Mario Savio

Last night I said to one of my coworkers, a man in his fifties, "Mario Savio is in danger of being forgotten."

"Who's Mario Savio?" he asked. And he wasn't kidding (though he did see the humor in his question).

For those who don't know, Savio was a grad student at UC-Berkeley in the 1960s, and a leader of the Free Speech Movement. He was articulate, magnetic, seemingly a born leader. Somewhere along the way, he seemed to lose his spirit, and he died far too young at 53.

To this day, he's best know for the speech he made on the steps of Sproul Plaza on December 2, 1964. These steps were officially renamed the Mario Savio Steps in 1997, and these words still resonate to such an extent that, among other things, they were paraphrased in an episode of Battlestar Galactica (with the permission of Savio's widow).

Here's his signature moment, taken from the documentary Berkeley in the Sixties.



Somebody please make a film on this man's life.