Bettina Apthetker, a Free Speech movement activist, was the MC. She said,
"His great strength as a student leader was his absolute and transparent
integrity." The next person who spoke was Lynn Hollander, Mario's widow.
She talked about the private man who loved calamari and candlelight,
geraniums and Gerlald Manley Hopkins, snuggling and "Star Trek" The Next
Generation." Mario's brother, Tom Savio, spoke next. Then Truston Davis, an
African-American who met Mario in jail. Then two more civil rights
activists--Anita Levine Medal and Jack Weinberg--spoke about Mario the
civil rights activist who went to Mississippi in Freedom Summer of 1964 to
work with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee after Chaney,
Schwerner and Goodman were murdered and who continued his civil rights work
back in Berkeley. This is the Mario I remembered.
But what moved me more than memories of Mario thirty years ago were the
next speakers who talked about Mario of the last ten years: Oliver Johns,
Mario's physics professor at S.F. State, shared with us how incredibly
brilliant a physics student Mario was; Elaine Sundberg shared her deep
friendship for him as a colleague and fellow political activist/teacher at
Sonoma State College where Mario taught for the last six years; Mette
Adams, a student activist at Sonoma State, shared how Mario helped empower
the students there to fight a fee hike. =C5dams said that Mario taught the
students that "ordinary people banding together can make change happen."
Mario's heart attack came as he was preparing a legal brief to beat back
the proposed fee hike at Sonoma State University and he attacked the fee
hike as "an assault on the ability of working people to send their children
to college." Adams said that after Mario's death the students continued to
battle against the fee hike; in the referendum recently taken, the fee hike
was defeated by the 16% margin.
A lot of other speakers said they wanted to remember both Mario the student
activist of thirty years ago and Mario the teacher who gave so much to his
own students and also helped empower them to act politically. In recent
years he had emerged in the Bay Area has a strong supporter of immigrant
rights, students' rights and of affirmative action. One of the best
speakers was Mario's son, Nadav Savio, who read a letter his father sent
him about the present: "We have a very hard task. We have to educate on
the basis of moral values, of what justice is."
The Mario I remember of thirty-two years ago and the Mario of the last six
years were the same: he acted out of deeply spiritual core, and acted for
justice. When he became famous at twenty-one, he rejected everything about
celebrity. He didn't want to became famous. He didn't want to become a
celebrity. He wanted a more just world. And he could always find time to
talk to people, whether students thirty years ago or now. He saw that the
way to that world was through talking to people. Even though he wasn't
Jewish, I think he would have understood Hanukah very well.
At the end of the memorial the people left the auditorium, went downstairs
and out of the student union to Sproul Steps. There they held hands and
sang "We Shall Overcome" on Sproul Steps.
The sixth night of Hanukah. I'll dedicate one of my Hanukah candles to Mario.
Julia Stein