“Free Speech Doesn’t Need Permission”

On October 31 CFA members at Sacramento State assembled an informational art installation titled “Free Speech Doesn’t Need Permission” on the Library Quad at Sacramento State in response to the interim Time, Place, and Manner policy (TPM).

Sacramento State senior Daniel Engotto was frustrated that the new TMP policy was imposed without any attempts at consultation with students. “It kind of makes you feel powerless.”

However for Engotto the experience of putting together the installation and talking to students, faculty, and staff “is giving me that power back, makes me realize that I do have power, I do have agency, and I’m going to vocalize that and make sure I’m able to do my bit to uphold our right to free speech.”

Engotto understands that ethnic studies courses at Sac Stat that have been, “so empowering for me because I was to able to see myself in all these different fields” are a direct consequence of student activism in the late 1960s that would be criminalized under the current TPM policy.  

The installation “Free Speech Doesn’t Need Permission” was assembled at 11am and featured signs with 100 social movements throughout the 20th and 21st centuries that didn’t have permission – and the gains they made. Passers-by were given information about the new “Time, Place, and Manner policy” and encouraged to take photos, learn more, and take action.

“We want to create awareness of the importance of student protests as part of the learning process, that protest has a history in public higher education,” explained CFA member and Sacramento State Professor Lina Rincón. “We know that for historically marginalized communities the only way to protest their oppression is actually mobilizing and this new policy is actually trying to ban that.”

“I’ve been speaking on the ‘Time, Place and Manner policy’ since the first day of classes because I was really struck by how horrible it was. I was really upset that a lot of my students might think that they can’t engage in social change programs like they were doing before,” said CFA Sacramento President Anne Luna. “Last semester I was inspired and excited by all the organizing that was happening on campus. The encampments were very nonviolent. It was a beautiful learning space where students are really learning how to be leaders and organizers. It was just a perfect example of how the university can be a place for folks to learn in a different context and not have to be in the classroom.”