A SHORT STATEMENT TO THOSE WHO SAY "NOTHING IS WORTH FIGHTING AND DYING FOR"
AMERIKA: Over 300 years of slaughtering Indians, ripping off their land, herding
them like cattle onto reservations, beating them into submission. So the Indians
have forcefully taken Alcatraz and are demanding that justice be done to the point
of seeing themselves that justice is done. And you counsel us to light candles?
Over 300 years of slavery, lynching, beating and burning blacks, depriving
them not only of their supposed "inalienable rights," but stripping them of their
dignity and pride as well. And the few gains made have been won only after
they took to the streets of Watts, Detroit, Newark. And you advise us to march
silently and peacefully?
Over 300,000 innocent peasants in Viet have died in a war that knows no
end. We have seen little babies bleeding by the roadside. And you suggest
silent vigils?
Now, four brothers and sisters have been murdered at Kent State University.
And still you are saying, GIVE PEACE A CHANCEt
Bullshitl We have heard that slogan for too long and tried to give peace
a chance. Amerika never gave Martin Luther King's peace a chance and Amerika
is giving our peace the same chance. We sang and clapped, marched and shouted
through rally after rally, moratorium after moratorium, and where has it got us?
Students are shot to death on campuses, and the bottomless war Nixon pledged to
end has escalated and expanded. Don't you realize it could have just as easily
have been you or your friend shot to death.
We must end the myth that that there is something in the very ha Wire of
good that will bring about its inevitable triumph over evil. The reality of
it is that whatever "good" there is now is the result of people fighting for
what they believed in.
Supreme Court Justice Willaim Douglas says, "Today's Establishment is
the new George III. Whether it will continue to adhere to its tactics, we do
not know. If it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is revolution."
^PYiv^ct The (first) American Revolution was a violent revolution. Are those
VK\o principles for which our forefathers died no longer worth dying, for?
Civil Rights Greensboro
