In light of the recent protests in the University of California system, Xicana scholar and activist, Cherrie Moraga, gave a pointed and stirring critique/speech to a graduation class at UC Berkeley. In it, she asks, “What happened to our movement?” in reference to the work done by activists of color in the 60s. What happened to that movement? And how can we start it up again?

What happened to our movement?

The current economic crisis makes its patently evident. It was literally bought off. As graduates, you came of age in a time where for at least a quarter century consumerism had been unequivocally conflated with citizenship. You have gleaned no other message from the mass media, except to maintain your individual freedom by maintaining the ‘free enterprise’ of those who have enslaved you to this new American ethic. What the Declaration of Independence described as an unalienable right – “the pursuit of Happiness” — has been reconfigured within the popular imagination as the ‘pursuit of purchasing power.’ Even the so-called public university system, which cost you considerably to attend, is being sustained by corporate interests and ethics of competitive privatization. So, in many ways you are not to blame, but you are responsible because it will be up to your generation and those that follow to literally stop passing the buck to the rich guys.

What is our response as progressives to these times of economic upheaval? Do we look to Corporate America to protect our rights and our pocketbooks, to define our family life styles and educate our children, even after the ruling class betrayed its own ever-trusting middle-class by robbing it of a lifetime of savings and the homes they were programmed to purchase? Where is the protest?

Read the rest of the speech here!