To protest is an act of intellectual commitment. It is to say, 'Sir, I
protest' when you are slapped in the face...
To protest is to play a game. You go to a demonstration, listen to
speeches, wave signs, and go home to see if you got on television.
There are many toys in the game of protest.
There is a picket line. Originally a picket line was formed by striking
workers to keep strikebreakers out. If anyone tried to cross that picket
line, the strikers tried to kill him. Today you get a permit from the
police to picket...
There is no protest if permission must be sought and rules abided by. We
have allowed the form that our protest takes to be defined for us by those
whom we protest against. Thus, our protest is drained of its power because
we do not have the power to make our protest effective.
We think the war in Palestine is being waged only against the Palestinians,
but we are its victims, too. It is our own deaths we protest, but we
haven't realized it. It is not a war against 'the Palistinian people.' It
is a war against us and the little humanity we have have remaining. Too
little humanity we have remaining. Too little humanity, because we are no
longer outraged at what is being done to us.
If we were, we would resist.
To resist is to say No! without qualification or explanation.
To resist is not only to say I Won't Go. It is to say I'll make sure nobody
else goes, either.
To resist is to pit Life as you define it against Life as they define it
and to do all that is necessary to see that their definition is is
destroyed in all of its parts.
To resist is not to go to jail when sentenced, but only when caught and
there is no other choice but death.
To resist is to make the President afraid to leave the White House because
he will be spat upon wherever he goes to tell his lies, because his
limousine will find the streets filled with tacks and thousands of people
who will surge around it, smashing the windows and rocking the car until it
is turned on its side.
Have we forgotten? The man is a murderer. It is us he is killing.
To resist is to realize that your own life is at stake at this very moment.
To resist is to become alive, truly alive for the first time. It is to say
not only will I not accept what you are doing, I will stop you from doing
it. No one shall sleep peacefully again until you cease, desist and abdicate.
To resist is to say if the parents of Palestine weep for their children
then the parents of America shall weep for theirs.
If the people of Palestine are unable to harvest the crop without fear, to
live their lives without being shrouded by the shadow of death, then no
American shall harvest his crop without fear, no American shall live
outside the shadow of death.
To protest is to dislike the inhumanity of another. To resist is to stop
inhumanity and affirm your own humanity.
One does not protest murder. One apprehends the murderer and deals with him
accordingly.
[First published in the Palestine Summer News, Cambridge, Mass., 4 August
1967.]
With Vietnam substituting for Palestine.
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=221894&group=webcast
