Mario Savio - Legacy

Legacy

A Memorial Lecture Fund was set up to honor Mario Savio upon his death. The MSMLF hosts an annual fall lecture on the University of California, Berkeley campus. Past lecturers include Howard Zinn, Winona LaDuke, Lani Guinier, Barbara Ehrenreich, Arlie Russell Hochschild, Cornel West, Christopher Hitchens, Adam Hochschild, Amy Goodman, Molly Ivins, Jeff Chang, Tom Hayden, Angela Davis, Seymour Hersh, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Naomi Klein, Elizabeth Warren, and Robert Reich.

The Memorial Fund also set up the Mario Savio Young Activist Award to honor an outstanding young activist with a deep commitment to human rights and social justice and the qualities of leadership ability, creativity, and integrity. Recipients of the award since it was first bestowed in 1998 include Michael Leon Guerrero, Niki Fortunato Bas, Jia Ching Chen, Jim Keady, Harmony Goldberg, Genevieve Gonzales, Rocio Nieves, Jason West, Erin Durban, Noemi Ramos, Christopher Goodman, Patrisse Marie Cullors, Julissa Bisono, Chelsea Chee, Timothy Den-Herder, Reyna Wences, Rigoberto Padilla-Perez, Ellen Choy, Josh Healey, and Christsna Sot.

In 1997, the steps of Sproul Plaza, from which he had given his most famous speech, were officially renamed the “Mario Savio Steps".

Mario's famous speech is sampled in many songs including "An Ounce Of Prevention" from the album On Little Known Frequencies by the band From Monument to Masses, "Timelessness" by the band Fear Factory, "The Movie's Over" by the Australian band Cog, "Article IV" by the Santa Cruz band Good Riddance, "Here Come The Pigs" by Deadsoul Tribe and "Wretches and Kings" from the album A Thousand Suns by Linkin Park. It is also paraphrased in an episode of Battlestar Galactica (Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II), given by Chief Galen Tyrol, the head of a union. It is also used in the intro to the podcast of the Dean Blundell Show on 102.1 the Edge, Toronto's largest radio station.

On March 12, 2011, at the end of an announcement by hacktivist group Anonymous of an attack, called the Empire State Rebellion, on the Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund, the Bank of International Settlements and the World Bank, an excerpt of Savio's speech was included.

Since the onset of the Occupy movement in the United States in Fall 2011, Savio's speech and his activism have been cited many times.

His speech has also been cited and referenced by Stephen Patis's comic, Pearls Before Swine, by the main character, Rat, on a few occasions.