You cannot negotiate with a mob. The money quote starts at 1:31 in the clip:
"All of it began the first time some of you who know better, and are old enough to know better, let young people think that they have the right to choose the laws they would obey as long as they were doing it in the name of social protest."
If you want to quote the Declaration of Independence in your protest, you'd better win. Ben Franklin said it best: We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
I'm sure those college students thought they were right. I do not. And in many cases today I don't think college students are right, either.
My parents were both there, although not much into protesting. My mom was so anxious to get to her class that she crossed the National Guard line, only (of course) to find that class was not happening. When I went to Cal in the 1990s, there were riots over People's Park again! I think it was over whether there should be a basketball court; some people thought there shouldn't be any man-made materials in the park, thus no asphalt. So they made a dirt court, which of course was practically unusable--it's hard to dribble on packed, uneven dirt. Rioting was quite the fad that year, with the result that some beloved, well-established stores shut down. Ah, Berkeley.
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