Hello and welcome everyone! Thank you all so much for being here.
My name is Anthony Tinaro and I am organized with the Revolutionary Student Union. I am a Rhode Islander and an artist myself, but it's not about me tonight. It's about you guys.
I want to thank everyone here for coming and bringing so many supplies - I'm really amazed by the way you guys showed up here. I want to thank the musicians for helping to put this on and for all the hard work they do practicing their instruments and getting everyone together.
It means a lot to me that these bands have given me some of their showtime to speak to you guys because I know how hard they work, so please give them a round of applause.
Shoutout to all the mutual aid organizations and food banks that are here or who are collecting food elsewhere. You guys are keeping New England from starving and you're doing it during a very hard time. Thank you so much.
I want to talk about a few things tonight before we get into the music. I want to discuss what it means for us to come here and put our hands together to help people who need it. It's connected to the good fight - against fascism and corporatism, and against hunger itself.
We are all friends here, and friends know that it really takes a village. We've got nothing without each other. I owe everyone everything. I owe you my voice and my body, the shirt off my back, my talents and treasure.
The world owes its people all that it has and it gives freely. There is no tree out there that asks me for cash before I take its fruit. When I milk a cow, it doesn't swing around a tablet and ask me for a tip. I don't charge my friends for the time I spend doing them a favor, like picking them up from work or like cooking them a warm meal, even though time is money.
We all worry about our time and our money - whether we are productive enough, efficient enough, too tired, too lazy. We're always being made to feel like we're running out of time. In this capitalist system, even those of us who get where we're trying to go don't always feel like it was worth it.
Karl Marx discussed this feeling in his writings. He goes, "The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being."
All that time you spend warmly embraced in the arms of a loved one, the quiet hours in between a calm sunrise and a sleepy sunset, the days and weeks we are in love and we grieve -- these moments and memories only count to the distant billionaires as time not spent on task. The times that belong to you and your friends and your family only count to the distant billionaires as lost profit and they'll do whatever they can to steal more of your time.
The ruling class will commit even the most heinous of crimes against humanity so that they can continue harvesting more and more of your precious time, these hours on the earth which we prize beyond all other possessions. They keep dangling rewards in front of our faces, but what do we have if not each other? What are we except for the time we spend?
We only give our time to capitalists because they will starve us otherwise, they would rather jail us, they would rather kill us.
When I heard that the government was going to be deliberately starving its own people by withholding SNAP benefits, I thought of the people starving in Palestine and Sudan and the Congo. I thought of the Irish and the Indians who were forced to starve to save the British pocketbook. I thought of the Native Americans who were forced out of their homes in order to make room for parking lots and Confederate statues and McDonald's drivethrus. What this government has wrought in the distant places in the world and in our own past has come back to haunt us. The government which starves the people over there - of course they're willing to starve people here!
And we see how the blue wing and the red wing of the American Fascist Party argue amongst themselves. They argue, "shall we starve 40% of the population, or 60%? 80%?" They argue, "shall we imprison all the black and brown people or only some?" The politicians will defend ethnic cleansing and genocide when it comes to Rafah and the West Bank, but they get a little uneasy when the ethnic cleansing gets started in Los Angeles, and Chicago, and Hartford, Boston, Providence.
ICE agents are authorized to wear masks and to go fill the streets with blood and terror, and the debate here, if you can call it that, is over whether or not they should be wearing a uniform! Maybe they'd like to put a little red armband with a swastika on it too. Maybe they should continue to look like what they are - a bunch of lowlife gangsters.
That's what our politicians argue over all damn day while their constituents slide small plastic plates towards their children. While mothers carry two kids and the weight of the world into the grocery store and they leave a hundred or two dollars in debt.
Debt for school. Debt for housing. Debt for fucking DoorDash, but the military never pays interest. Wall Street doesn't worry about monthly payments or loan deferments or medical bills.
The politicians certainly aren't paying for their own housing and healthcare and food - you're paying for it, aren't you? And I know you feel the weight on your back. You're not just carrying these corrupt institutions - you're carrying the humiliation, the depression, the anxiety, the trauma. You're being treated like an animal.
We're not animals. We're human beings and we know better. Take a second and look around you for a moment. Is there anyone here whom you would not shelter? Anyone here who deserves to leave feeling hungry or thirsty? Is there anyone here to whom you would not listen? Or just give them a ride or pass them a cigarette or something so we all feel a little less alone?
We're so connected but at the same time we're also so alone. I've got everyone in my phone, but I look around and sometimes I'm in rooms full of strangers. I don't want to be strangers tonight. I want to know you, I want us to help each other, I want to be friends.
We are brothers, sisters, siblings, and comrades so let us talk freely, and hereafter let's talk freely with the people who couldn't make it here tonight. Let's talk about why we're here. We collected boxes and boxes full of supplies for families in need, yes. We raised money for the people who need it more than us and that's very fine. We're coming together to have fun and listen to music and to drink beer, and that's amazing. But that's not the whole picture. Not even close.
I don't know about you, but I'm here because of tomorrow. I'm here because I believe in tomorrow. I call myself a revolutionary because no matter what it takes, tomorrow will come.
Let's go there for a minute, let's talk about tomorrow - with open eyes and hungry hearts, let's press on, all of us in one boat, shaking the tears from our eyes. There is no future without clear purpose and steely resolve. The flesh might be weak, but the heart finds strength in numbers.
We must find the strength together to seek the alternative. The alternative to reform is revolution. The alternative to civil war is class war. The alternative to barbarism is socialism! Built from the very earth by its working and exploited people! Within our lifetimes, the end of poverty - within our lifetimes, the end of preventable illness - within our lifetimes, the end of war! Every child cared for, all the human beings wanting nothing. The wonders of the world at hand, the Earth's beauty guarded like the most sacred treasure.
Win the future - win the republic - while you are young - struggle to win! Not just survive! Believe in our siblings and friends. Believe in the audacity of our queer youth, trans youth, who are already surpassing our wildest dreams! Universal care is not a fantasy. Universal literacy is not a dream. Don't let our enemies tell us what is dream and what is reality!
We have the capability to create sprawling communities spanning continents and oceans! Without borders, we can make science and art instead of weapons!
Perhaps we should rise above the earth and take to the stars, and take ourselves on journeys to the worlds in other solar systems, and find new suns to worship. Perhaps we should remain with our Mother Earth, and carve gleaming cities into the floors of her oceans, and build towers which pierce the very heavens themselves. Towers which will house the throng of new life which is to come - the teeming billions - living together!
The future of this republic - of Newport, of New England, of all the stolen territories of American Indigenous people - all of it depends on what you do - tomorrow! I am going to shake your hand when I get off this stage and tell you thanks for listening to me go on and on and on. But I have said nothing if you do nothing tomorrow. Feed someone tomorrow. Meet someone tonight and organize with them tomorrow. Up until now our enemies have been making the plans. Tomorrow let's flip the goddamn table over!
And if you need a hug from someone you love to keep going, ask for that hug. If the music keeps you going, keep going to the music. Do what you need to do, but never stop fighting.
Tell your sister she is on the right track. Tell your brother he needs to change his ways. Tell the people around you, the people at your workplaces and schools, that we are building the new world out of the shell of the old and if we have any hope of survival we have to stick together.
Tell the nation that you are here, and here to stay, and you will not be silenced!
I also want you to understand what it could feel like to be free because I also feel the burdens of the everyday cycle, the hustle, the grind. It makes you forget what freedom feels like. I've only felt freedom a few times. Privileged as I am. Sometimes I stop myself before I lash out, but sometimes I let it roar, because the world has to know that I've felt it. I know what it's like to hold a brick in your hand, to toss it in the ocean, to run as far as you can until your lungs hurt, to laugh until your lungs hurt, to feel your soul reaching out to all that lives and feeling that connection - that high - the thrill of music pounding in your skull.
Of course that's worth dying for! Of course! You can kill a freedom fighter -- but you can't kill freedom! I live and I am free, I am a revolutionary! Are you with me?