Voices - PCC Multicultural Center Performance

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Hello.
Welcome, and thank you all for coming out to Voices, second annual. Voices!
So, my name is Gabriela Sanchez, I'm a student coordinator at the Multicultural Center,
and I'm in the leadership program there,
and I'm also the Voices director for this year.
Super exciting.
But before we begin, I wanted to go over a few logistical issues. There are few exits
on the back of the theater,
I just wanted to let you guys know in case of emergencies,
and with that said, you can see the theater being really small, that the light comes through,
so it might distrupt the performance, so if we can strictly keep the exits
to a minimum, and if you do have to come in, to exit the way you came in,
that's what I'm trying to say.
The bathrooms are located inside this building, there will be an usher at the door
if you need any assistance.
and there are signs, I think they're yellow signs today, going into the building for the restrooms.
And, if for any reason you have any questions, the content of this play
is very complex and the issues that will be performed today, like I said are really complex
so if you need any support around that we have the Counseling/Advising office here on campus,
of course the Multiculural Center, and the Womens Resource Center.
as support, resources, and services.
So, what is voices?
Voices is a non-profit art education and social justice
organization active throughout the United States.
It was founded in 2007 by a group of activists,
artists, and educator's led by historian Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove,
who together edited the book,
"Voices of a People's History of the United States".
The speeches that are performed this evening are actually words from US history
performed by fellow PCC students and staff.
Voices has been used for the past year by the Multicultural Center as a vehicle
to promote social change on campus and throughout our community.
Not only as audience members do you get to experience a timeline of history,
of US history, through the speeches,
the actors and committee members worked together throughout the year to
build this play, and within that they built community.
So, the compilation of speeches is meant to educate through art,
and to inspire, and to bring about positive social change,
so without further adieu,
the Sylvania Multicultural Center presents Voices.
In recent years,
historians have begun to challenge the idealized, romanticized picture of Christopher Columbus.
One of the first people to speak out against the crimes of Columbus was
Bartolomé de Las Casas, who witnessed the consequences of his conquest,
which he describes in the following passages, first published in 1542.
The Indies were discovered in the year one thousand four hundred and ninety-two.
Forty-nine years have passed since the first settlers penetrated the land,
the first being the large and most happy isle called Hispaniola,
perhaps the most densely populated place in the world.
There must be close to two hundred leagues of land on this island,
and all the land so far discovered is a beehive of people;
and so far discovered is a beehive of people
it is as though God had crowded into these lands the great majority of mankind.
And of all the infinite universe of humanity,
these people are the most guileless, the most devoid of wickedness and duplicity,
the most obedient and faithful to their native masters
the most albeit unfaithful to their native masters
and to the Spanish Christians whom they serve.
And because they are so weak and complaisant,
they are less able to endure heavy labor and soon die of no matter what malady.
Yet into this sheepfold, into this land of meek outcasts
there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts,
wolves, tigers, or lions that had been starved for many days -
killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples,
doing all this with the strangest new methods of cruelty,
never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola,
once so populous, having a population that I estimated to be more than three millions,
has now a population of barely two hundred persons.
Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls
is that the Christians have an ultimate aim, which is to acquire gold,
and to swell themselves with riches in a very brief time and thus rise to an estate
disproportionate to their merits.
It should be kept in mind that their insatiable greed and ambition,
the greatest ever seen in the world, is the cause of their villainies.
And also, those lands are so rich and felicitous, the native peoples so meek and patient,
so easy to subject, that our Spaniards have no more consideration for them than beasts —
no, for thanks be to God, they have treated beasts with some respect;
I should say instead like excrement on the public squares.
The Indians began to seek ways to throw the Christians out of their lands.
They took up arms, but their weapons were very weak
and of little service in offense and still less in defense.
The Christians, with their horses and swords
and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them.
They attacked the towns and spared neither the children
nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed,
not only stabbing them and dismembering them
but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house.
They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victim's feet almost touched the ground,
stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer
and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive.
When tied to the stake, the cacique Hatuey — a very important noble —
was told by a Franciscan friar about the God of the Christians and of the articles of Faith.
And he was told what he could do in the brief time that remained to him,
in order to be saved and go to heaven.
The cacique — who had never heard any of this before,
was told he would go to Inferno
where if he did not adopt the Christian Faith, he would suffer eternal torment —
asked the Franciscan friar if Christians all went to Heaven.
When told that they did, he said he would prefer to go to Hell.
One of the great figures of early Native resistance to colonization was Tecumseh,
a Shawnee leader.
Here he speaks to the Osages about the struggle against the colonists,
as they expanded westward.
Brothers,—We all belong to one family; we are all children of the Great Spirit;
we walk in the same path; slake our thirst at the same spring.
Brothers, we are friends; we must assist each other to bear our burdens.
The blood of many of our brothers and fathers has poured like water on the earth,
We must, ourselves, battle, the threat between us.
We, ourselves, are threatened with a great evil;
nothing will pacify the white man but the destruction of all the red men.
Brothers, when the white men first set foot the ground, we hunt, they were hungry,
there were feeble,
they could do nothing for themselves.
they had nowhere to spread their blankets or to kindle their fires,
We commiserated their distress,
and we share with them whatever the Great Spirit has given his red children.
and gave them warmth
food when hungry, medicine when sick, and they spread skins on the ground for them to sleep.
They gave them grounds in which they could hunt and raise corn.
Brothers,the white man are like poisonous serpents: when chilled, they are feeble and meak
invigorate them with warmth,
we will sting their benefactors to death.
White men came to us as meak and feeble,
now we have made them strong,
and now nothing will satisfy them
but the whole of our hunting ground.
Brothers, who are these white people that we should fear them?
They cannot run fast, and they make good aims to shoot.
We have killed many of them, our fathers have killed many of them,
we will stain the earth red with their blood.
Brothers, we must be united;
we must smoke the same pipe;
we must fight eachothers burdens and battles;
and more than all, we must love the Great Spirit
:he is for us; and he will make all his red children happy.
Maria Stewart was a leader in the struggle to end slavery.
Stewart's writings, speeches, and activism were directed primarily at Black ,
rather than white, abolitionists.
In 1831, she wrote the first public manifesto of an African-American woman in U.S. history,
and in 1833, she delivered this speech at The African Masonic Hall.
Most of our color have been taught to stand in fear of the white man,
from their earliest infancy, to work as soon as they could walk, and call "master,"
before they scarce could lisp the name of mother.
Continual fear and laborious servitude have in some degree lessened in us that
natural force and energy which belong to man;
or else, in defiance of opposition, our men, before this, would have nobly and
boldly contended for their rights.
Give the man of color an equal opportunity with the white from the cradle to manhood,
and from manhood to the grave, and you would discover the dignified statesman,
the man of science, and the philosopher.
But there is no such opportunity for the sons of Africa,
and I fear that our powerful one's are fully determined that there never shall be.
O ye sons of Africa, when will your voices be heard in our legislative halls,
in defiance of your enemies, contending for equal rights and liberty?
Is it possible that for the want of knowledge,
we have labored for hundreds of years to support others,
and been content to receive what they have chose to give us in return?
Cast your eyes about, look as far as you can see; all, all is owned by the lordly white,
except here and there a lowly dwelling which the man of color,
midst deprivations, fraud and opposition, has been scarce able to procure.
Like King Solomon, who put neither nail nor hammer to the temple,
yet received the praise; so also have the white Americans gained themselves a name,
like the names of the great men that are in the earth,
while in reality we have been their principal foundation and support.
We have pursued the shadow, they have obtained the substance;
we have performed the labor they have received the profits;
we have planted the vines, they have eaten the fruits of them.
In this editorial from 1848, the North Star
the abolitionist newspaper edited in Rochester, New York, by Frederick Douglass
argues the case against the war on Mexico.
From aught that appears in the present position
and movements of the executive and cabinet
the proceedings of either branch of the national Congress,
the several State Legislatures, North and South
the spirit of the public press
slight hope can rationally be predicated
of a very speedy termination of the present disgraceful, cruel, and iniquitous war
with our sister republic.
Mexico seems a doomed victim to Anglo Saxon cupidity and love of dominion.
The determination of our slaveholding President to prosecute the war,
and the probability of his success in wringing from the people men and money to carry it on,
is made evident, rather than doubtful,
by the puny opposition arrayed against him.
No politician of any considerable distinction or eminence,
seems willing to hazard his popularity with his party,
or stem the fierce current of executive influence,
by an open and unqualified disapprobation of the war.
None seem willing to take their stand for peace at all risks;
and all seem willing that the war should be carried on, in some form or other.
We have no preference for parties, regarding this slaveholding crusade.
The one is as bad as the other.
the friend of peace have nothing to hope from either.
The Democrats claim the credit of commencing,
and the Whigs monopolize the glory of voting supplies and carrying on the war;
branding the war as dishonorably commenced, yet boldly persisting in pressing it on.
Grasping ambition, tyrannical usurpation, atrocious aggression, cruel and haughty pride,
spread, and pervade the land.
The curse is upon us. The plague is abroad.
A general outcry is heard
"Vigorous prosecution of the war!" - "Mexico must be humbled!"
"Conquer a peace!"—"War forced upon us!"
"National honor!"—"The whole of Mexico!"
"Our destiny!"—"This continent!"
"Anglo Saxon blood!"—"More territory!"
"Free institutions!"—"Our country!"
The taste of human blood and the smell of powder seem to have extinguished the senses,
seared the conscience, and subverted the reason of the people
to a degree that may well induce the gloomy apprehension that our nation
has fully entered on her downward career,
and yielded herself up to the revolting idea of battle and blood.
Unavailing as our voice may be, we wish to warn our fellow countrymen,
that they may follow the course which they have marked out for themselves;
no barrier may be sufficient to obstruct them;
they may accomplish all they desire;
Mexico may fall before them; she may be conquered and subdued;
her government may be annihilated; but, so sure as there is a God of justice,
we shall not go unpunished; the penalty is certain;
we cannot escape; a terrible retribution awaits us.
We beseech our countrymen to leave off this horrid conflict,
abandon their murderous plans, and forsake the way of blood.
Our country may yet be saved. Let the press, the pulpit, the church, the people at large,
unite at once; and let petitions flood the halls of Congress by the million,
asking for the instant recall of our forces from Mexico. This may not save us,
but it is our only hope.
Here, the black abolitionist Sojourner Truth,
who was freed from slavery in 1827,
speaks to a gathering of feminists in Akron, Ohio, in 1851.
Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter.
I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North,
all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon.
But what's all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages,
and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere.
Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place!
And ain't I a woman?
Look at me! Look at my arm!
I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me!
And ain't I a woman?
I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well!
And ain't I a woman?
I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery,
and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me!
And ain't I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head;
what's this they call it?
That's it, honey.
What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights?
If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart,
wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men,
'cause Christ wasn't a woman.
Where did your Christ come from?
Where did your Christ come from?
From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made
was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone,
these women together ought to be able to turn it back,
and get it right side up again.
And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.
July Fourth is held up as a day to celebrate the struggle for freedom and independence.
But the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass dared to challenge the exaltation of the holiday.
Here is part of his remarkable address to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society
in July 1852.
Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens
:He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation,
has stronger nerves than I.
I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly,
nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day.
A feeling has crept over me quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech.
Fellow-citizens, pardon me,
allow me to ask, why am I called here to speak here today?
What have I, or those I represent, have to do with your national independence?
Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice,
embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?
And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar,
and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude
for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours,
that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions!
they might have to be like in my burning easy and delightful.
But such is not the state of the case.
I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us.
I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary.
Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us.
The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common.
The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers,
is shared by you, not by me.
The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me.
This Fourth July is yours, not mine.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.
O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear,
I would, today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule,
blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke.
For this is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.
We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused;
the propriety of the nation must be startled;
the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed;
and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?
I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year,
the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.
To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license;
your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless;
your denunciations of tyrants,
brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery;
your prayers and hymns,
your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity,
are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -
a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.
There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody
than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will,
roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America,
search out every abuse, and when you have found the last,
lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation,
and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity
and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without rival.
On October sixteenth, 1859,
John Brown and nearly two dozen slaves seized
the armory at Harper's Ferry in West Virginia
hoping to use his massive arsenal in the struggle to end slavery.
Captured and brought to trial at nearby Charlestown,
Brown was found guilty of treason.
One month before his execution,
he addressed the courtroom, in Charlestown, West Virginia.
I have, may it please the court, a few words to say.
In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted --
the design on my part to free the slaves.
I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of that matter, as I did
last winter when I went into Missouri
and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side,
moved them through the country, and finally left them in Canada.
I designed to have done the same thing again on a larger scale.
That was all I intended.
I never did intend murder,
or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite slaves to
rebellion, or to make insurrection.
I have another objection;
and that is, it is unjust that I should suffer such a penalty.
Had I interfered in the manner
which I admit,
and which I admit has been fairly proved
had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent,
the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends
either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children,
or any of that class-
and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference,
it would have been all right;
and every man in this court
would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.
This court acknowledges, as I suppose,
the validity of the law of God.
I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible,
or at least the New Testament.
That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me,
I should do even so to them.
It teaches me, further, to "remember them that are in bonds,
as bound with them.
I endeavored to act up to that instruction.
I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons.
I believe that to have interfered as I have done--
as I have always freely admitted I have done--i
in behalf of His despised poor was not wrong, but right.
Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life
for the furtherance of the ends of justice,
and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children
and with the blood of millions in this slave country
whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments--
I submit; so let it be done.
In November
1872, Susan B. Anthony was one of fourteen women
women who defied the law to cast a ballot in the presidential election.
Anthony was arrested for "knowingly voting without having a lawful right to vote,"
and on June 18, 1873, was found guilty.
The next day, when her lawyer appealed the verdict,
she addressed the court in response to a question from the judge, Ward Hunt.
Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?
Yes, your honor,
I have many things to say;
for in your ordered verdict of guilty
you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government.
My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored.
Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship,
I am degraded from the status of a citizen, to that of a subject
and not only myself individually, but all of my sex are.
by your honor's verdict, doomed to political subjection under this
so-called republican form of government.
The Court cannot listen to a rehearsal of argument which the
prisoner's counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.
May it please your honor, I am not arguing the question,
but simply stating the reasons why sentence can not, in justice, be pronounced against me.
Your denial of my citizen's right to vote, is the denial of my right of
consent as one of the governed,
the denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed,
the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers as an offender against law;
therefore, the denial of my sacred right to life, liberty, property and—
The Court can not allow the prisoner to go on.
But your honor will not deny me this one and only poor privilege of
protest against this high-handed outrage upon my citizen's rights.
The Court must insist—the prisoner has been tried according to the established forms of law.
Yes, your honor, but by forms of law all made by men,
interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men and against women;
and hence your honor's ordered verdict of guilty, against a United States citizen
for the exercise of the "citizen's right to vote,"
simply because that citizen was a woman and not a man.
But yesterday, the same man-made forms of law
declared it a crime punishable with $1,000 fine and six months'
imprisonment to give a cup of cold water,
a crust of bread or a night's shelter to a panting fugitive tracking his way to Canada;
and every man or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy
violated that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in doing so.
As then the slaves who got their freedom had to take it over
or under or through the unjust forms of law,
precisely so now must women take it to get right to a voice in this government;
and I have taken mine, and mean to take it at every opportunity.
The Court must insist — The sentence of the Court is that you pay a fine of
$100 and the costs of the prosecution.
May it please your honor, I will never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.
All the stock in trade I possess is a debt of $10,000, incurred by publishing my paper—
The Revolution—
the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done,
rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, which tax,
fine, imprison and hang women, while denying them the right of representation
in the government;
and I will work on with might and main to pay every dollar of that honest debt,
but not a penny shall go to this unjust claim.
And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women
to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim,
"Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."
Chief Joseph,
the lands of Nez Percé stretched from Oregon to Idaho,
but after the gold rush in the 1860's, the federal government siezed
millions of acres crowding them
into a small part of their former territories. Chief Joseph lead
the resistance to colonization of the Nez Percé lands.
As people came under fierce attack in 1877, he and his
followers were defeated.
Joseph was sent to Indian territories in Oklahoma, where he
continued to speak out against the crimes of the US government and he did so in
a visit to Washington in 1879, where he recalls this speech.
At last I was granted permission to come to Washington and bring my friend Yellow Bull
and our interpreter with me.
I am glad I came.
I have shaken hands with a good many friends,
but there are some things I want to know which no one seems able to explain.
I cannot understand how the Government sends a man out to fight us,
as it did General Miles,
and then breaks his word.
Such a government has something wrong about it.
I cannot understand why so many chiefs are allowed to talk so many different ways,
and promise so many different things.
I have seen the Great Father Chief, and many other law chiefs
and they all say they are my friends, and that I shall have justice,
but while all their mouths talk right I do not understand why nothing is done for my people.
I have heard talk and talk but nothing is done.
Good words do not pay for my dead people.
They do not pay for my country, now overrun by white men.
They do not pay for my horses and cattle.
Good words do not give me back my children.
good words
Good words will not make good the promise of your war chief, General Miles.
Good words will not give my people good health,
and stop them from dying.
Good words will not give my people a home where they can live in peace
and take care of themselves.
I am tired of talk that comes to nothing.
It makes my heart sick
when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises.
There has been too much talking by men who had no right to talk.
If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian he can live in peace.
There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike.
Give them the same laws. Give them all an even chance to live and grow.
All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief.
They are all brothers.
If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect he will grow fat?
If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth and compel him to stay there,
he will not be contented nor will he grow and prosper.
I have asked some of the Great White Chiefs where they get their authority
to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place,
while he sees white men going where they please.
They cannot tell me.
When I think of our condition, my heart is heavy.
I see men of my own race treated as outlaws
and driven from country to country, or shot down like animals.
I only ask of the Government to be treated as all other men are treated.
We only ask an even chance to live as other men live.
We ask to be recognized as men.
We ask that the same law shall work alike on all men.
If an Indian breaks the law, punish him by the law.
If a white man breaks the law, punish him also.
Let me be a free man,
free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose,
free to choose my own teachers,
free to follow the religion of my fathers,
free to talk, think and act for myself
and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty.
Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other
then we shall have no more wars.
We shall be all alike
brothers of one father and mother,
with one sky above us and one country around us and one government for all.
Then the Great Spirit Chief
who rules above will smile upon this land
and send rain to wash out the bloody spots made by brothers' hands upon the face of the earth.
Harriet Hanson Robinson.
When Boston capitalists, making use of the new canal system, began building textile
mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the early nineteenth century, they recruited young
women from rural New England as their labor force.
They assumed they would be docile and easily managed. Instead, the young women
in the Lowell mills formed reading circles and agitated for better workplace conditions.
Here, Harriet Hanson Robinson, who started work in the mills when she was only ten,
recounts a strike of the Lowell women.
At the time the Lowell cotton-mills were started,
the factory girl was the lowest among women.
In England, and in France particularly,
great injustices had been done to her real character;
she was subjected to influences that could not fail to destroy her
purity and self-respect.
In the eyes of her overseer she was but a brute, slave, to be beaten, pinched, and pushed about.
One of the first strikes of the cotton-factory operatives that ever took place
in this country was that in Lowell, in October, 1836.
When it was announced that wages were to be cut down,
great indignation was felt, and it was decided to strike, in masses.
This was done.
The mills were shut down, and the girls went in procession from their several
corporations to the "grove" on Chapel Hill,
and listened to "incendiary" speeches from early labor reformers.
One of the girls stood on a pump,
and gave vent to the feelings of her companions in a neat speech,
declaring that it was their duty to resist all attempts at cutting down the wages.
This was the first time a woman had spoken in public in Lowell,
and the event caused surprise and consternation among her audience.
Cutting down the wages was not their only grievance, nor the only cause of this strike.
Hitherto the corporations had paid twenty-five cents a week towards the board of each
operative, and now it was their purpose to have the girls pay the sum;
and this, in addition to the cut in wages, would make a difference of at least one
dollar a week.
It was estimated that as many as twelve to fifteen hundred girls turned out,
and walked in procession through the streets.
My own recollection of this first strike (or "turn out" as it was called) is very vivid.
I worked in a lower room, where I had heard the proposed strike fully,
if not vehemently, discussed;
I had been an ardent listener to what was said against this attempt at "oppression" on
the part of the corporation, and naturally I took sides with the strikers.
When the day came on which the girls were to turn out,
those in the upper rooms started first,
and so many of them left that our mill was at once shut down.
Then, when the girls in my room stood irresolute, uncertain what to do, asking each other,
"Would you?" or "Shall we turn out?"
and not one of them having the courage to lead off,
I, who began to think they would not go out,
after all their talk, became impatient,
and started on ahead, saying, with childish bravado,
"I don't care what you do, I am going to turn out, whether any one else does or not;"
and I marched out, and was followed by the others.
As I looked back at the long line that followed me,
I was more proud than any success I may have achieved.
The anarchist organizer Emma Goldman,
a founder of the No-Conscription League,
gave this speech in San Francisco, in a period leading up to the outbreak of the
first world war.
What is patriotism?
Is it love of one's birthplace,
the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations?
"Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels," said Dr. Johnson.
Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our times,
defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers;
a trade that requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing
than the making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses;
a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the average workingman.
Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism.
Let me illustrate.
Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots,
each one surrounded by an iron gate.
Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot,
consider themselves better,
nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot.
It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight,
kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.
The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner,
of course, with the result that, from early infancy,
the mind of the child is poisoned with blood-curdling stories about the Germans,
the French, the Italians, Russians, etc.
When the child has reached manhood,
he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself
to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner.
It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army
and navy, more battleships and ammunition.
We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence.
Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting
dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens.
Our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on
earth, and that it will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.
Such is the logic of patriotism...
Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that
patriotism is too limited and narrow a conception
to meet the necessities of our time.
The centralization of power has brought into being
an international feeling of solidarity among the oppressed nations of the world;
a solidarity which represents a greater harmony of interests between the
workingman of America and his brothers abroad than between the working miner and
his exploiting compatriot;
a solidarity which fears not foreign invasion,
because it is bringing all the workers to the point when they will say
to their masters,
"Go and do your own killing. We have done it long enough for you."
In our schools we learn about Helen Keller,
the deaf and blind girl who became a famous writer,
but we do not learn that she was a leading socialist activist.
Here is part of a speech Keller delivered before U.S. entry into the war in 1917.
We are facing a grave crisis in our national life.
The few who profit from the labor of the masses
want to organize the workers into an army which will protect the interests of the capitalists.
You are urged to add to the heavy burdens you already bear
the burden of a larger army and many additional warships.
But it is in your power to refuse to carry the artillery.
You do not need to make a great noise about it.
with the silence and dignity of creatorsm, you can end wars and the system of
selfishness and exploitation that causes wars.
All you need to do to bring about this stupendous revolution
is to straighten up and fold your arms.
We are not preparing to defend our country.
Congress is not preparing to defend the people of the United States.
It is planning to protect
the capital of American spectators and investors in Mexico, South America, China,
and the Philippine Islands.
Incidentally this preparation will benefit the manufacturers of munitions and war machines.
A dollar that is not being used to make a slave of some human being is not fulfilling its purpose
in the capitalistic scheme.
That dollar must be invested in South America, Mexico, China, or the Philippines.
Every modern war has had its root in exploitation.
The Civil War was fought to decide whether the slaveholders of the South
or the capitalists of the North should exploit the West.
The Spanish-American War
decided that the United States should exploit Cuba and the Philippines.
The present war is to decide who shall exploit
the Balkans, Turkey, Persia, Egypt, India, China, Africa.
And we are whetting our sword to scare the victors into sharing the spoils with us.
Now, the workers are not interested in the spoils; they will not get any of them anyway.
The propagandists have still another object, and a very important one.
They want to give the people something to think about besides their own unhappy condition.
They know the cost of living is high, wages are low, employment is uncertain.
I think the workers are the most unselfish of the children of men;
they toil and live and die for other people's country,
other people's sentiments, other people's liberties and other people's happiness!
The workers have no liberties of their own;
they are not free when they are compelled to work twelve or ten or eight hours a day.
They are not free when they are ill paid for their exhausting toil.
They are not free when their children must labor in mines, mills and factories or starve.
They are not free when they are clubbed and imprisoned
because they go on strike for a raise of wages and for the elemental
justice that is their right as human beings.
It is your business to see that no child is employed in an industrial establishment or
or mine or store, and that no worker in needlessly exposed to accident or disease.
It is your business to make them give you clean cities,
free from smoke, dirt and congestion.
It is your business to make them pay you a living wage.
It is your business to see that everyone has a chance to be well born,
well nourished, rightly educated.
Strike against all ordinances and institutions that continue the slaughter
of peace and the butcheries of war.
Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought.
Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder.
Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction.
Be heroes in an army of construction.
Malcolm X.
While some civil rights leaders
urged a more cautious approach to winning civil rights,
Malcolm X expressed the feelings of many blacks
that more uncompromising methods of struggle were needed.
Like members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense,
Malcolm X advocated the right of armed self-defense for blacks
and other oppressed groups who lived in so violently racist a society as the United States.
Here is an excerpt of a speech Malcolm X delivered in Detroit, Michigan.
Two years after giving this speech, he was assassinated in New York City.
Before I get started, I just want to say that I'm very pleased to be here today,
and for all of you that don't know, Malcom's birthday is tomorrow.
We want to have just an off-the-cuff chat between you and me, us.
We want to talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand.
We all agree tonight, all of the speakers have agreed, that America has a very serious problem.
Not only does America have a very serious problem,
but our people have a very serious problem.
America's problem is us.
We're her problem.
The only reason she has a problem is she doesn't want us here.
And every time you look at yourself,
be you black, brown, red or yellow, a so-called Negro,
you represent a person who poses such a serious problem for America
because you're not wanted.
Once you face this as a fact,
then you can start plotting a course that will make you appear intelligent, instead of unintelligent.
What you and I need to do is learn to forget our differences.
When we come together, we don't come together as Baptists or Methodists.
You don't catch hell because you're a Baptist,
and you don't catch hell because you're a Methodist,
You don't catch hell, all of us catch hell, because we're not Americans;
American doesn't want us.
You all catch hell because you're a black man.
You catch hell, all of us catch hell, for the same reason.
So we're all black people, so-called Negroes, second-class citizens, ex-slaves.
You don't like to be told that. But what else are you?
You are ex-slaves.
You didn't come here on the "Mayflower."
You came here on a slave ship.
In chains.
And you were brought here by the people who came here on the "Mayflower,"
you were brought here by the so-called Pilgrims, or Founding Fathers.
They were the ones who brought you here.
We have a common enemy. We have this in common.
We have a common oppressor, a common exploiter, and a common discriminator.
But once we all realize that we have a common enemy,
then we unite on the basis of what we have in common
And what we have foremost in common is that enemy —
the white man.
He's an enemy to all of us.
I know some of you all think that they aren't enemies, at least some of them aren't enemies.
Time will tell...
Look at the American Revolution in 1776.
That revolution was for what? For land.
Why? Independence.
How was it carried out? Bloodshed.
The French Revolution — what was it based on?
The landless against the landlord.
What was it for? Land.
How did they get it? Bloodshed.
The Russian Revolution — what was it based on?
Land; the landless against the landlord. How did they bring it about?
Bloodshed.
You haven't got a revolution that doesn't involve bloodshed.
But you're afraid to bleed.
As long as the white man sent you to Korea, you bled.
He sent you to Germany, you bled.
He sent you to the South Pacific to fight the Japanese, you bled.
You bleed for white people, but when it comes to seeing your own churches being bombed
and little black girls murdered; you haven't got any blood
You bleed when the white man says bleed;
you bite when the white man says bite;
and you bark when the white man says bark.
I hate to say this about us, but it's true.
How are you going to be nonviolent in Mississippi, as violent as you were in Korea?
How can you justify being nonviolent in Mississippi and Alabama,
when your churches are being bombed, and your little girls are being murdered?
If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad.
If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children
and black babies and black men,
then it is wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her.
And if it is right for America to draft us,
and teach us how to be violent in defense of her,
then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary
to defend our own people right here in this country.
MISSISSIPPI FREEDOM DEMOCRATIC PARTY
In McComb, Mississippi, in July 1965,
civil rights activists in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party circulated
and published this petition.
It was one of the first petitions against the Vietnam war.
Here are five reasons why Negroes should not be in any war fighting for America
:No Mississippi Negroes should be fighting in Vietnam for the White Man's freedom,
until all the Negro People are free in Mississippi.
Negro Boys should not honor the draft here in Mississippi.
Mothers should encourage their sons not to go.
We will gain respect and dignity as a race only by forcing the U.S. Government
and the Mississippi Government to come with guns, dogs and trucks
to take our sons away to fight and be killed protecting
Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana.
No one has a right to ask us to risk our lives and kill other Colored People
n Santo Domingo and Vietnam, so that the White American can get richer.
We will be looked upon as traitors by all the Colored People of the world
if the Negro people continue to fight and die without a cause.
Last week a white soldier from New Jersey was discharged from the Army
because he refused to fight in Vietnam;
he went on a hunger strike.
Negro boys can do the same thing.
We can write and ask our sons if they know what they are fighting for.
If he answers Freedom, tell him that's what we are fighting for here in Mississippi.
And if he says Democracy, tell him the truth—
we don't know anything about Communism, Socialism, and all that,
but we do know that Negroes have caught hell right here under this American Democracy.
Howard Zinn.
In November 1970, after his arrest along with others who had engaged in a Boston protest
at an army base to block soldiers from being sent to Vietnam,
Howard Zinn flew to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore to take part in a debate
with the philosopher Charles Frankel on civil disobedience.
He was supposed to appear in court that day
in connection with the charges resulting from the army base protest.
He had a choice: show up in court and miss this opportunity to explain - and practice -
his commitment to civil disobedience,
or face the consequences of defying the court order by going to Baltimore.
He chose to go.
The next day, when he returned to Boston,
he went to teach his morning class at Boston University.
Two detectives were waiting outside the classroom and hauled him off to court,
where he was sentenced to a few days in jail.
Here is part of his speech that night at Johns Hopkins.
I start from the supposition that the world is topsy-turvy, that things are all wrong,
that the wrong people are in jail and the wrong people are out of jail,
that the wrong people are in power and the wrong people are out of power,
that the wealth is distributed in this country and the world
in such a way as not simply to require small reform but to require a drastic reallocation of wealth.
I start from the supposition that we don't have to say too much about this
because all we have to do is think about the state of the world today
and realize that things are all upside down.
Daniel Berrigan is in jail—
a Catholic priest, a poet who opposes the war—
and J. Edgar Hoover is free, you see.
David Dellinger, who has opposed war ever since he was this high
and who has used all of his energy and passion against it,
is in danger of going to jail.
The men who are responsible for the My Lai massacre are not on trial;
they are in Washington serving various functions, primary and subordinate,
that have to do with the unleashing of massacres, which surprise them when they occur.
If you don't think, if you just listen to TV and read scholarly things,
you actually begin to think that things are not so bad, or that just little things are wrong.
But you have to get a little detached, and then come back and look at the world,
and you are horrified.
So we have to start from that supposition—that things are really topsy-turvy.
And our topic is topsy-turvy: civil disobedience.
As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience,
you are saying our problem is civil disobedience.
That is not our problem.
Our problem is obedience.
Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world
who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government
and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience.
We recognize this for Nazi Germany.
We know that the problem there was obedience, that the people obeyed Hitler.
People obeyed; that was wrong.
They should have challenged, and they should have resisted;
and if we were only there, we would have showed them.
Even in Stalin's Russia we can understand that;
people are obedient, all these herdlike people.
Remember those bad old days when people were exploited by feudalism?
Everything was terrible in the Middle Ages—
but now we have Western civilization,
the rule of law.
The rule of law has regularized and maximized the injustice that existed
before the rule of law, that is what the rule of law has done.
When in all the nations of the world the rule of law is the darling of the leaders and
the plague of the people,
we ought to begin to recognize this.
We have to transcend these national boundaries in our thinking.
Nixon and Brezhnev have much more in common with one another than we have with Nixon.
J. Edgar Hoover has far more in common with the head of the Soviet secret
police than he has with us.
It's the international dedication to law and order
that binds the leaders of all countries in a comradely bond.
That's why we are always surprised when they get together—
they smile, they shake hands, they smoke cigars,
they really like one another no matter what they say.
What we are trying to do, I assume,
is to get back to the principles and aims and spirit of the Declaration of Independence.
This spirit is resistance to illegitimate authority
and to forces that deprive people of their life and liberty and right to pursue happiness,
and therefore under these conditions,
it urges the right to alter or abolish their current form of government—
and the stress had been on abolish.
But to establish the principles of the Declaration of Independence,
we are going to need to go outside the law, to stop obeying the laws that demand killing
or that allocate wealth the way it has been done, or that put people in jail
for petty technical offenses and keep other people out of jail for enormous crimes.
My hope is that this kind of spirit will take place not just in this country but in
other countries because they all need it.
People in all countries need the spirit of disobedience to the state,
which is not a metaphysical thing but a thing of force and wealth.
And we need a kind of declaration of interdependence
among people in all countries of the world who are striving for the same thing.
Here Sylvia Woods, a pioneer in the struggle of African-American and women trade unionists,
describes her first experiences speaking out against racism.
I was born March 15, 1909. My father was a roofer.
When I was maybe ten years old, I changed schools.
On the way to school, I had to go through a park that was for white people only.
We could walk through the park but we couldn't stop at all, just pass through it.
There were swings in this park and, oh, I so much wanted sometimes to just stop and swing
a little while, but we couldn't because we were black.
I would walk through this park to my school where there weren't any swings at all.
Every morning all the kids would line up according to classrooms and
we would have prayers and sing the "Star Spangled Banner"
and then we'd march to our respective groups after this business.
I decided I wasn't going to sing the "Star Spangled Banner."
I just stood there every morning and I didn't sing it.
One morning, one of the teachers noticed that I wasn't doing it.
So she very quietly called me over and asked me why didn't I sing the "Star Spangled Banner."
I said I just didn't feel like singing it. So she said,
"Well then you have to go in to the principal and explain that to him.
All of the children in the school do their part and you've got to do it too."
OK, I went in to the principal and he asked me why I wasn't singing the "Star Spangled Banner."
Finally I told him. "Because it says 'The land of the free and the home of the brave'
and this is not the land of the free.
I don't know who's brave but I'm not going to sing it any more."
Then he said,
"Why you've been singing it all the time haven't you? How come you want to stop now?"
And I told him about coming through the park and I could only walk in the walk,
and I couldn't swing in the swings in the park, and I couldn't sit in the park,
and I could only walk in Shakespeare Park,
then it couldn't be the land of the free.
"Who's free?" He didn't say anything.
Then he said, "Well, you could pledge allegiance to your flag."
I said, "It's not my flag. The flag is with freedom. If the land is free and the flag is mine,
then how come I can't do like the white kids?"
The economic crisis of the 1930s led to a wave of union organizing
and strikes all over the country.
Stella Nowicki was one of many rank-and-file activists active in Chicago.
Years later, she spoke about the conditions in the plants and the tactics
radicals used to organize unions.
I ran away from home at age 17.
I had to because there was not enough money to feed the family in 1933
during the Depression...
I was doing housework for $4 a week and I hated it.
So Herb suggested that I get a job in the stockyards.
One of the ways to get a job was to go down to the employment office.
Every morning you got there by six or six-thirty.
There were just so many benches and they would all be filled early.
They would only need one, maybe two people.
This woman, Mrs. McCann, women's hiring director,
would look around for the biggest and brawniest person.
"Have you had experience?" she asked.
I said, "Well not in the stock yards but we used to butcher our own hogs at home."
I carried this big steel and that impressed her. Mrs. McCann hired me.
In 1933–34 we worked six hour shifts at 37 and a half cents an hour.
We would have to work at a high rate of speed. It was summer.
It would be so hot that women used to pass out.
The ladies' room was on the floor below
and I would help carry these women down almost vertical stairs into the washroom.
We started talking union.
The thing that precipitated it is that on the floor below they used to make hotdogs
and one of the women,
in putting the meat into the chopper, got her fingers caught.
there were no safety guards
Her fingers got into the hotdogs and they were chopped off. It was just horrible.
Three of us "colonizers"
had a meeting during our break and decided this was the time to have a stoppage and we did...
All six floors went on strike.
We just stopped working right inside the building,
protesting the speed and the unsafe conditions.
We got the company to put in safety devices.
Soon after the work stoppage the supervisors were looking for the leaders
because people were talking up the action.
They found out who was involved and we were all fired. I was blacklisted.
I got a job doing housework again and it was awful.
I just couldn't stand it. I would rather go back and work in a factory, any day or night.
A friend of mine who had been laid off told me that she got called to go back to work.
Meanwhile she had a job in an office and she didn't want to go back to the stockyards,
so she asked me if I wanted to go in her place.
She had used the name Helen Ellis.
I went down to the stockyards and it was the same department, exactly the same
job on the same floor where I had been fired.
But it was the afternoon and Mrs. McCann wasn't there.
Her assistant was.
And she told me that I would start the next day.
I got my hair cut really short and hennaed. I thinned my eyebrows and penciled them,
I wore a lot of lipstick and painted my nails. I came in looking sharp
and not like a country girl,
so I passed right through and I was hired as Helen Ellis on the same job.
After several days the forelady, Mary, who was also Polish,
came around and said, "OK, Helen, I know you're Stella.
I won't say anything but just keep quiet."
She knew I was pro-union and I guess she was too,
, so I kept the job as Helen Ellis until I got laid off.
Later on I was blacklisted under the name Ellis.
If you even talked union you were fired.
So we actually had secret meetings.
Everybody had to vouch for anyone that they brought to the meeting...
When I look back now,
I really think we had a lot of guts. But I didn't even stop to think about it at the time.
It was something that had to be done.
We had a goal.
That's what we felt had to be done and we did it.
The Japanese-American civil rights activist
Yuri Kochiyama was born and raised in San Pedro, California.
She and her family were among the 120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast
who were rounded up in a wave of anti-Japanese hysteria that followed the bombing of
Pearl Harbor.
Here she recalls her experiences in the detention camps.
I was red, white and blue when I was growing up.
I taught Sunday school, and was very, very American. But I was also very provincial.
We were just kids rooting for our high school.
I was nineteen at the time of the evacuation.
I had just finished junior college.
I was looking for a job, and didn't realize how different the school world
was from the work world.
In the school world, I never felt racism.
But when you got into the work world, it was very difficult.
This was 1941, just before the war.
I finally did get a job at a department store. But for us back then, it was a big thing,
because I don't think they had ever hired an Asian in a department store before.
I tried, because I saw a Mexican friend who got a job there...
Everything changed for me on the day Pearl Harbor was bombed.
On that very day—December 7, the FBI came and they took my father.
He had just come home from the hospital the day before.
For several days we didn't know where they had taken him.
Then we found out that he was taken to the federal prison at Terminal Island.
Overnight, things changed for us...
Most Japanese Americans had to give up their jobs, whatever they did, and were told
The edict for 9066—President Roosevelt's edict for evacuation
was in February 1942.
We were moved to a detention center that April.
We were sent to an assembly center in Arcadia, California.
It was the largest assembly center on the West Coast having nearly twenty thousand people.
There were some smaller centers with about six hundred people.
All along the West Coast—Washington, Oregon, California—
there were many, many assembly centers, but ours was the largest.
Most of the assembly centers were either fairgrounds, or race tracks.
So many of us lived in stables and they said you could take what you could carry...
I was so red, white and blue,
I couldn't believe this was happening to us. America would never do a thing like this to us.
This is the greatest country in the world.
So I thought this is only going to be for a short while,
maybe a few weeks or something, and they will let us go back.
At the beginning no one realized how long this would go on.
I didn't feel the anger that much because I thought
maybe this was the way we could show our love for our country,
and we should not make too much fuss or noise,
we should abide by what they asked of us.
I'm a totally different person now than I was back then.
I was naive about so many things.
The more I think about, the more I realize how little you learn about American history.
It's just what they want you to know...
We always called the camps "relocation centers" while we were there.
Now we feel it is apropos to call them concentration camps.
It is not the same as the concentration camps of Europe; those we feel were death camps.
Concentration camps were a concentration of people
placed in an area, and disempowered and disenfranchised.
So it is apropos to call what I was in a concentration camp...
Historically, Americans have always been putting people behind walls.
First there were the American Indians who were put on reservations,
Africans in slavery, their lives on the plantations, Chicanos doing migratory work,
and the kinds of camps they lived in,
and even too, the Chinese when they worked on the railroad camps where they were almost
isolated, dispossessed people—disempowered.
And I feel those are the things we should fight against so they won't happen again.
This whole period of what the Japanese went through is important.
If we can see the connections of how often this happens in history,
we can stem the tide of these things happening again by speaking out against them.
We end with a speech by Cindy Sheehan,
whose son Casey was killed in action in Iraq on April 4, 2004.
This is a speech she delivered in August at the Veterans for Peace convention in Dallas, Texas
just before heading down to camp outside of Bush's vacation home in Crawford, Texas.
President Bush refused to meet with her,
but Sheehan helped galvanize sentiment against the occupation of Iraq.
I said to my son not to go.
I said, "You know it's wrong, you know you're going over there.
You know your unit might have to kill innocent people, you know you might die."
And he says, "My buddies are going. If I don't go, my buddies will be in danger."
Thirty of our bravest young men have already died this month, and it's only the 5th of August.
And the tragedy of the marines in Ohio is awful.
But do you think George Bush will interrupt his vacation and go visit the families
of the twenty marines that have died in Ohio this week?
No, because he doesn't care, he doesn't have a heart.
That's not enough to stop his little "playing cowboy" game in Crawford for five weeks.
So, as you can imagine, every day, the grieving parents that have lost -
lost, I don't like to use that word -
the parents whose child was murdered -
it's extremely difficult, you can't even get a small scab on our wound,
because every day its ripped open.
So anyway, when that filth-spewer and warmonger, George Bush was speaking
after the tragedy of the marines in Ohio,
he said a couple things that outraged me - seriously outraged me.
George Bush was talking, and he never mentioned the terrible incident of those marines,
but he did say that the families of the ones who have been killed can rest
assured that their loved ones died for a "noble cause."
He also said - he says this often, and this really drives me crazy -
he said that we have to stay in Iraq and complete the mission,
to honor the sacrifices of the ones who have fallen.
And I say, why should I want one more mother to go through what I've gone through,
because my son is dead.
You know what, the only way he can honor my son's sacrifice
is to bring the rest of our troops home.
To make my son's death count for peace and love, and not war and hatred like Bush stands for.
I don't want him using my son's death or my family's sacrifice to continue the killing.
I don't want him to exploit the honor of my son and others to continue the killing.
And I just had this brainstorm
:I'm going to Crawford. I don't know where Crawford is. But I don't care, I'm going.
And I'm going to go, and I'm going to tell them, "You get that evil maniac out here, because a
Gold Star Mother, somebody whose son's blood is on his hands, has questions for him."
And I'm going to say, "OK, listen here, George. Number one
:I demand, every time you get up and spew the filth
that you're continuing the killing in Iraq to honor my son's sacrifice, honoring the fallen heroes,
by continuing the mission; you say, 'except Casey Sheehan.'"
You don't have my permission to use my son's name.
And I'm going to say,
"And you tell me, what the noble cause is that my son died for."
And if he even starts to say "freedom and democracy," I'm going to say, "bullshit."
You tell me the truth. You tell me that my son died for oil.
You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich.
You tell me my son died so you can spread the cancer of Pax Americana,
imperialism in the Middle East.
You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine, and the terrorism will stop.
And if you think I won't say "bullshit" to the President, you're wrong,
because I'll say what's on my mind.
So anyway, I'm going to go to Crawford tomorrow, and I'm going to say,
"Get George here." And if they say, "No, he's not coming out."
Then I'm going to say, "OK, I'm going to put up my tent here
and I'm staying until he comes and talks to me."
Another thing that I'm doing is — my son was killed in 2004,
so I'm not paying my taxes for 2004.
And if I get a letter from the IRS, I'm going to say,
"You killed my son for this. I don't owe you anything."
I live in Vacaville, California. If you can find me there, come and get me and put me on trial.
It's up to us, as moral people, to break immoral laws, and resist.
As soon as the leaders of a country lie to you, they have no authority over you.
These maniacs have no authority over us.
And they might be able to put our bodies in prison, but they can't put our spirits in prison.
When I was growing up, it was "communists."
Now it's "terrorists."
So you always have to have somebody that's our enemy to be afraid of,
so the war machine can build more bombs, and guns, and bullets, and everything.
But I do see hope. I see hope in this country.
Fifty-eight percent of the American public are with us.
We're preaching to the choir, but not everybody in the choir is singing.
If all of the 58 percent started singing, this war would end.
Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform.
The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made
to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle.
If there is no struggle there is no progress.
This struggle may be a moral one,
or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical,
but it must be a struggle.
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to -
and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong
which will be imposed upon them.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of whom they oppress.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Hello everybody, and good evening to you all. Thank you again,
we really appreciate all your support in coming out tonight.
My name is Amara, and I am a student coordinator with the Multicultural Center
here at PCC.
And again, my name is Gabriela Sanchez, we're both co-coordinators for the voices program.
This 2011-2012 voices production has been long awaited,
and now that it's here,
we'd like to take time to thank the production crew
timeshare thank their production crew hope
Our ASL interpreter.
We'd like to take the opportunity to thank the Outreach and Marketing,
all of the cast and volunteers, come on out.
Of course the Sylvania Multicultural Center, the Sylvania Women's Resource Center,
The Illumination Project, Transitions, PCC Theater Department, Public Safety,
At the Multicultural Center, we are commited to social change and
working to end impression based on race, class, and gender,
which we believe stands in the way of justice.
We'd like to acknowledge that the proceeds of this production
will go to the Multicultural Center Scholarship Fund which is for students like us,
and twenty percent will go back to the voices protection.
So we'd like to take this opportunity to invite you all to make a donation, yay!
The scholarship is for student leaders and to help promote services and programs just like this,
so any amount will help.
Thank you so much.
I mean, we... Just give another round of applause for our awesome cast!
♪♪♪