troops from Vietnam. Trees grew in People’s Park. Anything seemed possible….
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and Berkeley made Reagan president