Thank you all for coming. I don't want to take up too much of your time. Tonight I only want to say something that makes sense. We all see the dishonor and incompetency on display in our state and federal government. There is dread, there is fear. I can feel it. We marched week after week, month after grueling month. We have carried every grief with us. We have uttered every word. We have salvaged what we could of the last eight years. We have not failed. We have been failed.
I hear about despair, about mourning very often. V. Lenin once said, "Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle." Revolutionaries like ourselves have never lived with this despair. We do not suffer under the cruel delusion that the Democratic Party is anything more than a petulant whimper. I've seen far too much despair for this party of snakes and devils, these liars who from forked tongues promise relief and inflict pain. Somehow beggar and miser all at once! Does the distinction between the Democrats and the Republicans even matter anymore when both of them defend bombing kids? When they pick and choose which battles to lose and which ones to not even put up a fight for? The Democrats don't give a fuck about you. You've been abandoned during a global pandemic: they don't care. You've survived gun violence, racist, sexist, homophobic terror: they don't care. Tuition is going up all the time, and nobody can get a job unless it's fast food, and nobody in that party is even talking about debt and employment!
Every repressive weapon Trump has fired upon students, activists, and ordinary people was locked and loaded first by the Biden administration. Elon Musk is in there now because Kamala Harris shook Netanyahu's hand first. We saw them launder his war crimes, his ethnic cleansing. Democrats negotiated with terrorists, and now Republicans bargain with fascists. The two-party system. Let us never forget: genocide anywhere, committed against anybody, is a real, mortal threat to every living being on the planet. Never forget that the US Military's bloated arsenal is more responsible for pollution than many entire countries!
Every time our government votes to increase the military budget and its participation in Israel's ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, it elects to sentence the world to a slow, grim death.
I have come to tell you that there is no time to waste. There is no greater strength than yours. The glorious future of freedom, of flowing water, and glowing smiles is in your hearts already. It is hidden in your rage. Do you feel it burning? The conservatives hope to extinguish that flame - they hope to kill you! That hurricane, your storm, it sweeps away the cop cities, the apartheid states that liberals defend, and the liberals sneer at you, they demean you, and now they violently suppress it. They try in vain to quell the storm - still it rages on! The flood which will bear the future is born in your tears! The blood which will heal the earth has already been spilled by the martyrs. I hear all the time about how might does not make right. That's a good point. But there comes a time when right makes might. When the cause is as righteous as the people are powerful - right makes might!
A. Gramsci said once: "Educate yourselves, because we will need all of your intelligence! Stir yourselves, for we will need all your enthusiasm! Organize yourselves, for we will need all your strength!"
Climate disaster is upon us. Police fascism protects the criminals who perpetrate climate disaster. Shock doctrine capitalism keeps the masses on the streets, in prisons, in detention camps. I don't want that to be my story. I want to tell you something different. I'm here to tell you that you matter.
You can make a difference. You can make a world. You can rip apart this greasy, sick machine and you can invent the future! The solar energy grid, the international high speed railroads, the end of world hunger! I want to tear down these walls! and walk freely among the world's cultures, see the Earth's natural beauty! We can go there together one day, to the far reaches of the world. We can be there for other people, right now, and there's not a damn salary or internship or payout that's worth more to me than your intelligence, your enthusiasm, your strength. Let your free time define you more than your work, and I think you'll see for yourself just how wonderful you are! How much of a talented leader you can be! And when the water's clean and the beaches are busy, because all the work's been done, I want to lay down with you there and watch a red sun hang low in a crystal sky!
One thing I like to see when I go to live events is people moving, people talking, people sharing their enthusiasm. From up here on the soapbox it looks like an enormous tide. It looks like a galaxy of a billion dazzling stars at night. The dancing, the surging, the wailing of a crowd is the best confidence a revolutionary can have! I have confidence in our ability! I have confidence in our connectedness and in the destiny of our class! I believe that we are invincible, and that no fascist in the history of humankind has ever proved me wrong, nor ever will!
And still so many ask me - more out of fear than out of reason - what's the point? What's the point of music and of protest? of art and fire? of riot and rebellion?
Well, here's a point! I know what I think, and I know who thinks like I do.
I know what the drums sound like, they beat in my heart!
I know what the weapon is - it is my song and my sister's hand!
I have my orders. I must free myself, and all others, all at once, without compromise, by any means necessary!
I have the tools to dismantle the machine. I have Intifada, I have Revolution! Mass non-compliance, sabotage, direct action, mutual aid!
It's your campus! It's your workplaces, your streets! Your classes, taxes, tuition! Socialism or Barbarism, Liberty or Death!
We must evolve the tools of rebellion for a time of rapid change. We have Mutual Aid. Let us evolve Mutual Aid and let it become People's Defense.
If people live in fear of a tyrannical police force: if we allow our vital community members and organizers to become victims and martyrs: no amount of financial support we raise for vulnerable people will be enough. People are our greatest strength. Revolution is the flourishing and thriving of people. We must abolish the prison in our minds first so that we can free our comrades from the chains which bind their bodies. Abolition is nothing without people.
We must evolve the tools of rebellion for a time of confusion and escalating struggle. Let us evolve Direct Action and let it become Independent Unionism.
Yes! we must act. We must also act together. We must also act creatively and on our own terms. The weaponry of this oppressor is unlike anything before seen on Earth. Therefore our union must be unlike any before seen. People are our greatest strength. What can you do? Who are you friends with? Who can you do a favor for and get a favor back? I don't care anymore which organization you belong to and how your organization might disagree with mine. People who talk like that sound like the Democrats. Let us unify ourselves and fight side-by-side, friends and family as one, comrades forever!
Rhode Island has a long history of this. 1824! The first industrial strike in the so-called United States... Rhode Island women!
1672! The Narragansett tribe joins the heroic Indigenous League under Metacomet... Rhode Island men!
Hear me now! Metacomet's War rages on! Arm yourselves, people, against imperialism, colonialism, against capitalism, fascism!
His soul marches on! John Brown and Nat Turner march with him! "Struggle so that all may live this rich and overflowing life, and be sure that in the struggle you will find a joy greater than any you have ever known! Thank you.