Thank you everyone for coming. I graduated last year from Providence College and I’m currently a graduate student studying online at UMass Boston.
I know how hard it has been to fit everything you do for school and for work in with this walkout and with your organizing efforts. On behalf of my organization and myself and the free people of Rhode Island I would like to express my deep gratitude for you all being here today.
I appreciate the work you’ve been doing independently as you seek a free Palestine and a united front against fascism worldwide. Your fight for peace is honorable and it inspires me everyday to be a better friend to you and to the oppressed people of the world.
You lead the way to Providence. Today, I want to share a memory from one of the protests which took place last year.
CPAX was going to meet at Brown Medical School on Richmond Street near Dune Brothers. They were there to make a decision about divestment and I followed the students at Brown and RISD to the struggle.
We chased CPAX everywhere. When I arrived the corporation were stuffing their faces at Dune Brothers. It makes a guy sick.
While we can barely afford our dining plans, groceries, and fast food, these losers discuss the child murder budget of the university over $40 lobster rolls and $18 dollar squid salad! They heard it from us, that’s for sure.
We chased them from Dune Brothers and they entered their meeting and we chased them out of their rooms and we made sure they had a bad day. Finally, the police cleared a way for CPAX to enter a bus and leave the facility.
By now, the anger of students was profound and true. Anger provides clarity, and some of us saw an opportunity to get in the way of CPAX. Some of us used our bodies to block the street which the CPAX bus needed to use to escape.
I was there on the crosswalk and I could feel the emotions of the inside of the bus. Now that they couldn’t ignore us, they were afraid!
So many implements of power and here they were like sardines in a can! But before a negotiation could begin on the student’s terms, some of us wearing the high visibility vests came around to disperse the crowd.
I‘m not going to be the guy who nitpicks what other people do, and I‘m in a glass house so I don‘t have a stone to throw at any one. But I knew the risk I was taking when I got in front of that bus with you guys.
I knew that I wasn‘t going to listen to a cop telling me to disperse. I know I can run hot, and I appreciate being asked to calm down if I need to.
But it really hurt to watch that bus go away. And then it was just sad news after sad news.
Brown SJP suspended. Students charged with trumped up disciplinary violations. No divestment yet. I want to learn something from this. I want to grow with you all.
I figure that we learn a bit about what class struggle really is together. It reminds me of something V. Lenin said.
He says, “Neither we nor anyone else can calculate precisely what portion of the proletariat is following or will follow the social-chauvinists and opportunists. This will be revealed only by the struggle.”
We have to acknowledge the kind of moment we are in as we struggle for divestment, sanctions, and an arms embargo. Only the struggle can tell us who is for us and who will have to get out of the way.
Only the struggle can tell us who will stand for us and who is paralyzed by fear, compromised by the enemy, hesitant to raise those forces which can be raised and to take arms in the class struggle. You guys are better than me when it comes to taking bold action.
I can be hesitant sometimes when I don’t know what to do and I feel scared or helpless or guilty. I know that I need my friends to look me in the eye and tell me when I am wrong.
We can unite with anyone, no matter the organization or label, as long as all of us are open to criticism and if we are humble. The only ones we call opportunists or reformists are those who refuse good criticism without thinking.
Opportunists and revisionists are not open to criticism nor are they humble. The opportunists will follow you, they will clap for your speeches, and then they will leave you in prison, they will abandon you in your debt, they will allow the fascists to crush your international allies.
They will isolate you only so that they can say that they are your only friends and then they will sell you out to protect fantasies like “vote blue no matter who,” “safe protest” and “nonviolent change.” Tell me, my friends, has any protest been safe for the last two years?
With COVID still around, it‘s honestly been a risk factor just meeting up like this. Not to mention there‘s cameras and microphones everywhere. They are over your head, in the hands of predators, and on your phone.
The cops don‘t help either, when they swarm everywhere and you can‘t catch a breath. It's hard to feel like you have free speech when you've lived your whole life in a police state.
When young people feel like they need to get in front of a moving bus to feel heard by the people who make decisions about their everyday lives, it's hard for other people to understand. But the only way to be heard is to speak - the only way to win is to fight - the only way to live is to be free.
We need to question the politicians and pundits because the whole point of this is that we are putting ourselves on the line to stop this occupation. Whether we do so a little or a lot, everyone plays a part in historical change and in dangerous times everyone risks something.
We risk a whole lot if we don’t do enough, but the truth is we still risk too much if we do. It does not make sense to speak of safety in protest because a mass force that is a real threat to the machine is not safe.
We are riot! We are revolt! We built the encampments, we struggled in the buildings, we worked and worked and worked.
When the students went on strike, so should the unions have gone on strike. So should the small businesses - they should have shuttered their doors and fed the armies of the people.
The socialists should have followed them, we should have built the barricades, besieged the citadel, and made good on the promises we made to the future. The Intifada is the natural conclusion of all Marx, all Lenin, all of Nature.
Any living animal will fight to escape if it finds itself in a trap - under occupation, besieged, and impoverished. Only the dead are “safe”.
A hunter should know not to corner a desperate beast. But look! they kill us for sport.
The enemies of the people flaunt their abundance, joy is abound at the slaughterhouse. Genocide committed against anyone in the world threatens the climate of the entire planet.
The war on civilians in Gaza and in Sudan and in the Congo imperils the entire world. And where are we?
The revolutionaries are backed into a corner, fighting for everyone no matter what. The opportunists are frogs boiling in the pot.
No matter how hot it gets for people here and in Palestine, some people aren‘t going to jump out of the pot until you turn off the stove. It‘s time to shut Providence down.
It‘s high past time for a bold move. Every day that the fighters lose themselves in random rallies and meetings and spontaneous social-media networks is only a day spent boiling.
“Networking” but not investigating. Being “visible” while obscuring the facts of the matter. “Speaking truth to power” even though power clocked out not even thirty minutes ago.
I‘m saying this to you all because you showed up early. Some people are only coming out to protest when it‘s convenient, but you know better.
You know that it can‘t be business as usual while Gaza starves. You can‘t just sit in class today.
It‘s been 77 years of occupation, 2 years of open genocide, and here you are. I want to tell you how much that means to me.
You’re giving it everything you have. You can fight, you can dance.
You are young, you are free. You know that one body isn’t enough to lift the boot from our chests.
You gotta start acting like it. I remember the reactionaries at Providence College used to burn books on the quad.
Where are the fires at Brown and RISD? At JWU and RIC? At PC and URI and Salve? I can’t smell the smoke when I walk around Providence, but I know there’s flame. I know there's flame.
Why are you letting people put out your fire? If you don‘t listen to a thing I say today, hear me on this: you’re in charge.
You’re the democracy here and you lead from the left. You’re gonna hit liberals where it hurts because they don’t like the tough conversations.
We need to be having tough conversations because that‘s the only way problems get solved. Liberals don’t like it when you point out that “activism” isn’t something you want to be putting on your resume.
They don’t like it when you point out that Pinterest boards aren’t the same as revolutionary action. They don’t like it when you point out how surrounded we are by cops all the time, how tiring and demoralizing that is, how this cycle of rally after rally is not a replacement for real self-reflection, for democratic coalition building, for a proper counter government by which the toiling millions may wake from dreaming slumber and rise to their proper place as masters of their own destinies!
Students and workers! We know that nothing can replace class struggle. We see no other path for us - our lives will be struggle, so long as the masses have to contend with fascists, with capitalists, and with police.
Let‘s solve the problems when they come up. Let‘s accept good criticism from our neighbors and friends, whoever they are.
If we fight amongst ourselves, what good does it do? “If you‘re afraid of socialism, you‘re afraid of the people.”
We have a world to win, don‘t we? If we explain ourselves and tell the world that we cannot remain in the old ways, and we live that truth in both word and deed, the world is sure to fight with us for something new.
We can go there together. We can make them believe.
I want to live! I want to fight!
I am confident we can win! Not just within our lifetimes but today! Tomorrow! And forevermore! Thank you.