"bodies upon the gears" speech
E31495
The "bodies upon the gears" speech is Mario Savio’s famous 1964 address at UC Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement rally, in which he passionately urged students to nonviolently disrupt the university’s oppressive bureaucratic machinery.
Aliases (1)
Statements (45)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
historical event
→
political speech → protest speech → |
| addresses |
students
→
university administration → |
| advocates |
nonviolent direct action
→
|
| alsoKnownAs |
Mario Savio "bodies upon the gears" speech
→
Mario Savio Sproul Hall steps speech → Mario Savio machine speech → |
| associatedWith |
New Left
→
civil rights era activism → |
| audienceSize |
hundreds of students
→
|
| callsFor |
collective action by students
→
moral responsibility of individuals within institutions → |
| city |
Berkeley, California
→
|
| context |
student protest against restrictions on political activity at UC Berkeley
→
|
| country |
United States
→
|
| critiques |
complicity with unjust authority
→
university bureaucracy → |
| date |
1964-12-02
→
|
| famousLine |
"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'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." → |
| historicalPeriod |
1960s American student movement
→
|
| influenced |
later campus protest movements in the United States
→
|
| language |
English
→
|
| legacy |
iconic expression of 1960s student radicalism
→
symbol of resistance to dehumanizing systems → |
| location |
Sproul Hall steps
→
|
| medium |
public oral address
→
|
| movement |
Free Speech Movement
→
|
| place |
University of California, Berkeley
→
|
| politicalOrientation |
left-wing
→
|
| recordedAs |
audio recording
→
film footage → |
| referencedIn |
histories of the Free Speech Movement
→
scholarship on social movements → |
| rhetoricalDevice |
mechanical metaphor for institutional power
→
|
| speaker |
Mario Savio
→
|
| subjectOf |
archival collections at UC Berkeley
→
documentaries about Mario Savio → |
| theme |
civil disobedience
→
free speech → nonviolent resistance → opposition to bureaucratic oppression → |
| year |
1964
→
|
Referenced by (2)
| Subject (surface form when different) | Predicate |
|---|---|
|
Mario Savio
("“Bodies upon the gears” speech")
→
|
famousSpeech |
|
Mario Savio
→
|
knownFor |