Berkeley in the Sixties

I just finished watching Berkeley in the Sixties, a 1990 documentary that had been recommended to me by various people. This is a fascinating film about the origins and transformations of the activist movement in Berkeley, San Francisco, and Oakland during that decade, narrated by interviews with many key student figures from the era. Many expressed a great deal of disappointment in how the serious Free Speech and anti-Vietnam War protests degenerated into violent protests and attracted all kinds of "crazy" people to Berkeley. Perhaps the most shocking scene of the film was the tear-gassing of a peaceful demonstration in Sproul Plaza by the National Guard at the height of the People's Park confrontation (the film implies that this was ordered by then-Governor Reagan). Not too surprisingly, the footage of Reagan as candidate and then as governor reveal that he essentially had the same arrogant demeanor as George W. Bush.