Mark Tribe Th

e PorT huron ProjecT

Texts by Mark Tribe, Nato Thompson, Rebecca Schneider72 pages 20 illustrations including 14 in color

The PorT huron ProjecT was a series of reenactments of VieTnaM-era ProTesT sPeeches. Mark Tribe, an inTerdisciPlinary arTisT, staged public reenactments of speeches by six new left leaders:angela daVis, cesar chaVez, sTokely carMichael, Paul PoTTer, howard zinn and coreTTa scoTT king. this book features TranscriPTs of The sPeeches, PhoTograPhs of The reenacTMenTs and archiVal PhoTograPhs of The original sPeakers.

reenactments of new left protest speeches

Reenactments of new Left PRotest sPeeches

Essays by Rebecca SchneideR

and nato thompSon

MarkTribe

Introduction mark tribe

Yesterday’s Future nato thompson

Protest Now and Again Rebecca Schneider

LeT anoTher WorLd be born: Stokely carmichael 1967/2008

We are aLso resPonsibLe: cesar chavez 1971/2008

The LiberaTion of our PeoPLe: angela davis 1969/2008

unTiL The LasT Gun is siLenT: coretta Scott King 1968/2006

We MusT naMe The sysTeM: paul potter 1965/2007

The ProbLeM is civiL obedience: howard Zinn 1971/2007

biography

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When i started teaching at brown University in 2005, i was surprised by how little anti-war pro-test there was on campus. brown has a long his-tory of student activism: the eruptions of 1968 culminated in brown’s adoption of a progressive new curriculum drafted by students, and in 1985, students erected shanties and staged hunger strikes to protest the university’s investments in companies doing business in South africa.

it was clear that my students objected to american involvement in iraq and the bush administration’s disregard for civil liberties, but they seemed to believe that resistance was futile. it is not hard to imagine why. in 2000, they wit-nessed a presidential election that many believed had been stolen. in 2003, many students partici-pated in the largest anti-war protests in history (the bbc estimated that six to ten million people in sixty countries protested the imminent inva-sion of iraq on February 15 and 16 of that year), but the bush and blair administrations were

undeterred. in 2004, many students worked on John Kerry’s presidential campaign, only to see George W. bush reelected by a narrow margin amid accusations of voting fraud. their forma-tive political experiences had left them demoti-vated, if not cynical.

the absence of contemporary youth-led protest movements is often attributed to the lack of a military draft, to greater economic uncertain-ty or to the rise of the internet as an alternative to face-to-face interaction. but it seems to me that this absence is symptomatic of larger political, cultur-al and intellectual dynamics as well. Slavoj Žižek argues that “things look bad for great causes today, in a ‘postmodern’ era when, although the ideological scene is fragmented into a panoply of positions which struggle for hegemony, there is an underlying consensus: the era of big explanations is over… in politics too, we should no longer aim at all-explaining systems and global emancipatory projects.” (In Defense of Lost Causes, 2008.)

Mark TribeIntroduction

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the country formed a new national organization named after Students for a democratic Society, the radical student group that was founded in 1960 and grew into the largest student activist movement in U.S. history before dissolving in 1969. the original SdS had fraught relation-ships with old Left organizations such as the League for industrial democracy (Lid), and represented a generation that united behind the saying, “don’t trust anyone over thirty.” it is thus ironic, if not surprising, that the new SdS looked to their parents’ peers for inspiration.

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in the Port Huron Project, i sought to engage the legacy of the new Left by reanimating large-ly forgotten protest speeches. i wanted to pluck speeches out of the archives and bring them into the present without smoothing over the inter-vening historical transformations. i adopted the form of historical reenactment in order to pro-duce what New York Times art critic Ken Johnson, referring to The Problem is Civil Obedience: Howard Zinn 1971/2007, called an “odd sense of chron-ological dislocation… For though the speaker seemed to be addressing people in the present, he was, in a theatrical sense, speaking to an in-visible audience, a crowd with a very different sense of the moment.” my aim was not to hold up the new Left as an ideal, but rather to create situations in which the New Left’s specific politi-cal positions, as well as its spirit of political ur-gency and utopian possibility, might be grasped intellectually, through rhetoric, and aesthetically, through embodied experience.

i chose the speeches for their historical sig-nificance and their points of resonance and dis-sonance with contemporary issues. i was struck by the ways in which many of the speeches linked imperialist war with racism and econom-

ic injustice, and by the boldness with which they called for a radically different future. The first reenactment, a 1968 speech by coretta Scott King in central park, new York, took place in September 2006 and was presented by the Conflux Festival. In July 2007, I staged reenact-ments of a 1971 howard Zinn speech on boston common and a 1965 paul potter speech on the national mall in Washington, d.c. Later that year, creative time, a new York organization that supports art in the public realm, agreed to commission and present the final three reenact-ments. and in 2008, i received a substantial grant from the creative capital Foundation to complete the project. that summer, i staged re-enactments of a 1971 speech by cesar chavez in exposition park, Los angeles, a 1969 speech by angela davis in deFremery park, oakland, and a 1967 speech by Stokely carmichael out-side the United nations in new York city. the Los angeles event was co-presented by Lace (Los angeles contemporary exhibitions). the oakland event was co-presented by the oak-land museum of california.

all six reenactments were staged at the sites of the original speeches. obtaining permits was a complicated and uncertain task—the per-mit for the Stokely carmichael reenactment was not granted until the day before the event. i cast actors to deliver the speeches to audiences that included people who came to participate in the reenactment and passersby. a great deal of ef-fort went into attracting people to the event: i worked with creative time and local partners to organize community meetings, post flyers, send e-mails and engage the media.

the speeches were given in their entirety, using original texts, transcripts or audio record-ings. the performers did not attempt to look or sound like the original speakers; i directed them to wear their everyday clothes and to deliver the

the collapse of the Soviet Union, the widespread abandonment of socialism in the face of neoliberalism and the rise of capitalism in communist asia have created a situation in which it has become difficult to sustain sweeping radical agendas. Revolution seems impossible, at least for now. all but a very few of us have abandoned what alain badiou calls the “com-munist hypothesis,” the theory that a “different collective organization is practicable, one that will eliminate the inequality of wealth and even the division of labor… [that] the existence of a coercive state, separate from civil society, will no longer appear a necessity: [that] a long process of reorganization based on a free association of producers will see it withering away.” (New Left Review, January 2008.) it appears that we have

entered an era in which reform and tactical re-sistance define the horizon of possibility.

although some students do stage small protests focused on specific issues like racial profiling by campus security and divestment from companies involved in israel’s occupation of palestine, many more are engaged in public service. if you can’t start a revolution, the logic goes, change the world by helping one person at a time. For these students, the “massive so-cial movement” that SdS president paul potter called for in his 1965 speech “We must name the System” is practically inconceivable. Yet the legacy of the new Left movements of the 1960s and ’70s continues to inform the ways in which radical politics is imagined and practiced. in 2006, students at dozens of campuses around

Max Bunzel delivering Paul Potter’s 1965 speech, “We Must Name The System,” on the National Mall, Washington, D.C., on July 26, 2007. Photo by Meghan Boudreau.

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spatial correlation between the installation and the event site. this effect reproduced in techno-logical form the performative mediation inher-ent in reenactment as a cultural form, as well as the historical distance that separated the re-enactments from the original events. as of this writing, similar installations have been exhibited at the aspen art museum and at Lace.

in September 2008, videos of the cesar chavez and angela davis performances were shown on a large video screen in times Square, new York city, as part of a public program or-ganized by creative time. For this screening, i made short videos using only close-ups of the performers, and, because there was no sound, i added closed captions, cable news-style graphics and a text crawl. the following e-mail from a passerby gives me hope that the Port Huron Project may not have been entirely in vain: “Yesterday, I stood on Broadway trying to figure out what was going on. First the intense expressions on the giant close-up attracted my attention. then the words: clearly aggressive politics and from another time. Yet the image was brand new and in hd quality. could someone really be saying this somewhere in the U.S.a. today?”

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the Port Huron Project videos are available online at www.marktribe.net

speeches in their own voices. i made no attempt to theatricalize the performances or to create any illusion of returning to the past. my guid-ing principle was to realize the idea—reenacting new Left protest speeches at their original loca-tions—in a straightforward manner without self-conscious gestures or aesthetic adornments.

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the Port Huron Project is in part a medita-tion on the role of media in protest politics. in 1968, protesters outside the democratic nation-al convention in chicago chanted “the whole world in watching,” knowing that their images would appear hours later on the evening news. two years later, Jerry Rubin wrote, “You can’t be a revolutionary today without a television set—it’s as important as a gun! every guerrilla must know how to use the terrain of the culture that he is trying to destroy!” (Do It!: Scenarios of the Revolution, 1970.) today, major newspapers and television networks ignore most political pro-tests. activists can no longer rely on mainstream media to carry their messages, so they become media makers themselves, organizing actions via online social networks, bringing their own cameras and posting videos online. although anyone who wants one can have her own tV channel, bodies in the street seem to have less of an impact on the body politic now than they did before the advent of participatory media. the internet has empowered us as individuals and small groups, but in doing so it may have short-circuited our ability to organize ourselves as a collective mass.

to engage this dynamic, i assembled a conspicuous crew of photographers, video cam-era operators, sound recordists and production assistants to document the events, turning the reenactments into small-scale media spectacles.

i then distributed the documentation on vari-ous media sharing sites, screened it on campuses and in media festivals, and exhibited it in art spaces. Los Angeles Times art critic christopher Knight reflected on this aspect of the project in his review of We Are Also Responsible: Cesar Chavez 1971/2008:

“it’s the scripted, taped and electronically distributed nature of these performances that is distinctive… the Port Huron Project is a kind of digital samizdat, a technological twist on the distribution of political leaflets that is as Ameri-can as tom paine and as revolutionary as farm-ers and small-businessmen toppling the com-bined power of George iii and the east india co. […] activism seemed futile when, despite the hundreds of thousands of people flooding into city streets around the world in protest be-fore the invasion of iraq, the ill-fated war went on. Yet there’s a difference between old models based on mass culture, which had their zenith in the 1960s era of these original speeches, and the new ‘niche culture’ of our high-tech pres-ent. mass culture is effectively over. the possi-bility for closing the contemporary gap between activism and the individual is underway in the netroots—activist blogs and other online com-munities, including artistic ones.”

the Port Huron Project installation in “de-mocracy in america,” an exhibition and event series organized by creative time curator nato thompson at the park avenue armory in new York city, explored the role of the body in pro-test, and its relation to the media, using surround sound and two synchronized video projections to reproduce the reenactments as an immersive environment. each screen corresponded to a stationary camera at the performance, display-ing a single unedited shot. matching angles of projection and speaker locations to camera angles and microphone placements produced a

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The Port Huron Project screening organized by Creative Time in Times Square, New York City, September 2008. Photo by Sam Horine.

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mark tribe’s Port Huron Project reenacted speech-es from the anti–Vietnam War movement of the 1960s and ’70s. crisscrossing the country in 2006, 2007 and 2008, these performative events transpired under the pall cast by the increasingly bellicose bush administration. as much as po-litical conditions remain historically consistent from the era of the baby boomers to the present, even the span of two years had altered the po-litical landscape. in 2006, bush’s iraq war was unpopular, but by 2008, with elections on the horizon, all things bush were political poison.

creative time commissioned reenactments of speeches by cesar chavez, angela davis and Stokely carmichael to accompany a large-scale exhibition titled “democracy in america” at new York city’s park avenue armory. Like the efforts of alexis de tocqueville in his 1834 book of the same name, the exhibition attempted to take the political temperature of a country grappling with democracy. no longer a fresh idea in the repub-

lic, democracy remained a contested notion as a political community grappled with the troubling question: how did George W. bush get into of-fice, not once, but twice?

the Port Huron Project served as a barometer for contemporary democracy. Re-spoken at the sites where they were first uttered, the words of historic New Left figures resonated like echoes in a time capsule. as it had been in the 1960s, the country was again caught up in a protracted, unpopular war. but a protest movement could hardly be located. articulate radicals like angela davis, cesar chavez and Stokely carmichael seemed to have disappeared from public life. With the country in such political turmoil, what was it that made protest so unpopular? the anti-globalization movement of the early twenty-first century had faded on U.S. soil under the trauma of 9/11, and the streets went silent.

in the summer of 2008, the legacy of ’68 was the subject of numerous books, films and

naTo ThoMPson Yesterday’s Future

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little to no protest movement on U.S. soil. the aggregate of these conditions certainly motivat-ed tribe’s desire to bring back to the stage paul potter, howard Zinn, coretta Scott King, cesar chavez, angela davis and Stokely carmichael. if this was the end of history, maybe looking to the past was a way of finding a more promising future.

each reenactment took place at a public site with a local partner, a performer, a produc-tion crew and an audience. in casting the part of the speaker, tribe looked not so much for a verisimilitude of appearance as for an ability to enact the urgency of the speech’s political mes-sage. cesar chavez’s impromptu speech at a 1971 memorial service for Vietnam War dead was restaged on location in exposition park in

front of the natural history museum of Los angeles county. Ricardo dominguez, himself an artist, addressed an audience of about 300 spectators: “For the poor it is a terrible irony that they should rise out of their misery to do battle against other poor people when the same sacri-fices could be turned against the causes of their poverty. but what have we done to demonstrate another way?” as his sonorous voice rang out over the crowd, the war in iraq raged on, young adults of color battled the people of a foreign land, and migrant workers in the United States continued their battle for recognition and fair pay.

in oakland, a large audience gathered in deFremery park on a beautiful august day to hear a speech originally delivered by angela

editorials. in the midst of these cries to remem-ber, many activists were asking if the memory of these figures proved overbearing. In Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, writer Jeff chang stipulates that the children of the baby boomer radicals, the hip-hop Generation, grew up burdened and dis-gusted by the self-righteousness of their former black panther parents. they might wax nostal-gic for a time when there was actual activism in the air, but meanwhile the incarceration rate of young black males had skyrocketed. angela da-vis, cesar chavez and Stokely carmichael may have been right that the war abroad was also the war at home, but this war at home had contin-ued and escalated for 39 years. the next genera-tion was broke, banged up and in jail.

Yet mark tribe’s project also participated in a particular genre growing in contemporary art. Reenactment had become quite a popular form over the first decade of the twenty-first cen-tury. in 1999, artist pierre huyghe recreated the film Dog Day Afternoon. in huyghe’s version, the starring role originally played by al pacino was taken over by John Wojtowicz, the original bank robber, who had just been released from jail. in 2001, artist Jeremy deller reenacted a 1984 con-frontation between police and picketing miners in orgreave, South Yorkshire. deller’s cast of 800 people included some of the original miners and police. the artist omer Fast produced God-ville (2006), an installation featuring interviews with living-history character interpreters who work at colonial Williamsburg. and in 2002, the artist Felix Gmelin remade a 1968 film in which his father ran though the streets of berlin carry-ing a red flag. The list could go on; suffice it to say that reenactment was in the air.

So what is it about reenactment that at-tracted so much attention and interest? it’s a peculiar form, often associated with Southern enthusiasts clad in muslin drawers and cotton

shirts attempting to finally win the American civil War. but in the hands of politicized artists, it has become a vehicle for memory. if the win-ners write history, then reenactment offers up an opportunity to unearth the losers’ narrative. throughout the 1990s, the art collective Repo-history used street signs to bring attention to lost histories of labor, urban renewal and queer communities. the artist Krzysztof Wodiczko uses large projections on city monuments to make overwhelmingly public the historical nar-ratives of oppressed communities. Within a po-litical art tradition, one of the driving forces has long been the power of historic memory. While mark tribe’s Port Huron Project is certainly an ex-ample, it also complicates this narrative.

to understand the zeitgeist of the bush era at the dawn of the twenty-first century, it is important to recall that a decade earlier politi-cal theorist Francis Fukuyama had argued that civilization had reached the end of history; the victory of capitalism over communism signaled the end point of ideological evolution. Liberal democracy would inevitably become the univer-sal form of government, and would henceforth reign unchallenged. Fukuyama’s emphatically counterintuitive declaration begged a look into the material reality of history itself.

couple the self-aggrandizing victory of capitalism with the hawkish, anti-enlightenment bush administration, and one gets a sense of the end not only of history, but of knowledge in general. For many thinking citizens in the Unit-ed States, the bush administration had brought embarrassment and a deep reconsideration of the entire democratic project. the bush ad-ministration’s record of accomplishments—the war in iraq, Guantanamo bay, rendition flights, wiretapping, the response to Hurricane Katrina—had crushed all hope that progress was on the table. on top of all this, there existed

The Port Huron Project installation in “Democracy in America,” organized by Nato Thompson/Creative Time at the Park Avenue Armory, New York City, September 2008. Photo by Sam Horine.

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the case of chairman bobby Seale, the tenor of her words took on a more revolutionary tone. this wasn’t simply a call for protest; it was a call for regime change. how soft the contemporary rhetoric had become! the analysis remained valid, but time had dampened the language of protest and revolution. Racism, capitalism and belligerent nationalism continued to demand the countervailing force of public disavowal.

the Port Huron Project gets its name from The Port Huron Statement, a book-length manifesto written by the Students for a democratic Soci-ety in 1962. a provocative text, its intention was to articulate an alternative to old Left thinking and to challenge the Kennedy administration and its pro-business cronies. For many, this ex-traordinarily eloquent document foretold the movement to come as it called upon middle-class college students to rise up and challenge the established order. one cannot help but feel that tribe hoped the same could be done with the Port Huron Project—that the eloquence of the new Left might again stir the imaginations and hearts of citizens today.

as of this writing on october 12, 2009, protests remain small and infrequent in this country. on the heels of the bush administra-tion came the historic election of barack hussein obama. Riding on themes of hope and change, equipped with oratorical skills matching or ex-ceeding those whose speeches tribe had selected to recast, and mobilizing a large cross-section of the american public, obama had captured the exhausted imagination of the United States. his town hall talks came with frank speech, a calm analysis of racism and a belief in environmen-talism. his words brought tears to audiences across america. and his election had transpired without a protest movement to be found.

did the words re-spoken by tribe’s per-formers foretell the election of America’s first

black president, or do they remain a deft chal-lenge to the established order? Young soldiers are still fighting men of color across the world. migrant farm workers are still denied fair pay. and black males are still incarcerated at record levels. We cannot ignore the prescient warnings of the past. While things have certainly changed, some things remain poignantly the same.

davis some 39 years earlier. Families picnicked among the oaks, community organizers set up tables and former black panthers quietly ob-served. tribe stood at the podium, welcomed the audience and began to direct people to stand in particular areas for the sake of the cameras. his instructions made clear that this was to be a reenactment without illusions—a representation that would not ask us to suspend disbelief. this was not living-history as practiced at colonial Williamsburg. it was something different. as the actress Sheilagh brooks began her speech, the audience had to grapple with an unresolved conflict between the immediacy of performance and the distance of the past. the relevance of davis’s historic words returned a sense of urgen-cy. they mattered. “and what we have to talk

about now is a united force, which sees the lib-eration of the Vietnamese people as intricately linked up with the liberation of black and brown and exploited white people in this society, and only this kind of a united front, only this kind of a united force can be victorious.” the audience could not help but consider the connections be-tween the war abroad and the war at home, be-tween then and now.

meanwhile, camera crews documenting the event moved through the crowd, heightening the sense of artifice. Yet the rhetorical power of the original speech and the intensity of brooks’s performance pushed back, insisting on their re-alness. What did that leave the audience with?

eloquence and patient rage punctuated the analysis of davis. as her speech dug into

Nato Thompson (running) and crew at We Are Also Responsible: Cesar Chavez 1971/2008, Exposition Park, Los Angeles, on July 19, 2008. Photo by Jules Rochielle.

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thirty-six years after he delivered a speech on boston common to protest the war in Viet-nam, and in the same year that artist-activist mark tribe staged a reenactment of the protest speech as part of his Port Huron Project, how-ard Zinn published a commentary on history as “creative.” the promise for the future, Zinn writes in A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, is in the past’s “fugitive moments.”

tribe’s Port Huron Project takes the prom-ise of fugitive time quite literally. orchestrating the live reenactment of six protest speeches de-livered between l965 and l971 by a variety of anti-war activists, tribe disperses or circulates one time (l960s) across or within another time (2000s), and then further disperses or circulates that laminated time across multiple media at multiple and shifting sites. the project includes live reenactments of speeches, delivered by ac-tors at original sites, which then become videos, dVds, still photographs, billboard displays and

the book in your hands—all of which are the Project, none of which is a privileged object nor singular event. thus the Port Huron Project itself takes place in multiple times, across multiple registers, in multiple media. arguably, the sense of multiple sites gives a kind of credential twist to the aspect of multiple or fugitive time that is the politic of temporal play at the project’s base.

What are fugitive moments? and when is fugitive time? could such moments be, per-haps, past moments on the run in the present? Moments when the past flashes up now to pres-ent us with its own alternative futures—futures we might chose to realize differently? might the past’s “fugitive moments” be leaky, synco-pated and errant moments—moments stitched through with repetition and manipulated to re-cur in works of performance, works of ritual, works of art, works of reenactment that play with time as malleable material? as malleable political material? might the past’s fugitive mo-

if history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, i believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when,

even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, and occasionally to win. i am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past’s fugitive

moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare. —howard Zinn (2007: 11-12)

these are queer times indeed. —Jasbir puar, Terrorist Assemblages (2007: 204)

rebecca schneider Protest Now and Again

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ed—deferred as an invocation or an appeal, a plea or a prod for future action now—ultimately occur? What are the limits of this future? What are the limits of this now?1

tribe writes here that “revolution seems impossible, at least for now.” and so, in The Port

1. in this vein, and in homage to noW (national organiza-tion of Women), we can consider artists such as mary Kelly and Sharon hayes who have recently reenacted precedent feminist protest actions. mary Kelly’s WLM Demo Remix is a ninety-second film loop in which Kelly uses a slow dissolve to blend a photo of a reenactment of a 1970 “women’s lib-eration movement” political demonstration in nYc with the archival photo the first image reenacts. The loop begins with the later image and slowly dissolves to combine past and present—with the archival image either superimposed upon or shining through the photo of the reenactment. in-terestingly, the present image never completely fades—and the archival image is never completely clear.

Huron Project the artist makes work that touches another temporal register, bringing an alterna-tive “now” into play and using seeming anach-ronism, suggestive deferral and explicit repeti-tion as political and aesthetic spurs to thought. his work may be playing fast and loose with “now”—but listen to the way angela davis stud-ded her 1969 deFremery park speech with the word. “now” resounds so many times that lis-tening to it in 2010 makes anachronism less into an error of happenstance and more into a kind of tolling bell against the industry—war—that davis so eloquently deplores. now is still now if we are still, now, waging war.

the site of “now” is, of course, the cel-ebrated substance of live performance. Live performance is most often (and some would say

ments not only remind us of yesterday’s sense of tomorrow, but compose the sense again and offer, without expiration date, a politic of pos-sibility?

as tribe suggests in his discussion of the Port Huron Project in this book, how to effectively protest government and multinational corpo-rate actions under neoliberal global capital is a question that has flummoxed the Left across the bush era. tribe’s work adds complexity to the issue by not only asking how to protest, but by interrogating the when of protest. and his ap-proach to “when” is not reductively to say that now is simply not the right time, but to suggest that now is material, has duration, and, like a medium, can be mixed and recombined. think of it this way: must protest always only happen

in a “now” considered distinct from prior nows or future nows? in another of his many spurs to action, Zinn wrote: “We are not starting from scratch” (l990: 7). that is, we are not starting now—or, our “now” is not only now.

Of course, when playing in the cross fire of time, letting anachronism do its creative work, things can feel a little uncanny, or dislocated, un-settling, or queer. the questions that arise can be mind-boggling: What happens to history if nothing is ever fully over nor discretely begun? When does a call to action, cast into the future, fully take place? only in the moment of the call? or can a call to action be resonant in the varied and reverberant cross-temporal spaces where an echo might encounter response—even years and years later? When does that which has sound-

Matthew Floyd Miller delivering Howard Zinn’s 1971 speech on location in Boston Common, Boston, on July 14, 2007. Photo by Meghan Boudreau.

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was 2007 and not 1971. but then, even in l971, Zinn was not “starting from scratch.”

Listening to the Zinn reenactor, i looked across the way to other performers and activ-ists simultaneously using some of the commons space nearby. there was a living-sculpture mime standing rock still in whiteface as if timeless. an-other man protested the chinese government’s treatment of the Falun Gong by displaying pho-tographs of tortured practitioners. a christian fundamentalist read aloud from the bible beside a poster advertising salvation and the second coming. i wondered exactly what was anachro-nistic in any of these scenes, including the faux Zinn, and what was not? how was there even such a thing as anachronism when the citational or ritual properties of passersby waving hello, or stopping to listen to “Zinn” for a moment before tossing a dime to the “Statue of Liberty,” were as studded with cross-temporal possibilities, ref-erences and memories as the Zinn reenactment itself. that the actor matthew Floyd miller was not Zinn himself, that the date was not may l971, that references to “now” were also “then”—none of these things could fully dismiss the possibility of efficacity. That some attendees or passersby might have shrugged and said, “it’s only an act,” or that some Youtube viewers might sigh and think, “too bad the time for action is over, ” or that some of us who are curious might wonder at the seeming ability of tribe to arrive so late to the scene—these criticisms are only one aspect to the event’s time-warped theatricality. The flip side to these important criticisms is an equally important possibility—one that irrupts only spo-radically in listening to the re-speeches: the fugi-tive moments of dis-temporality, of uncanniness, of error, or of a return to sense that happens in pauses, or stray sentences, or tiny moments when the “now” folds and multiplies—even if only for a fugitive flash.

The promise in a flash of fugitive realiza-tion feels something like: Yes We Can. Yes We Can protest now. and yes we must protest the limits of a “now” handily considered by Left melan-cholists to be completely subjugated to the terms of linear time. the time to protest the war in afghanistan is not over. the time to protest the war in iraq is not over. the time to protest the war in Vietnam is not over. and as Zinn has made clear across his life’s work, the time to protest WWii is not over. clearly, if sadly, the time to protest the crusades is not over. in fact, the time to protest war and its inevitable ties to industry, to capital and to the drive to empire is not, and is never, complete. (my scholarship begins to sound like a protest speech—as if such speech might be infectious?) it is now. it is again. it is the necessary vigilance of arguing for never—again. and again.

Works Cited

bryan-Wilson, Julia. “Sounding the Fury.” Artforum. January 2008.

Freeman, elizabeth. “packing history and count(er)ing Generations.” New Literary History, 2000, 31: 727–744.

puar, Jasbir. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. duke University press, 2007.

Serementakis, nadia. The Senses Still: Perception and Memory and Material Culture in Modernity. Westview press, l994.

Stein, Gertrude. Lectures in America. Random house, 1935.

Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. oxford University press, 1985.

Zinn, howard. Declarations of Independence. perennial, 1990.

Zinn, howard. A Power Governments Cannot Suppress. San Francisco, ca: city Lights books, 2007

too often) considered to be an ephemeral me-dium, due to its composition in time, making it take place only now, and otherwise disappearing. but tribe, and many others engaging reenact-ments, complicate the singularity of “now” and approach performance by mixing and matching time, playing across temporal registers through explicitly and literally re-playing. the re-play is arguably the property of theater that Gertrude Stein called its troubling “syncopated time” (1935: 93)—a trouble many contemporary art-ists are keen to deploy. the queering of time (to borrow from twenty-first-century scholars such as puar, pellegrini, Jakobsen, Frecerro, dinshaw and Freeman) troubles our heritage of enlight-enment (and capitalist) investments in straight-forward linearity as the only way to mark time—and points to a politic in veering, revolving or turning around.

So, to go back for a moment: even if “rev-olution seems impossible, at least for now,” as tribe writes, his own work suggests that it may nevertheless be possible to revolve. this is the sense of revolution that the cultural material-ist Raymond Williams, whose work was widely read by the new Left in the l960s, brings out in his influential Keywords where he reminds the reader not to forget that the word ‘revolution’ stems from simply turning around (1985: 270). perhaps this sense of revolution has gained a certain political viability—at least in art circles. The sheer numbers of twenty-first-century art-ists exploring reenactment as medial material, as a fertile mode of inquiry, as a means of mak-ing and as a mode of art practice, should be indicative of a turn toward temporality as mal-leable substance, capable of intervention and (re)articulation. in such a turn, in-time events themselves might be given, like an object, to (re)touch—causing one to question the promises as well as the limits in thinking through (and even

acting in) cross-temporality. does cross-tempo-rality or inter-temporality bear material weight or pull? or, using elizabeth Freeman’s terms, is there political efficacity in “temporal drag”? 2

i started with the Zinn epigraph, above, because the howard Zinn re-speech was the only one of tribe’s Port Huron Project reenactments i attended at the live moment of its performance. Seeing the reenactment live on boston com-mon, flush (if not packed) with photographers and videographers as well as passersby, and lis-tening to the againness of the actor re-intoning Zinn’s speech, there was no hiding the fact that this re-event was not about singular moments, ephemerality or the disappearance of some unitary performing subject. Rather, the “live-ness” of the event was itself syncopated with other times no longer live. the time, then, was not (only) now. it was past and present, present and deferred into the future when it would ob-viously be reencountered screenally. the pres-ence of technology and the explicit citationality of re-speech tilted time off of the straight and narrow—even at moments when it seemed that “Zinn” might indeed be speaking about “today” (too). perhaps particularly in the re-live event, time was explicitly folded. there was simply no singular or discreet “nowness” to the action re-acted, nor was there any invitation to suspend disbelief and forget that it was, indeed, now—it

2. See elizabeth Freeman, “packing history, count(er)ing Generations.” New Literary History, 2000, 31: 727–744. the act of revolving, or turning, or pivoting off of a linear track, may not be nostalgic, if nostalgia implies a melancholic at-tachment to loss and an assumed impossibility of return. Rather, the turn to the past—or a gestic journey through the past’s possible alternative futures—bears a political purpose for a critical approach to futurity unhinged from enlighten-ment and capitalist investment in time as linear. on the lim-its of the “american” denigration of nostalgia as compared with the cross-temporal and visceral promise in the Greek root, see nadia Serementakis, The Senses Still (Westview press, l994: 4). See Julia bryan-Wilson on nostalgia in tribe’s work in “Sounding the Fury,” Artforum, January 2008.

26 27

BRotheRS and SiSteRS, i am here today not just as the chairman of the Student nonviolent coordi-nating committee, not just as an

advocate of black power, but as a black man—a human being who joins you in voicing opposition to the war on the Vietnamese people.

the Student nonviolent coordinating committee took a stand against that war in 1965 because it is a brutal and racist war. We took our stand because we oppose the drafting of young afro-americans to defend a so-called democra-cy which they do not find at home. We took that stand because this war forms part and parcel of an american foreign policy which has repeat-edly sought to impose the status quo, by force, on colored peoples struggling for liberation from tyranny and poverty. only the white powers of the West will deny that this is a racist war. When the colored peoples of the world look at that war, they see just one thing. For them, the U.S. mil-

itary in Vietnam represents international white supremacy.

We black people have struggled against white supremacy here at home. We therefore un-derstand the struggle of the Vietnamese against white supremacy abroad. We black people have struggled against U.S. aggression in the ghet-tos of the north and South. We therefore un-derstand the struggle of the Vietnamese people against U.S. aggression abroad.

this is why there can be no question of whether a civil rights organization should in-volve itself with foreign issues. it must do so, if it claims to have any relevance to black people and their day-to-day needs in the United States of america. it must do so, if it lays any claim to that humanism which declares: no man is an island. We therefore fully support dr. mar-tin Luther King’s stand and that of coRe. We call attention to the fact that dr. King was once awarded the nobel peace prize. it seems that at

LeT anoTher WorLd be born

Speech delivered by Stokely carmichael at the “Spring mobilization to end the War in Vietnam,” United nations plaza, new York city, on april 15, 1967. Reenacted on September 7, 2008.

stoKeLY caRmIchaeL 1967/2008

Stokely Carmichael speaking at the “Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam,” United Nations Plaza, New York City, on April 15, 1967. Photo by Bob Adelman/Magnum Photos.

28 29

Ato Essandoh delivering Stokely Carmichael’s 1967 speech on location outside the United Nations, New York City, on September 7, 2008. Photo by Meghan Boudreau.

least in Sweden, the connection between ending war and ending racism is clear.

Yet there are those who would remind us that it is tactically unwise to speak out against the war. it will alienate support. it will damage our fundraising. We have a question for these ad-vocates of expediency: in the words of the bible, “What would it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”

We would remind these advocates of ex-pediency of the nuremberg trials, which af-firmed that a man has a responsibility to speak out against murder and genocide—no matter what the opinion and standing rule of his coun-try might be. this nation sent hundreds of Ger-mans to jail after World War ii precisely because they did not act on their consciences. Where is the voice of conscience today?

those who attack us for opposing the bombing of mothers, the napalming of children, the wiping out of whole villages, are in fact sup-porting the war whether they admit it or not. no neutralism is possible in the face of such acts. Would those same critics have advocated silence when medgar evers was murdered in mississippi? Would those same critics have urged expediency when the four young girls were bombed in a bir-mingham church?

to these critics, we would quote the words of Frederick douglass: “those who profess to fa-vor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. they want rain without thunder and lightning. they want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. power concedes nothing without a de-mand—it never has and it never will.”

We have not only a right to speak out—we have an obligation. We must be involved, we must fight racism in all its manifestations. We must also look truthfully at this land of the free and home of the brave, and remember that there is another side to that land—a side better known to the rest of the world than to most americans. there is another america, and it is an ugly one. it is an america whose basic policy at home and abroad can only be called genocide.

When we look at the america which brought slaves here once in ships named Jesus, we charge genocide. When we look at the amer-ica which seized land from mexico and prac-tically destroyed the american indians—we charge genocide. When we look at all the acts of racist exploitation which this nation has com-mitted, whether in the name of manifest destiny or anti-communism, we charge genocide.

We must look at the america which de-plores apartheid in South africa while our banks and private business keep the South afri-can economy alive and thus maintain the most brutal legalized system of white oppression to be found in the world today. it is not merely the whites in South africa who suppress the huge black majority. it is also white Westerners of sev-eral other nations, including this one. the Unit-ed States rescued the South african economy six years ago. today, almost 200 american com-panies are there with an investment of half a billion dollars. an american company helped South Africa to build its first atomic reactor. american companies are helping white South africa arm to destroy a black revolution.

there is an almost endless list of these other americas, but they all add up to the same thing: this nation was built on genocide and it contin-ues to wage genocide. it wages genocide in many forms—military, political, economic and cultur-al—against the colored peoples of our earth.

It Is uP to You—the PeoPLe heRe todaY—to maKe YouR feLLow cItIzens see thIs otheR sIde of ameRIca.

30 31

we have seen how peacetime conscription has al-lowed the president to extend this nation’s pow-er without the consent of its citizens. For years we have seen the Pox Americana in operation. the United States invaded one country after another to suppress social revolution. the United States has invaded one country after another to start reactionary revolts where social progress threat-ened to materialize. the draft takes the enslaved black youth of this society and uses them to sup-port enslavement abroad. the draft says that a black man must spend two years of his life learn-ing how to kill people of his own color and peo-ple of his own kind: poor and powerless.

the draft is white people sending black people to make war on yellow people in order to defend the land they stole from red people. the draft must end: not tomorrow, not next week, but today.

We must also ask the question now heard in certain circles: is it true, mr. president, that there is a planned invasion of north Vietnam? i ask this question in all seriousness. We recall that millions of americans once watched a pres-ident speak on television and assure us that there was no planned invasion of cuba. So is it true, Lyndon, that there is a planned land invasion of north Vietnam? Lyndon—we’re listening.

practical suggestions for ending the war abound. We will not offer new proposals. the problem we face is not one of finding a formula. but if we can admit that this country is indeed a rapist of the colored peoples on this earth—a

rapist, today, of Vietnamese freedom—then let me just ask this: if you were being raped, would you call for negotiation or withdrawal?

brothers and sisters, the future and the is-sues are yours. We urge that the Spring mobili-zation be fully supported so that it may lead to a summer mobilization and fall mobilization and on to a great amassing of people who shall speak out against this war.

it may seem that such opposition has lit-tle effect on policy. but there is good reason to believe that the war would have been escalated even more had it not been for the opposition al-ready manifested. We must sustain our declara-tion of war on the Vietnam War, on racism, on genocide. to everyone whom the Vietnam War affects, to all the poor and powerless, and partic-ularly to black youth, let me read these words of a black poet, margaret Walker:

For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way from confusion from hypocrisy and misunderstanding, trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people all the faces all the adams and eves and their countless generations;

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth, let a people loving freedom come to growth, let a beauty full of healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control!

the dRaft Is whIte PeoPLe sendIng bLacK PeoPLe to maKe waR on YeLLow PeoPLe In oRdeR to defend the Land theY stoLe fRom Red PeoPLe.

this nation has been not only anti-revolutionary but anti-poor, anti-wretched of the earth.

most americans do not wish to look at these truths. they prefer to claim that we are a moral people, fighting a holy war against Com-munism. We claim that we want peace in Viet-nam. Last december, the american ambassa-dor to the United nations, arthur Goldberg, wrote to Secretary General U thant: “We turn to you … with the hope and the request that you will take whatever steps you consider nec-essary to bring about the necessary discussions which would lead to a cease-fire.” And U Thant offered his proposals. the United States ig-nored them.

Meanwhile, up on the 38th floor of this building—the United nations—sits the hon-orable dr. Ralph bunche, who once marched against police brutality in Selma, alabama, and today condemns those of us who would speak out against the war.

this nation’s hypocrisy has no limits. newspapermen speak of LbJ’s credibility gap; i call it lying. president Lyndon baines Johnson talks of peace while napalming Vietnamese chil-dren, and i can think of just one thing: he’s talk-ing trash out of season, without a reason. Let’s not call it anything but that.

it is up to you—to the people here today—to make your fellow citizens see this other side of america. in your great numbers lies a small hope. but this mass protest must not end here. We must move from words to deeds. We must go back to our communities and organize against the war. black people must begin to organize the

ghettoes for control by the people and against exploitation. exploitation and racism do not ex-ist only in this nation’s foreign policy, but right here in the streets of new York.

it is crystal clear to me that white people, in their turn, must begin to deal with the fun-damental problems of this country: racism and exploitation. You must go into the white com-munity, where racism originates. You must go into the white community, where the Vietnam War originated. You must work there, organize there, strike against the american system at its base. You must begin to organize in the poor white community as SdS has done in chicago. We urge you to help make the Vietnam Sum-mer now being planned in boston into a nation-wide effort.

You must raise the question: why is there a department of War and not a department of peace? You must go into the churches and tell the churchmen that you heard they followed the one who wanted to bring good news to the poor. tell them that you heard they taught love and nonviolence. tell them that you heard they wor-shipped the one who said: the world belongs to all peoples. tell them that you wait for their an-swer, and that answer must be action.

We must all speak out more strongly against the draft. our position on the draft is very simple: hell no, we ain’t going.

The draft exemplifies as much as racism the totalitarianism which prevails in this nation in the disguise of consensus democracy. the president has conducted war in Vietnam with-out the consent of congress or of the american people—without the consent of anybody ex-cept maybe Luci, Linda and Ladybird. in fact, the war itself is for the birds—with the omission perhaps of George and pat. the president sends young men to die without the consent of any-one. there is nothing new about this. For years,

You must RaIse the questIon: whY Is theRe a dePaRtment of waR and not a dePaRtment of Peace?

32 33

ThanK YoU FoR inVitinG me to participate in this meeting. it is hard for me because we in the farm work-ers movement have been so absorbed

in our own struggle that we have not participated actively in the battle against the war.

in thinking about the memorial service i keep thinking about the women in Washington, d.c., who participated in the veterans’ protest against the war. the L.A. Times reported it as follows:

anna pine of trenton, nJ, wanted to dis-card her dead son Fred’s air medal & bronze Star and purple heart and a half-dozen other awards for heroism. but she had already turned away crying when the first former soldier announced, hands trembling, “and so we cast away these sym-bols of dishonor, shame and inhumanity.”“my son would be here,” mrs. pine said. “he would throw these things away. but

where do i throw them?” she wondered, peering through tears about the crowd that had edged her away from the veterans. an hour passed, the crowd dispersed, mrs. pine approached the fence. digging into a big plastic bag, she grabbed a handful of medals and threw them against the statue.

i have eight children. it is almost impossible to imagine the pain of seeing your own child die for a cause that neither of you believe in—especially when there are so many needs in the world and so many specific ways to work for change.

What causes our children to take up guns to fight their brothers in lands far away?

in our case thousands and thousands of poor, brown and black farm workers go off to war to kill other poor farm workers in Southeast asia. Why does it happen? perhaps they are afraid or perhaps they have come to believe that in order to be fully men, to gain respect from other men and to have

We are aLso resPonsibLe

Speech delivered by cesar chavez at a Vietnam veterans memorial rally in exposition park, Los angeles, on may 2, 1971. Reenacted on July 19, 2007.

cesaR chaVez 1971/2008

Cesar Chavez speaking at a rally opposing Proposition 22 in September 1972, location unknown. Photo by Glen Pearcy/Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.

34 35

Ricardo Dominguez delivering Cesar Chavez’s 1971 speech on location in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, on July 19, 2008. Photo by Cesar Garcia.

their way in the world, they must take up the gun and use brute force against other men.

they have had plenty of examples: in delano and Salinas and coachella all the growers carry gun racks and guns in their trucks. the police all car-ry guns and use them to get their way. the security guards (rent-a-cops) carry guns and nightsticks. the stores sell guns of all shapes and sizes.

it would be easy to put all the blame on the generals and the police and the growers and the oth-er bosses. or on violence in tV or the movies or war toys.

but we are also responsible. Some husbands prove to their children that might makes right by the way they beat on their own wives. most of us hon-or violence in one way or another, in sports if not at home. We insist on our own way, grab for security and trample on other people in the process.

but we are responsible in another, more ba-sic way. We have not shown our children how to sacrifice for justice. Say all that you will about the army, but in time of crises the army and the navy demand hard work, discipline and sacrifice. And so too often our sons go off to war grasping for their manhood at the end of a gun and trained to work and to sacrifice for war.

For the poor it is a terrible irony that they should rise out of their misery to do battle against other poor people when the same sacrifices could be turned against the causes of their poverty. but what have we done to demonstrate another way? talk is cheap and our young people know it best of all. it is the way we organize and use our lives every day that tells what we believe in.

Farm workers are at last struggling out of

their poverty and powerlessness. they are saying no to an agricultural system that has condemned them to a life of economic slavery.

at the same time they are making a new way of life for themselves and their children. they are turning their sacrifices and their suffering into a powerful campaign for dignity and for justice.

their nonviolent struggle is not soft or easy. it requires hard work and discipline more than any-thing else. it means giving up on economic security. it requires patience and determination. Farm work-ers are working to build a nonviolent army trained and ready to sacrifice in order to change conditions for all of our brothers in the fields.

our opponents are at work every day to crush us or to get us off target or to outmaneu-ver us with the american public. there is no way to defeat them unless we also are at work every day—week after week, month after month, and year after year if necessary, outlasting the opposi-tion and defeating them with time if necessary.

that is what it takes to bring change in america today. nothing less than organized, disciplined nonviolent action that goes on every day will challenge the power of the corporations and the generals.

the problem is that people have to decide to do it. individuals have to decide to give their lives over to the struggle for specific and meaningful so-cial change. and as they do that others will join them, and the young will join too.

if we provide alternatives for our young out of the way we use the energies and resources of our own lives, perhaps fewer and fewer of them will seek their manhood in affluence and war. perhaps we can bring the day when children will learn from their earliest days that being fully man and fully woman means to give one’s life to the liberation of the brother who suffers. it is up to each one of us. it won’t happen unless we decide to use our own lives to show the way.

taLK Is cheaP and ouR Young PeoPLe Know It best of aLL. It Is the waY we oRganIze and use ouR LIVes eVeRY daY that teLLs what we beLIeVe In.

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Yeah, i’d JUSt LiKe to SaY that i like being called sister much more than professor, and i’ve continually said that if my job—if keeping my

job—means that i have to make any compromises in the liberation struggle in this country, then i’ll gladly leave my job. this is my position. now, there has been a lot of debate in the left sector of the anti-war movement as to what the orientation of that movement should be. and i think there are two main issues at hand. one group of people feels that the movement, the anti-war movement, ought to be a single-issue movement: the cessation of the war in Vietnam. they do not want to relate it to the other kinds and forms of repression that are taking place here in this country. there’s another group of people who say that we have to make those connections. We have to talk about what’s happen-ing in Vietnam as being a symptom of something that’s happening all over the world, of something that’s happening in this country. and in order for

the anti-war movement to be effective, it has to link up with the struggle for black and brown liberation in this country, with the struggle of exploited white workers. now, i think we should ask ourselves why that first group of people want the anti-war move-ment to be a single-issue movement. Somehow they feel that it’s necessary to tone down the po-litical content of that movement in order to attract as many people as possible. they think that mere numbers will be enough in order to affect this gov-ernment’s policy. but i think we have to talk about the political content. We have to talk about the necessity to raise the level of consciousness of the people who are involved in that movement. and if you analyze the war in Vietnam, first of all it ought to become obvious that if the United States government pulled its troops out of Vietnam that that repression would have to crop up somewhere else. and in fact, we’re seeing that as this country is being defeated in Vietnam, more and more acts of repression are occurring here on the domestic

The LiberaTion of our PeoPLe

Speech delivered by angela davis at a black panther rally in deFremery park (aKa bobby hutton park), oakland, on november 12, 1969. Reenacted on august 2, 2008.

angeLa daVIs 1969/2008

Angela Davis speaking at a Black Panther rally in DeFremery Park, Oakland, on November 12, 1969. Photo by Stephen Shames/Polaris Images.

38 39

Sheilagh Brooks delivering Angela Davis’s 1969 speech on location in DeFremery Park, Oakland, on August 2, 2008. Photo by Rick Bronson.

scene. and i’d just like to point to the most dra-matic one in the last couple of weeks, which is the chaining and gagging of chairman bobby Seale and his sentence to four years for contempt of court. i think that demonstrates that if the link-up is not made between what’s happening in Vietnam and what’s happening here we may very well face a period of full-blown fascism very soon.

now, i think there’s something perhaps more profound that we ought to point to. this whole economy in this country is a war economy. it’s based on the fact that more and more and more weapons are being produced. What happens if the war in Vietnam ceases? how is the economy going to stand unless another Vietnam is created, and who is to determine where that Vietnam is gonna be? it can be abroad, or it can be right here at home, and i think it’s becoming evident that that Vietnam is entering the streets of this country. it’s becoming evident in all the brutal forms of repres-sion, which we can see everyday of our lives here. and this reminds me, because i think this is very relevant to what’s happening in Vietnam—that is, the military situation in this country. i saw on televi-sion last week that the head of the national Guard in california decided that from now on their mili-tary activities are gonna be concentrated in three main areas. now what are these areas? First of all, he says, disruption in minority communities, then he says disruption on the campus, then he says disruption in industrial areas. i think it points to the fact that they are going to begin to use that

whole military apparatus in order to put down the resistance in the black and brown community, on the campuses, in the working-class communities. i think that they are really preparing for this now. it’s evident that the terror is becoming not just isolated instances of police brutality here and there, but that terror is becoming an everyday instrument of the institutions of this country. the chief of the na-tional Guard said that outright. it’s happening in the courts. there is terror in the courts: that judge, whose name is hoffman, proved that he is going to take on the terror in the society and bring it into the courts, that he is going to use what is supposed to be a court of law, justice, equality, whatever you wanna call it, in order to mete out all of these, you know, fascist acts of repression.

now, something else has been happening in the courts, and i think this is an incident that we all ought to be aware of because it’s another instance of terror entering into the courts. down in San Jose, not too long ago, a young chicano was on trial, and i’d like to read a quote from the transcript, a quote by Judge—i think his name is chargin, the fascist. he said, “mexican peo-ple, after 13 years of age, it’s perfectly all right to go out and act like an animal. maybe hitler was right. the animals in our society probably ought to be destroyed because they have no right to live among human beings. You are lower than animals and haven’t the right to exist in organized society, just miserable lousy rotten people.” now this is the direct quote from the transcript that’s happened within the walls of the courtroom. how can we fail to see that there’s an intricate connection between that type of thing, between what happened to bobby Seale, between the un-warranted imprisonment of huey newton, and what’s happening in Vietnam. We are facing a common enemy, and that enemy is Yankee impe-rialism, which is killing us both here and abroad. now i think anyone who would try to separate

how Is the economY goIng to stand unLess anotheR VIetnamIs cReated, and who Is goIng to deteRmIne wheRe that VIetnam Is gonna be? It can be abRoad, oR It can be RIght heRe at home.

40 41

anti-war movement hasn’t just depended on num-bers. it hasn’t just depended upon attracting more and more people into the movement regardless of their political orientation. if we remember, the debate a long time ago was whether the anti-war movement or the peace movement then should talk about demanding the cessation of bombing in Vietnam or whether it should talk about with-drawing troops. i think now it’s very obvious that you have to talk about withdrawing all ameri-can troops from Vietnam. this has occurred only through the process of trying to raise the level of political consciousness of the people who were in that movement. and right now what we have to talk about is not just withdrawing american troops, but also recognizing the South Vietnamese provisional Revolutionary Government.

now, i think we have to go a step further. this is what’s happening inside the anti-war move-ment, but we have to take it further. and we have to say that if they—if we demand the immediate withdrawal of american troops in Vietnam [inau-dible] of the South Vietnamese provisional Revolu-tionary Government, then we also have to demand the release of all political prisoners in this country, here. this is what we have to demand. and i think that the liberation struggle here sheds a lot of light on what’s happening in Vietnam. it shows us that we can’t just push for peace in Vietnam, that we have to talk about also recognizing a revolutionary government. there was a kind of a peace that was obtained right here in this country, in a courtroom, that was the peace which Judge hoffman forced on chairman bobby Seale by coercion, by gagging him and binding him to his chair. this is not the kind of peace that we wanna talk about in Viet-nam, the peace in which you have a puppet regime representing the interests of this country in which you have other means of establishing the power of this government in Vietnam.

and i think on a much more personal level,

there’s some parallels that we can draw. Some very profound parallels i think. and we have to say that bobby Seale’s mother, who learned that he had been chained and gagged and that he had been sentenced to four years for contempt of court, is no less grieved than an american woman who finds out that her son has been captured in Viet-nam. i think we have to say that—that erica hug-gins and Yvonne carter were no less grieved when they found that their husbands bunchy and John [inaudible] liberation, than an american wife would feel about her husband there. but there is a different political consciousness involved, and this is what we have to show the american people to-day. We have to show the american people that their sons and their husbands are being victimized by american imperialism. they are being forced to go and fight a dirty war in Vietnam. They are

victims too, and they have to be shown that their true loyalties ought to be with us in the liberation struggle here and with the Vietnamese people in their liberation struggle there. now, bobby Seale once made a statement at a peace conference in montreal that the frontline of the battle against racism was in Vietnam. i think we have to ask our-selves what this means, because a lot of people may have thought that what this means is that we can depend on the Vietnamese to win our battle here. this is not what he was saying. he was pointing to that inherent connection between what’s hap-pening there and what’s happening here. and i think we can say—and i’m talking from personal experience, i was in cuba this summer and i met with some representatives of the South Vietnam-

we haVe to show the ameRIcan PeoPLe that theIR sons and theIR husbands aRe beIng VIctImIzed bY ameRIcan ImPeRIaLIsm.

those struggles, anyone who would say that in order to consolidate an anti-war movement, we have to leave all of these other outlying issues out of the picture, is playing right into the hands of the enemy. i mean, it’s an old saying; i think it’s been demonstrated over and over that it’s correct that once the people are divided, the enemy will be victorious. We will face defeat. and i think the attempt to isolate what’s happening on the do-mestic scene from the war in Vietnam is playing right into the hands of the enemy, giving him the chance to be victorious.

and i think there’s a much more concrete problem. if you talk about the anti-war movement as a separate movement, what happens? What happens if suddenly the troops are pulled out of Vietnam? What happens if nixon suddenly says we’re gonna bring all of the boys home? the peo-ple, the thousands, the millions of people who had been involved in that movement would feel as if they had been victorious. i think perhaps a num-ber of them would think that they could return home and relish in their victory and say that we have won, completely ignoring the fact that huey newton is still in jail, that erica huggins and all the other sisters and brothers in connecticut are still in jail. this is what we are faced with if we cannot make that connection between the international scene and the domestic scene. and i don’t think there’s any question about it. We can’t talk about protesting the genocide of the Vietnamese people without at the same time doing something to stop the genocide that is—that liberation fighters in this country are being subjected to. now i think we can draw a parallel between what’s happening right now and what’s—what happened during the 1950s. as the United States government was be-ing defeated in the Korean War, more and more repression did occur on the domestic scene. the mccarthy witch hunt started. this is the com-munist party, which was the main target of that.

i think we have to ask ourselves why that period served to completely stifle revolutionary activity in this country. people were scared, they ran away, they lost their families, they lost their homes. they did not resist. this is the problem. they did not resist. Right now the black panther party is the main target of the repression that’s coming down in this society, and the black panther party is re-sisting. and we all ought to talk about standing up and resisting this oppression, resisting the on-slaught of fascism in this country. otherwise, the movement is going to be doomed to failure. i think we can say that if the anti-war movement defends only itself and does not defend liberation fighters in this country, then that movement is going to be doomed to failure, just as we can say also if we in the black liberation movement and the liberation movement for all people in—all oppressed and exploited people in this country, defend only our-selves, then we too will be doomed to failure.

Within the whole liberation struggle in this country, the black liberation struggle and the brown liberation struggle, there has continually been the sentiment against the american imperialist aggres-sive policies throughout this world because we have been forced to see that the enemy is american im-perialism. and although we feel it here at home it’s being felt perhaps much more brutality in Vietnam, it’s being felt in Latin america, it’s being felt in africa. We have to make these connections. [inaudible] has to see that unless it makes that con-nection, it’s going to become irrelevant. and what we have to talk about now is a united force, which sees the liberation of the Vietnamese people as in-tricately linked up with the liberation of black and brown and exploited white people in this society, and only this kind of a united front, only this kind of a united force, can be victorious.

now, i think that there’s something else that we ought to consider when we try to analyze what has happened in the anti-war movement. and the

42 43

Sheilagh Brooks delivering Angela Davis’s 1969 speech on location in DeFremery Park, Oakland, on August 2, 2008. Photo by Nick Davis.

ese provisional Revolutionary Government and they told us that we were—we revolutionaries in this country—were their most important allies. and not just because we take signs and march in front of the White house saying U.S. government get out of Vietnam because—rather because we are actively involved in struggling to satisfy the needs of our people in this country, and in this way, as they point out, we are able to internally destroy that monster, which is oppressing people all over the country. i have to admit that i felt a little bit inadequate about that because what he’s saying—what the representative of the South Vietnamese provisional Revolutionary Govern-ment was saying—is that we are to escalate our struggle in this country, we ought to talk about making more and more demands for the libera-tion of our people here and this is going to be what they will depend on. this is going to help them in their liberation struggle. now i think that we ought to talk in the context of this upcoming march here and in Washington about the [inau-dible] to make simultaneous demands, and those demands ought to be immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. there ought to be vic-tory for the Vietnamese. there ought to be also recognition of the revolutionary government in South Vietnam, and i think this is perhaps most important, we ought to demand the release of po-litical prisoners in this country.

Just one last thing. You know nixon made a speech, on november 3rd i think it was, and he said something that we ought to take heed of, we ought to understand. he said, “Let us understand that the Vietnamese cannot defeat or humiliate our govern-ment. only americans can do that.” i feel that it is our responsibility to fight on all fronts, to fight on all fronts simultaneously to defeat and to humiliate the U.S. government and all the fascist tactics by which it is repressing liberation fighters in this country.

thank you very much.

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MY deaR FRiendS of peace and freedom, i come to new York today with the strong feeling that my dearly beloved

husband, who was snatched suddenly from our midst, slightly more than three weeks ago now, would have wanted me to be present to-day. though my heart is heavy with grief from having suffered an irreparable personal loss, my faith is stronger today than ever before. as many of you probably know, my husband had accepted an invitation to speak to you to-day. and had he been here, i am sure he would have lifted your hearts and spirits to new levels of understanding. i would like to share with you some notes taken from my husband’s pockets upon his death. he carried many scraps of pa-per upon which he scribbled notes for his many speeches. among these notes was one set which he never delivered. perhaps they were his early thoughts for the message he was to give to you

today. i simply read them to you as he recorded them. and i quote:

ten commandments on Vietnam:thou shalt not believe in a military victory.number two: thou shalt not believe in a political victory.number three: thou shalt not believe that they, the Vietnamese, love us. number four: thou shalt not believe that the Saigon government has the support of the people. Number five: Thou shalt not believe that the majority of the South Vietnamese look upon the Vietcong as terrorists. number six: thou shalt not believe the figures of killed enemies or killed americans. number seven: thou shalt not believe

unTiL The LasT Gun is siLenT

Speech delivered by coretta Scott King at a peace rally in central park’s Sheep meadow, new York city, on april 27, 1968. Reenacted on September 16, 2006

coRetta scott KIng 1968/2006

Coretta Scott King speaking at a peace rally in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow, New York City, on April 27, 1968. Photo courtesy of Bettmann/Corbis.

46 47

Gina Brown delivering Coretta Scott King’s 1968 speech on location in Central Park, New York City, on September 16, 2006. Photo by Veena Rao.

that the generals know best. number eight: thou shalt not believe that the enemy’s victory means communism. number nine: thou shalt not believe that the world supports the United States. number ten: thou shalt not kill.

You who have worked with and loved my husband so much, you who have kept alive the burning issue of war in the american con-science, you who will not be deluded by talk of peace, but who press on in the knowledge that the work of peacemaking must continue until the last gun is silent:

i come to you in my grief only because you keep alive the work and dreams for which my husband gave his life. my husband derived so much of his strength and inspiration from the love of people who shared his dream, that i too now come hoping you might strengthen me for the lonely road ahead.

it was on april 4th, 1967, that my husband gave his major address against the war in Viet-nam. on april 4th, 1968, he was assassinated. i remember how he agonized over the great mis-understanding which took place as a result of his position on the Vietnam War. his motives were questioned, his credentials were challenged, and his loyalty to this nation maligned. now, one year later, we see almost unbelievable results coming from all of our united efforts. had we then suggested the possibility of two peace can-didates as frontrunners for the presidency of the United States, our sanity certainly would have been questioned. Yet i need not trace for you

how many of our hopes have been realized in these twelve short months.

never in the history of this nation have the people been so forceful in reversing the pol-icy of our government in regard to war. We are indeed on the threshold of a new day for the peacemakers.

but just as conscientious action has re-versed the tide of public opinion and govern-ment policy, we must now turn our attention and the sole force of the movement to the prob-lems of the poor here at home. my husband al-ways saw the problem of racism and poverty here at home and militarism abroad as two sides of the same coin. in fact, it is very clear that our policy at home is to try to solve social prob-lems through military means, just as we have done abroad. the interrelatedness of domestic and foreign affairs is no longer questioned. the bombs we drop on the people of Vietnam con-tinue to explode at home with all of their dev-astating potential. and so i would invite you to join us in Washington in our effort to enable the poor people of this nation to enjoy a fair share of america’s blessing.

there is no reason why a nation as rich as ours should be blighted by poverty, disease and illiteracy. it is plain that we don’t care about our poor people, except to exploit them as cheap la-bor and victimize them through excessive rents and consumer prices.

our congress passes laws which subsidize corporation farms, oil companies, airlines and

we aRe Indeed on the thReshoLd of a new daY foR the PeacemaKeRs.

the woman PoweR of thIs natIon can be the PoweR whIch maKes us whoLe and heaLs the bRoKen communItY now so shatteRed bY waR and PoVeRtY and RacIsm.

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houses for suburbia. but when they turn their attention to the poor, they suddenly become concerned about balancing the budget and cut back on funds for head Start, medicare and mental health appropriations. the most tragic of these cuts is the welfare section to the So-cial Security amendment, which freezes feder-al funds for millions of needy children who are desperately poor but who do not receive public assistance. it forces mothers to leave their chil-dren and accept work or training, leaving their children to grow up in the streets as tomorrow’s social problems.

this law must be repealed, and i encour-age you to join welfare mothers on may 12th, mother’s day, and call upon congress to es-tablish a guaranteed annual income instead of these racist and archaic measures, these mea-sures which dehumanize God’s children and create more social problems than they solve.

We will be marching towards Washington soon. We will begin in memphis where my hus-band was slain and kick off this poor people’s campaign. We will be marching towards Wash-ington to demand that america share its abun-dant life with all its citizens.

i would now like to address myself to the women. the woman power of this nation can be the power which makes us whole and heals the broken community now so shattered by war and poverty and racism. i have great faith in the power of women who will dedicate them-selves wholeheartedly to the task of remaking our society. i believe that the women of this na-

tion and the world are the best and last hope for a world of peace and brotherhood.

this challenge is simply but profoundly stated in the words of one of the greatest black poets, the late Langston hughes. he called the poem “mother to Son,” but it speaks to the sons and the daughters of this generation and those yet unborn. it speaks of the determination and the indestructible spirit of a black people who re-fuse to be conquered. this spirit must somehow be imbued in the hearts and souls of women and their sons everywhere. Listen to this black moth-er as she councils her son in all of her ungram-matical profundity:

Well, son, i’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.it’s had tacks in it,and splinters,and boards torn up,And places with no carpet on the floor—bare.but all the time i’se been a-climbin’ on,and reachin’ landin’s,and turnin’ corners,and sometimes goin’ in the darkWhere there ain’t been no light.So, boy, don’t you turn back.don’t you set down on the steps.’Cause you finds it’s kinda hard.don’t you stop now—For i’se still goin’, honey,i’se still climbin’,and life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

With this determination, with this faith, we will be able to create new homes, new com-munities, new cities, a new nation. Yea, a new world, which we desperately need.

thank you.

neVeR In the hIstoRY of thIs natIon haVe the PeoPLe been so foRcefuL In ReVeRsIng the PoLIcY of ouR goVeRnment In RegaRd to waR.

Gina Brown delivering Coretta Scott King’s 1968 speech on location in Central Park, New York City, on September 16, 2006. Photo by Winona Barton-Ballentine.

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MoSt oF US GReW Up think-ing that the United States was a strong but humble nation, that involved itself in world af-

fairs only reluctantly, that respected the integri-ty of other nations and other systems, and that engaged in wars only as a last resort. this was a nation with no large standing army, with no de-sign for external conquest; that sought primar-ily the opportunity to develop its own resources and its own mode of living. if at some point we began to hear vague and disturbing things about what this country had done in Latin america, china, Spain and other places, we somehow re-mained confident about the basic integrity of this nation’s foreign policy. the cold War with all of its neat categories and black-and-white de-scriptions did much to assure us that what we had been taught to believe was true.

but in recent years, the withdrawal from the hysteria of the cold War era and the develop-

ment of a more aggressive, activist foreign policy have done much to force many of us to rethink at-titudes that were deep and basic sentiments about our country. the incredible war in Vietnam has provided the razor, the terrifying sharp cutting edge that has finally severed the last vestige of il-lusion that morality and democracy are the guid-ing principles of american foreign policy. the saccharine self-righteous moralism that promises the Vietnamese a billion dollars of economic aid at the very moment we are delivering billions for economic and social destruction and political re-pression is rapidly losing what power it might ever have had to reassure us about the decency of our foreign policy. the further we explore the reality of what this country is doing and planning in Viet-nam the more we are driven toward the conclu-sion of Senator morse that the United States may well be the greatest threat to peace in the world to-day. that is a terrible and bitter insight for people who grew up as we did; and our revulsion at that

We MusT naMe The sysTeM

Speech delivered by paul potter at the “march on Washington to end the War in Vietnam,” national mall, Washington, d.c., on april 17, 1965. Reenacted on July 26, 2007.

PauL PotteR 1965/2007

Paul Potter, president of Students for a Democratic Society in 1964 and 1965. Photo by Todd Gitlin, date and location unknown.

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Max Bunzel delivering Paul Potter’s 1965 speech on location at the National Mall, Washington, D.C., on July 26, 2007. Photo by Meghan Boudreau.

insight, our refusal to accept it as inevitable or nec-essary, is one of the reasons that so many people have come here today.

the president says that we are defending freedom in Vietnam. Whose freedom? not the freedom of the Vietnamese. The first act of the first dictator, Diem, the United States installed in Vietnam, was to systematically begin the perse-cution of all political opposition, non-commu-nist as well as Communist. The first American military supplies were not used to fight Commu-nist insurgents; they were used to control, im-prison or kill any who sought something better for Vietnam than the personal aggrandizement, political corruption and the profiteering of the diem regime. the elite of the forces that we have trained and equipped are still used to con-trol political unrest in Saigon and defend the lat-est dictator from the people.

and yet in a world where dictatorships are so commonplace and popular control of gov-ernment so rare, people become callous to the misery that is implied by dictatorial power. the rationalizations that are used to defend political despotism have been drummed into us so long that we have somehow become numb to the pos-sibility that something else might exist. and it is only the kind of terror we see now in Viet-nam that awakens conscience and reminds us that there is something deep in us that cries out against dictatorial suppression.

the pattern of repression and destruction that we have developed and justified in the war

is so thorough that it can only be called cultural genocide. i am not simply talking about napalm or gas or crop destruction or torture, hurled in-discriminately on women and children, insurgent and neutral, upon the first suspicion of rebel ac-tivity. that in itself is horrendous and incredible beyond belief. but it is only part of a larger pat-tern of destruction to the very fabric of the coun-try. We have uprooted the people from the land and imprisoned them in concentration camps called “sunrise villages.” through conscription and direct political intervention and control, we have destroyed local customs and traditions, tram-pled upon those things of value which give digni-ty and purpose to life. What is left to the people of Vietnam after twenty years of war? What part of themselves and their own lives will those who survive be able to salvage from the wreckage of their country or build on the “peace” and “secu-rity” our Great Society offers them in reward for their allegiance? how can anyone be surprised that people who have had total war waged on themselves and their culture rebel in increasing numbers against that tyranny? What other course is available? and still our only response to rebel-lion is more vigorous repression, more merciless opposition to the social and cultural institutions which sustain dignity and the will to resist.

not even the president can say that this is a war to defend the freedom of the Vietnam-ese people. perhaps what the president means when he speaks of freedom is the freedom of the american people.

What in fact has the war done for free-dom in america? it has led to even more vigor-ous governmental efforts to control information, manipulate the press and pressure and persuade the public through distorted or downright dis-honest documents such as the “white paper” on Vietnam. It has led to the confiscation of films and other anti-war material and the vigorous ha-

how can anYone be suRPRIsed that PeoPLe who haVe had totaL waR waged on themseLVes and theIR cuLtuRe RebeL In IncReasIng numbeRs agaInst that tYRannY?

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willing to contemplate the risks of allowing the Vietnamese to choose their own destinies. Sec-ond, those people who insist now that Vietnam can be neutralized are for the most part looking for a sugar coating to cover the bitter bill. We must accept the consequence that calling for an end of the war in Vietnam is in fact allowing for the likelihood that a Vietnam without war will be a self-styled communist Vietnam. third, this country must come to understand that creation of a communist country in the world today is not an ultimate defeat. if people are given the opportunity to choose their own lives, it is like-ly that some of them will choose what we have called “communist systems.” We are not pow-erless in that situation. Recent years have finally and indisputably broken the myth that the com-munist world is monolithic and have conclusively shown that American power can be significant in aiding countries dominated by greater powers to become more independent and self-determined. and yet the war that we are creating and escalat-ing in Southeast asia is rapidly eroding the base of independence of north Vietnam as it is forced to turn to china and the Soviet Union, involving them in the war and involving itself in the com-promises that that implies. Fourth, i must say to you that i would rather see Vietnam communist than see it under continuous subjugation of the ruin that american domination has brought.

but the war goes on; the freedom to con-duct that war depends on the dehumanization not only of Vietnamese people but of ameri-cans as well; it depends on the construction of a system of premises and thinking that insu-lates the president and his advisors thoroughly and completely from the human consequences of the decisions they make. i do not believe that the president or mr. Rusk or mr. mcnamara or even mcGeorge bundy are particularly evil men. if asked to throw napalm on the back of a

ten-year-old child they would shrink in horror—but their decisions have led to the mutilation and death of thousands and thousands of people.

What kind of system is it that allows good men to make those kinds of decisions? What kind of system is it that justifies the United States or any country seizing the destinies of the Viet-namese people and using them callously for its own purpose? What kind of system is it that dis-enfranchises people in the South, leaves millions upon millions of people throughout the coun-try impoverished and excluded from the main-

stream and promise of american society, that creates faceless and terrible bureaucracies and makes those the place where people spend their lives and do their work, that consistently puts material values before human values and still persists in calling itself free and still persists in finding itself fit to police the world? What place is there for ordinary men in that system and how are they to control it, make it bend itself to their wills rather than bending them to its?

We must name that system. We must name it, describe it, analyze it, understand it and change it. For it is only when that system is changed and brought under control that there can be any hope for stopping the forces that cre-ate a war in Vietnam today or a murder in the South tomorrow or all the incalculable, innu-merable more subtle atrocities that are worked on people all over all the time.

what In fact has the waR done foR fReedom In ameRIca? It has Led to eVen moRe VIgoRous goVeRnmentaL effoRts to contRoL InfoRmatIon, manIPuLate the PRess and PRessuRe and PeRsuade the PubLIc.

rassment by the Fbi of some of the people who have been most outspokenly active in their criti-cism of the war. as the war escalates and the ad-ministration seeks more actively to gain support for any initiative it may choose to take, there has been the beginnings of a war psychology unlike anything that has burdened this country since the 1950s. how much more of mr. Johnson’s freedom can we stand? how much freedom will be left in this country if there is a major war in asia? by what weird logic can it be said that the freedom of one people can only be maintained by crushing another?

in many ways this is an unusual march be-cause the large majority of people here are not involved in a peace movement as their primary basis of concern. What is exciting about the par-ticipants in this march is that so many of us view ourselves consciously as participants as well in a movement to build a more decent society. there are students here who have been involved in pro-tests over the quality and kind of education they are receiving in growingly bureaucratized, dep-ersonalized institutions called universities; there are negroes from mississippi and alabama who are struggling against the tyranny and repression of those states; there are poor people here—ne-gro and white—from northern urban areas who are attempting to build movements that abolish poverty and secure democracy; there are facul-ty who are beginning to question the relevance of their institutions to the critical problems fac-ing the society. Where will these people and the movements they are a part of be if the presi-dent is allowed to expand the war in asia? What happens to the hopeful beginnings of expressed discontent that are trying to shift american at-tention to long-neglected internal priorities of shared abundance, democracy and decency at home when those priorities have to compete with the all-consuming priorities and psychology of a

war against an enemy thousands of miles away?the president mocks freedom if he insists

that the war in Vietnam is a defense of ameri-can freedom. perhaps the only freedom that this war protects is the freedom of the war hawks in the pentagon and the State department to ex-periment with counter-insurgency and guerilla warfare in Vietnam.

Vietnam, we may say, is a laboratory ran by a new breed of gamesmen who approach war as a kind of rational exercise in international power politics. it is the testing ground and staging area for a new american response to the social revo-lution that is sweeping through the impoverished downtrodden areas of the world. it is the begin-ning of the american counter-revolution, and so far none of us—not the New York Times, nor 17 neutral nations, nor dozens of worried allies, nor the United States congress have been able to interfere with the freedom of the president and the pentagon to carry out that experiment.

thus far the war in Vietnam has only dramatized the demand of ordinary people to have some opportunity to make their own lives, and of their unwillingness, even under incred-ible odds, to give up the struggle against exter-nal domination. We are told, however, that the struggle can be legitimately suppressed since it might lead to the development of a communist system, and before that ultimate menace all crit-icism is supposed to melt.

this is a critical point and there are sev-eral things that must be said here—not by way of celebration, but because i think they are the truth. First, if this country were serious about giving the people of Vietnam some alternative to a communist social revolution, that opportu-nity was sacrificed in 1954 when we helped to install diem and his repression of non-commu-nist movements. there is no indication that we were serious about that goal—that we were ever

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titions or letters of protest, or tacit support of dis-sident congressmen; i mean people who are will-ing to change their lives, who are willing to chal-lenge the system, to take the problem of change seriously. by a social movement i mean an effort that is powerful enough to make the country un-derstand that our problems are not in Vietnam, or china or brazil or outer space or at the bottom of the ocean, but are here in the United States. What we must do is begin to build a democratic and hu-mane society in which Vietnams are unthinkable, in which human life and initiative are precious. the reason there are twenty thousand people here today and not a hundred or none at all is because five years ago in the South students began to build a social movement to change the system. the reason there are poor people, negro and white, housewives, faculty members, and many others here in Washington is because that movement has grown and spread and changed and reached out as an expression of the broad concerns of peo-ple throughout the society. the reason the war and the system it represents will be stopped, if it is stopped before it destroys all of us, will be because the movement has become strong enough to exact change in the society. twenty thousand people—the people here, if they were serious, if they were willing to break out of their isolation and to accept the consequences of a decision to end the war and commit themselves to building a movement wher-ever they are and in whatever way they effectively can—would be, i’m convinced, enough.

to build a movement rather than a protest or some series of protests, to break out of our in-sulations and accept the consequences of our de-cisions, in effect to change our lives, means that we can open ourselves to the reactions of a soci-ety that believes that it is moral and just, that we open ourselves to libeling and persecution, that we dare to be really seen as wrong in a society that doesn’t tolerate fundamental challenges.

it means that we desert the security of our riches and reach out to people who are tied to the mythology of american power and make them part of our movement. We must reach out to every organization and individual in the country and make them part of our movement.

but that means that we build a movement that works not simply in Washington but in com-munities and with the problems that face people throughout the society. that means that we build a movement that understands Vietnam in all its hor-ror as but a symptom of a deeper malaise, that we build a movement that makes possible the imple-mentation of the values that would have prevent-ed Vietnam, a movement based on the integrity of man and a belief in man’s capacity to tolerate all the weird formulations of society that men may choose to strive for; a movement that will build on the new and creative forms of protest that are beginning to emerge, such as the teach-in, and extend their ef-forts and intensify them; that we will build a move-ment that will find ways to support the increasing numbers of young men who are unwilling to and will not fight in Vietnam; a movement that will not tolerate the escalation or prolongation of this war but will, if necessary, respond to the administra-tion war effort with massive civil disobedience all over the country, that will wrench the country into a confrontation with the issues of the war; a move-ment that must of necessity reach out to all these people in Vietnam or elsewhere who are struggling to find decency and control for their lives.

For in a strange way the people of Vietnam and the people on this demonstration are united in much more than a common concern that the war be ended. in both countries there are peo-ple struggling to build a movement that has the power to change their condition. the system that frustrates these movements is the same. all our lives, our destinies, our very hopes to live, depend on our ability to overcome that system.

how do you stop a war then? if the war has its roots deep in the institutions of ameri-can society, how do you stop it? do you march to Washington? is that enough? Who will hear us? how can you make the decision makers hear us, insulated as they are, if they cannot hear the screams of a little girl burnt by napalm?

i believe that the administration is serious about expanding the war in asia. the question is whether the people here are as serious about end-ing it. i wonder what it means for each of us to say we want to end the war in Vietnam—wheth-er, if we accept the full meaning of that statement and the gravity of the situation, we can simply leave the march and go back to the routines of a society that acts as if it were not in the midst of a grave crisis. maybe we, like the president, are in-sulated from the consequences of our own deci-sion to end the war. maybe we have yet really to listen to the screams of a burning child and de-cide that we cannot go back to whatever it is we did before today until that war has ended.

there is no simple plan, no scheme or gim-mick that can be proposed here. there is no sim-ple way to attack something that is deeply rooted in the society. if the people of this country are to end the war in Vietnam, and to change the institutions which create it, then the people of this country must create a massive social move-ment—and if that can be built around the issue of Vietnam then that is what we must do.

by a social movement i mean more than pe-

In both countRIes theRe aRe PeoPLe stRuggLIng to buILd a moVement that has the PoweR to change theIR condItIon. the sYstem that fRustRates these moVements Is the same.

Max Bunzel delivering Paul Potter’s 1965 speech on location at the National Mall, Washington, D.C., on July 26, 2007. Photo by Meghan Boudreau.

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Six YoUnG peopLe who were in jail with me yesterday in Washing-ton, d.c., were arrested for walk-ing down a street together singing

“america the beautiful.” if thomas Jefferson were in Washington yesterday walking down the street, he would have been arrested. he was too young, and he had long hair. and if Jeffer-son had been carrying the declaration of in-dependence with him in Washington yesterday, he would have been indicted for conspiring to overthrow the government along with his co-conspirators George Washington, John adams, tom payne and a lot of others. So, obviously the wrong people are in charge of the machin-ery of justice, and the wrong people are behind bars, and the wrong people are calling the shots in Washington. the whole world seems to be topsy-turvy. and what we want to do is try to set it right.

a lot of people are troubled by civil dis-

obedience. as soon as you talk about commit-ting civil disobedience they get a little upset. but that’s exactly the purpose of civil disobedi-ence, to upset people, to trouble them, to disturb them. We who commit civil disobedience are disturbed too, and we need to disturb those who are in charge of the war, because the president, by his lies, is trying to create an air of calm and tranquility in people’s minds when there is no calm and tranquility in Southeast asia, and we mustn’t let people forget that.

and those people who get troubled and excited about civil disobedience have got to have some sense of proportion. the people who com-mit civil disobedience are engaging in the most petty of disorders in order to protest against mass murder. these people are violating the most petty of laws, trespass laws and traffic laws, in order to protest against the government’s vio-lation of the most holy of laws: “thou shalt not kill.” and, these people who commit civil dis-

The ProbLeM is civiL obedience

Speech delivered by howard Zinn at a peace rally in boston common, boston, on may 5, 1971.

howaRd zInn 1971/2007

Howard Zinn speaking at a peace rally in Boston Common, Boston, on May 5, 1971. Photo by Daniel Ellsberg.

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Matthew Floyd Miller delivers Howard Zinn’s 1971 speech on location in Boston Common, Boston, on July 14, 2007. Photo by Meghan Boudreau.

obedience don’t do harm to any person. they protest the violence of government.

We need to do something to disturb that calm, smiling, murderous president in the White house. now they say we disturb even our friends when we commit civil disobedience, and that’s true. but the history of civil disobedi-ence in this country and in other parts of the world shows that people may at first sight be put off by civil disobedience, but at second sight, at second thought, they learn that the protest-ers against war are right, and after a while they join us in their own way, and that’s why we must carry on.

the congressmen—you see this in the newspapers—while seven thousand people are arrested in Washington, you see congressmen coming out in the headlines saying, “oh, that’s bad. You’re upsetting those of us in congress who have worked so hard. You’re rocking and so on and so forth.” Well, we need to upset con-gress. We need to disturb congress, because for six years the president has carried on an uncon-stitutional war, and for six years the bodies of americans have been coming home in plastic bags, and for six years the villages and country-side of Vietnam have been destroyed, and these members of congress have been sitting there silently, passively, voting the money for this war. and if these congressmen don’t like the upsets to courtesy and decorum represented by civil disobedience, then let them courteously, sepa-rately, put an end to the murder in Vietnam by

the wRong PeoPLe aRe In chaRge of the machIneRY of justIce, and the wRong PeoPLe aRe behInd baRs, and the wRong PeoPLe aRe caLLIng the shots In washIngton.

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to be arrested for a good cause. the shame is to do the job of those who carry on the war. You policemen, you policemen around here who are going to be called on to make arrests tomorrow, remember it’s your sons also that are taking off for war to be killed. and it’s your sons, your sons as well as ours that they want to die for the prof-it of General motors and Lockheed. it’s your sons too, your sons too that they want to die for the political profit of the Mayor Daleys and the Spiro agnews [unintelligible].

So you policemen will have to put away your clubs and put away your guns, put away your tear gas. become nonviolent. and learn to disobey the order for violence. You agents of the Fbi who are circulating in the crowd, hey, don’t you see that you’re violating the spirit of democracy by what you’re doing? don’t you see that you’re behaving like the secret police of a totalitarian state? Why are you obeying J. edgar hoover? Why are you obeying the lies of an executioner, acting like a dictator from paraguay rather than a public servant in a sup-posedly democratic state? Remember, members of the Fbi, you are secret police, and you ought to learn what the German secret police did not learn in time. Learn to disobey.

So you police and you Fbi, if you want to arrest people who are violating the law, then you shouldn’t be here. You should be in Washington. (Unintelligible) You should go there immediately and you should arrest the president, and his ad-visors, on the charge of disturbing the peace of the world.

and theY’LL saY we aRe dIstuRbIng the Peace, but theRe Is no Peace. what ReaLLY botheRs them Is that we aRe dIstuRbIng the waR.

stopping the funds for the war, or by filibuster-ing or impeaching the president and the vice president and impeaching every high official in government. Let them not criticize those who in anguish cry out with the only means we have left—with our energies, with our spirits, with our bodies, against the abomination of this war.

it’s been a long time since we impeached a president. and it’s time, time to impeach a presi-dent, and the vice president, and everybody else sitting in high office who carries on this war. The constitution says, article 2, Section 4, that the president and the vice president, and other civil officers of the government, may be impeached for, and i quote, “high crimes and misdemean-ors.” is not making war on the peasants of Southeast asia a high crime?

We grow up in a controlled society, and the very language we use is corrupted from the time we learn to speak and read. and those who have the power, they decide the meaning of the words that we use. and so we’re taught that if one person kills another person, that is murder, but if a government kills a hundred thousand persons, that is patriotism. We’re taught that if one person invades another person’s home, that is breaking and entering, but if a government invades a whole country, and searches and de-stroys the villages and homes of that country, that is fulfilling its world responsibility.

When nuns and priests, horrified by the burning of children, disrupt actions that brought about the war, actions that do no violence to hu-man life, they’re arrested for conspiracy to kid-nap. and when the government reaches into a million homes and snatches the young men out of them under penalty of imprisonment, and gives them uniforms and guns and sends them off to die, that is not kidnapping. that’s selective service. So, let’s restore the meaning of words. and let’s tell the world that the government has committed high crimes. and that we don’t want to continue being accomplices to these crimes. and we have to do that, and we have to say that in every way our conscience compels and every way our imaginations suggest.

and so the veterans will throw away their medals, and GIs will refuse to fight, and young men will refuse to be drafted and women will defy the state, and we will refuse to pay our taxes, and we’ll disobey. and, they’ll say we’re disturb-ing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war.

For two weeks, for two weeks we have not let the country forget about this war. the vet-erans in their ways, the mass meetings in their way, the disrupters in their way… and we must continue disturbing the war and the makers of the war. We must not give them a moment’s rest until the soldiers and warplanes are out of Southeast asia. and so, tomorrow morning, early in the morning, let’s all go to Government center. all of us. Let us, let us be nonviolent. We are going to be protesting against violence. We may break some petty laws. We may interfere slightly with business as usual. but these are not terrible crimes. there are terrible crimes being committed, but sitting down and locking arms, that’s no terrible crime. War is the great crime of our age.

We may be arrested, but it’s not a shame

the hIstoRY of cIVIL dIsobedIence In thIs countRY and In otheR PaRts of the woRLd shows that PeoPLe maY at fIRst sIght be Put off bY cIVIL dIsobedIence, but at second sIght, at second thought, theY LeaRn that the PRotesteRs agaInst waR aRe RIght.

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mark tribe is an artist and occasional cu-rator whose interests include art, technology and politics. his artwork has been exhibited at Los angeles contemporary exhibitions, trinity Square Video in toronto, the park avenue ar-mory in new York city and the national cen-ter for contemporary art in moscow. he has organized curatorial projects for the new mu-seum of contemporary art, maSS moca and inSite_05. he is the co-author, with Reena Jana, of New Media Art (taschen, 2006). he is assistant

professor of modern culture and media Studies at brown University, where he teaches courses on digital art, curating, open-source culture, rad-ical media and surveillance. in 1996 he found-ed Rhizome, an organization that supports the creation, presentation, preservation and critique of emerging artistic practices that engage tech-nology. he received a mFa in Visual art from the University of california, San diego, in 1994 and a ba in Visual art from brown University in 1990. he lives in new York city.

Biography

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and clinton Lowe—i am eternally grateful. i am indebted to an amazing crew of fellow art-ists, former students and interns who worked with me on production and postproduction, particularly Sarah Sharp, paul Wallace, Ste-phen Salisbury, helena anrather, alexandra chemla, christina ducruet, margaret per-kins, Sally Szwed and maya manvi. i would like to thank all of the photographers who helped document the Port Huron Project reenact-ments and installations, especially those whose work appears in this book: Winona barton-ballentine, meghan boudreau, Rick bronson, nick davis, cesar Garcia, Sam horine, davis Jung, meghan mcinnis, Veena Rao and Jules Rochielle. i would also like to express my grati-tude to daniel ellsberg, todd Gitlin and Ste-phen Shames for granting permission to pub-lish their historic photographs; and to Shawn

Dellis at the Pacifica Radio Archives, Mary J. Wallace at the Walter p. Reuther Library at Wayne State University, and the Schomburg center for Research in black culture for pro-viding recordings, transcripts and archival pho-tographs of the original speeches. i am grateful to my colleagues in the department of mod-ern culture and media at brown University for providing valuable feedback and rigorous critique, and to the Karen t. Romer Under-graduate teaching and Research awards for providing financial support for several summer interns. Last but certainly not least, i would like to say thank you to my wife, emily eakin, my daughters, isabel and Sadie, and my parents, carolyn and Laurence tribe, for the countless ways in which they have supported me and the countless times they have tolerated my anxiet-ies, absences and absurd sense of humor.

this book, like the Port Huron Project itself, was the result of the collective effort of numerous wonderfully talented people. First and foremost, i would like to express my profound gratitude to six remarkable individuals whose words and deeds have inspired generations to struggle for peace and social justice: Stokely carmichael, cesar chavez, angela davis, coretta Scott King, paul potter and howard Zinn. i am par-ticularly grateful to the lovely people at edizioni charta for believing in this book and for their patience and guidance. i will fondly remember my meetings with Giuseppe Liverani and Fran-cesca Sorace in Charta’s New York office—a sprawling tribeca loft with art-covered walls and abundant espresso. i would like to thank Sherry Lerner and Sean elwood at creative Capital for providing crucial financial support for both the Port Huron Project and this book,

and for fostering among their grantees a dy-namic community of creative risk-takers. i am deeply grateful to anne pasternak for getting behind the project early and whole-heartedly, and for her visionary leadership of creative time. For his ceaseless energy, his willingness to entertain my many ideas, and the wisdom with which he cautioned me against “gilding the lily,” i am indebted to nato thompson, as i am to Gavin Kroeber, Shane brennan and nicholas Weist for their tireless efforts. carol Stakenas at Lace, and Rene de Guzman and adam Rozan at the oakland museum of cali-fornia, were instrumental in helping me reach out to and work with local communities in Los angeles and oakland. to the performers—ato essandoh, Ricardo dominguez, Sheilagh brooks, max bunzel, matthew Floyd miller, Gina brown, aleta hayes, brian Valparaiso

Acknowledgements

Designmario piazza, Letizia abbate (46xy studio)

Editorial CoordinationFilomena moscatelli

Copyeditingcharles Gute

Copywriting and Press OfficeSilvia palombi

US Editorial DirectorFrancesca Sorace

Promotion and Webmonica d’emidio

Distributionantonia de besi

AdministrationGrazia de Giosa

Warehouse and OutletRoberto curiale

© 2010edizioni charta, milano © mark tribe

tm/© 2009 the cesar e. chavez Foundation www.chavezfoundation.org for cesar e. chavez’s text© the estate of coretta Scott King for coretta Scott King’s text© the authors for their texts

all rights reservediSbn 978-88-8158-762-9printed in italy

CoverRicardo dominguez delivering cesar chavez’s 1971 speech. Photo by cesar Garcia

the author, mark tribe, made every effort to contact angela davis to request permission to include her speech in this book. considering that ms. davis granted permission to reenact her speech, and recognizing that this book would be incomplete without it, the author has decided to include it.

Photo Creditsbob adelman/magnum photos; Winona barton-ballentine; bettmann/coRbiS; meghan boudreau; Rick bronson; nick davis; daniel ellsberg; cesar Garcia; todd Gitlin; Sam horine; Glen pearcy/Walter p. Reuther Library, Wayne State University; Veena Rao; Jules Rochielle; Stephen Shames/polaris images.

We apologize if, due to reasons wholly beyond our control, some of the photo sources have not been listed.

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