---------------------Adapted by Utah Phillips. Originally from Mario Savio.
(washingtonpost.com)
When I first heard this quote I was very impressed. These are the kinds of words that gives one strength. Whether in a political setting or personal (But of course..the political IS personal). I heard these words from an album by Utah Phillips. A storyteller, an activist, a poet, folksinger, and former member of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World aka "Wobblies" aka Union Worker). He often spoke and sang about the industrial age and how that time flows down to ours. I believe storytelling is an art form and Utah was certainly an artist. Unfortunately he passed away on May 23rd, 2008.
At some point down the road I learned that Utah had adapted the quote from a famous speech made by civil rights activist Mario Savio. I learned that Mario worked in segregationist Mississippi and later moved on to be a spokesman for the Free Speech Movement at the University of California in 1964.
Mario later went on to become a mathematics, physics and philosophy professor at Sonoma State University. He continued to speak and organize in favor of immigrant rights, affirmative action and against U.S. intervention in Central America.
Mario Savio died on November 6, 1996, in the middle of a struggle against university fee hikes that hurt working-class students.
Mario Savio's speech December 2, 1964
"There is 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 upon 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!"
--------------------------Mario Savio 1964
According to Savio.org, "Savio's moral clarity, his eloquence, and his democratic style of leadership inspired thousands of fellow Berkeley students to protest university regulations which severely limited political speech and activity on campus. The non-violent campaign culminated in the largest mass arrest in American history, drew widespread faculty support, and resulted in a revision of university rules to permit political speech and organising. This significant advance for student freedom rapidly spread to countless other colleges and universities across the country."
Mario's words live on today and he is added to the list of so many activists that fought for freedoms we have today and freedoms we are still fighting for. I think it is important to look back. Important to take a pause of appreciation. It is important to know that the past does impact our present. He is one of those people that didn't make it into the history books as Utah would say. One of those people most of us never heard of through our early scholastic years.
"He says, you sing a lot about the past, you always sing about the past, you can't live in the past you know. I say to him I can go outside and pick up a rock that's older than the oldest song you know and bring it back in here and drop it on your foot. Now the past didn't go anywhere did it? It's right here, right now. I always thought that anybody who told me I couldn't live in the past was trying to get me to forget something, that if I remembered it I'd get in serious trouble. No, it's not that 50s, 60s, 70s, 90s, that whole idea of decade packaging. Things don't happen that way. The Vietnam war heated up in 1965 and ended in 1975, what's that got to do with decades? Um, no that packaging of time is a journalistic convenience that they use to trivialize and dismiss important events and important ideas. I defy that. Time is an enormous long river. I'm standing in it, just as you're standing in it. My elders were the tributaries and everything they thought and every struggle they went through and everything they gave their lives to and every song they created and every poem that they laid down flows down to me. And if I take the time to ask, and if I take the time to seek, if I take the time to reach out I can build that bridge between my world and theirs. I can reach down to that river and take out what I need to get through this world. Bridges. From my time, to your time as my elders from their time to my time. And we'll put into the river and we'll let it go and it flows away from us and away from us till' it no longer has our name, our identity. It has it's own utility, it's own use. And people take what they need to make it a part of their lives. "
-----------------------Utah Phillips
I am grateful for the songs, poems, speeches, stories that have been left behind for us. I am grateful to collectors like Utah Phillips who share the struggles and triumphs of an age I did not exist in. I also believe, that his words and those of Mario (and countless others) can be called upon today. In our time of war, and in our time of doing and undoing, we can carry on the sentiments of so many before us.
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