t was Henry David Thoreau who issued the famous dictum: “Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”  Now, I'm no Luddite—you wouldn’t be reading this on the Internet if I were.  I believe that technology has the capacity to enhance our lives; to enrich us in mind and spirit, and to provide us with an unprecedented level of material prosperity. The mechanism Thoreau railled against is actually a system, and an unquestioning acceptance of things that seem so profoundly “true” that they are never subjected to the rigors of critical intelligence. In this way, social, political and economic structures—even bad ones—are reproduced from one generation to the next without the slightest indication that they might be altered or improved: “All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds,” the old saying goes.

And yet, our history is full of individuals who would not remain silent in the face of injustice and oppression: Patrick Henry, Mercy Otis Warren, Daniel Shays (who led the Massachusetts rebellion which bears his name), John Brown, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Eugene V. Debs, to name but a few.

The “machine-stoppers” have always believed in the power and dignity of  the human spirit; that the measure of man transcends the prerogatives of governments.

[STAY TUNED FOR A BIOGRAPHY OF FREE SPEECH ACTIVIST MARIO SAVIO, PICTURED BELOW]

Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello
interviews scholar and critic Noam Chomsky