Obediently Yours - Logic

To be born free is to be born in debt

To live in freedom without fighting slavery

To profiteer

I have met Southerners who expect and fear a Negro insurrection

I see no purpose in withholding this from general discussion

There may be those within that outcast ten percent of the American people who

someday will strike back at their oppressors

But to put down that mob, a mob would rise

I’d like to ask, please: who will put down that mob?

I’m an overpaid producer with pleasant reasons to rejoice, and I do

In the wholesome practicability of the profit system

But surely, my right to having more than enough is cancelled

If I don’t use that more to help those who have less

I owe the very profit I make to the people I make it from

If this is radicalism, it comes automatically to most of us in show business

It being generally agreed that any public man owes his position to the public

That’s what I mean when I say I’m your obedient servant

We must, each day, earn what we own

A healthy man owes to the sick all that he can do for them

An educated man owes to the ignorant all that he can do for them

A free man owes to the world’s slaves all that he can do for them

And what is to be done is more, much more, than good works

Christmas baskets, bonuses and tips, and bread and circuses

There is only one thing to be done with slaves

Free them

If we can’t die in behalf of progress, we can live for it

Progress, we Americans take to mean, a fuller realization of democracy

The measure of progress, as we understand it, is the measure of equality

enjoyed by all men

We can do something about that

The way our fighting brothers and sisters looked at it

Some of them dead as I speak these words

The way they looked at it, we’re lucky

And they’re right, we’re lucky to be alive

But only if our lives make life itself worth dying for

We must be worthy of our luck or we are damned

Our lives were spared, but this is merely the silliest of accidents

Unless we put the gift of life to the hard employments of justice

If we waste that gift, we won’t have anywhere to hide from the indignation of

history

I want to say this

The morality of the auction block is out of date

There is no room in the American century for Jim Crow

Tomorrow’s democracy discriminates against discrimination

Its charter won’t include the freedom to end freedom

Race hate isn’t human nature, race hate is the abandonment of human nature

But this is true

There are alibis for the phenomenal excuses, economic and social

But the brutal fact is simply this

Where the racist lies acceptable, there is corruption

The race haters must be stopped, the lynchings must be stopped

The murders must be avenged

I come in that boy’s name and in the name of all, who, in this land of ours,

have no voice of their own

I come with a call for action

This is the time for it

I call for action against the cause of riot

It won’t surprise me if I’m accused in some quarters of inciting to riot

Well, I’m very interested in riots, I’m very interested in avoiding them

So I call for action against the cause of riots

Law is the best action, the most decisive

It’s in the people’s power to see to it that what makes lynchings and starts

wars is dealt with

Not by well-wishers, but by policemen, and I mean good policemen

Over several generations, maybe there’ll be men who can’t be weaned away from

the fascist vices of race hate

But we should deny such men responsibility in public affairs

Exactly as we deny responsibility to the wretched victims of the drug habit

There are laws against peddling dope

There can be laws against peddling race hate

But every man has the right to his own opinion as an American boasts

But race hate is not an opinion, it’s a phobia

It isn’t a viewpoint, race hate is a disease

In a people’s world, the incurable racist has no rights

He must be deprived of influence in a people’s government

He must be segregated, as he himself would segregate the colored and semitic

peoples

Anything very big is very simple

If there’s a big race question, there’s a big answer to it

And a big answer is simple, like the word «no»

America can write her name across this century, and so she will

If we, the people, brown and black and red

Rise now to the great occasion of our brotherhood

It will take courage

It calls for the doing of great deeds, which means the dreaming of great dreams

Giving the world back to its inhabitants is too big a job for the merely

practical

No one of us will live to see a blameless peace

We strive and pray and die for what will be here when we’re gone

Our children’s children are the ancestors of a free people

To the generations: the fight is worth it

And that just about means that my time is up

When my time’s up, I remain as always, obediently yours

Arjun Ivatury