Bruce Pascoe: 'Maybe the term "hunter-gathering" is just very convenient for people that wanted to take the land', NAIDOC Week - 2009

8 July 2009, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, Australia

Bruce Pascoe is a writer, editor and anthropologist of books such as Convincing Ground, Dark Emu and Fog a Dox. He is from theBunurong clan, of the Kulin nation.

Mr. Kirby was walking along the Murray River in 1839, and he came across a fisherman who was sitting on a weir that he had constructed into the river, and had made it in such a fashion that all the water was channelled through the weir and any fish that wanted to move up the river had to do so through a small net that had been placed in the river. Mr. Kirby sat down under a tree and watched this operation for some time, and noticed that there was a stick arrangement anchored into the ground, very fine, narrow stick and being tied down, so it had a lot of tension on the string, and the tie disappeared into the water.

He wasn't sure what was going on, whether it was a fishing rod or what the arrangement was, but then he noticed that a fish ... The stick released, and a fish flung over the fisherman's shoulder and landed behind him. Mr. Kirby noticed that the man was aware that he was being observed, and casually reached behind him, picked up the fish, and tossed into a basket and then leant back on his elbow and waited. This went on, Mr. Kirby's observation, for an hour or more, and every few minutes, another fish would be flung back over the fisherman's shoulder, and he would, with great insouciance, toss it into the basket.

Aboriginal people sometimes get a bit nervous when other aboriginal people use big words, but I'm a bookish sort of a person and I grew up with words and I loved them. Aboriginal people traditionally spoke seven or eight languages. We were the great wordsmith of the world, and one day, we'll recover that pride in the words. I'm happy to use insouciance because that's exactly what Mr. Kirby observed.

This man aware of being observed was proud of his achievement, and a bit disdainful of this other man watching him. He didn't even speak to the man, but he did observe how the tie from the springing stick was tied on to a noose. Every time a fish swam through the noose, it triggered the peg that was holding the noose down, and it flung the fish out of the water. This was engineering, and the man was very proud of his achievement.

 A man called Mitchell, on the Narran River on the Queensland-New South Wales border, right about the same time, rode through grasslands up to the withers of his horse, rode through those grasslands for nine miles. Throughout the nine miles, grass was stooped like the old English stoops that was set in piles, and he rode through this for nine miles.

Leichhardt was another man who visited that country and disappeared. Another man called Gregory came and followed in Leichhardt footsteps and hoof prints. They camped because they were tired and felt they were lost when they saw aboriginal people on these grasslands, and they witnessed them for three days while they repaired their carts, while they fixed up their horse's saddlery, they recovered their spirits and their health.

For three to four days, Gregory's people witnessed people harvesting grain. Then he saw a phenomenal thing. He saw people sowing grain, and the next day, saw people irrigating that grain. Later on, the harvested grain from the last season were sorted into stores, and some of it was put in pouches and worn around the neck, and was destined to be traded to neighbouring peoples. This was a trade in grain.

Mr. Smith from the Northern Territories, part aboriginal man, came across a number of people building what looked to him like a dam. He watched very carefully and very circumspectly, because these weren't his people. He stood back a mile off from this project and just watched. Eventually, the old men motioned him into the camp. He asked them about what they were doing. They said, "Oh, we're going to do another one tomorrow. You can watch that too if you like." The next day, another dam was built. That dam had an exit from it into some channels, which ran through flat ground, and those people were irrigating a crop.

Ernest Giles' brother, a bit earlier than this, was travelling through the Northern Territory, and came across huge stores of what he discovered was grain stored up in platforms three metres off the ground. Each of those stores weighted a tonne. He had never seen anything like it before, but it didn't stop him stealing it, because, once again, he was an explorer. He was lost, and he was angry. He took the grain that had been stored for the harvesters.

There was a woman of Cape Otway, and it was me who discovered her secrets, because near my home, near the Cape Otway log house at that time, I came across a midden that had been exposed by a great storm. Cape Otway is pretty good at having great storms. The face of the midden had sheared away and exposed a whole lot of tools, and they were the normal tools that you would find, axes, scythes, hammers, augers, bone spear points for sewing clothes.

There was one little stone, about that big, like a size of a top or a matchbox, and I couldn't work it out. It had various holes drilled in it of different dimensions, had notches on the side, and it has straight lines, and I couldn't work out what this was. I worried about it for days, and days, and days, and eventually, my mother came down. She was living at Apollo Bay not far away. My mother is blind, deaf, and epileptic but quite well. I gave it to my mother. I said, "What do you reckon this is?" She felt it, and she said, "Oh, this is a sewing kit."

She felt the holes, and she felt the lines. She said, "I used to have on like this when I was a kid made out of tin," and it was for sharpening needle points, bone needle points, getting an edge on the fine side of the needle, and notches for cutting twine. It was a very, very intimate thing, and I was more or less ashamed to be handling it. I did so in ignorance, but it wasn't really my business. I returned all those things to the site, and they're still there. I go back every now and then and see them.

Another man called Todd in 1835 was one of the very first white people to visit Victoria. He was supposed to be guarding the land for John Batman. John Batman had gone back to Tasmania because his nose was falling off. John Batman, the great discoverer of Victoria, had syphilis and his nose was falling off. He went back to Tasmania. There was a reason why he had syphilis. There was a reason why a lot of aboriginal people and aboriginal women in Tasmania had syphilis too.

Todd was told to wait there and not upset the aboriginal people. Todd wasn't a bad sort of a man. Now, if he was look after your milk bar or your pub or your hardware store, you could rely on his abilities, because he does seem like a decent sort of a bloke. He talked to the aboriginal people as much as he could, learned some words, seemed to be kind, gave people the things that they seemed to be interested in, accepted what he was given in return. It was a nice warm weather. Everything seem to be going pretty well.

Todd, in his spare time, because he seemed to have a lot of it, was happy to fish with the people, but also to make drawings of them as they fished or as they participated in other cultural activities. One of these drawings is a line of women and girls bending over with sticks about that long, and it's a transformative piece of Australian art. Not very good, but it's transformative because the women were digging up a yam pasture field, that if you look at the scale, is probably six, seven acres wide. It's a big paddock. It's full of yam daisy, and that's what those women were doing. They were digging up the yam daisy, selecting the mature tubers, and pressing them down. When they had selected their tubers, they'd press down the remaining tubers to regenerate the crop.

You can see all this in Todd's drawing. We're very, very fortunate to have it, because the next year, there was no yam daisy in Victoria. Wherever a sheep had roamed, they came across the yam pastures. They gravitated to them because they were such good eating. Sheep, because of their dentition, are able to crop the basal leaves of yam daisies right down to the ground. A kangaroo can't do it. A wombat can't do it. A bandicoot can't do it, but a sheep can. They wiped out the yam daisy in one season. You hardly can find a yam daisy in Victoria now. Some people are growing them commercially, but if you go along the railway tracks around Werribee and places like that, you'll see plenty of them.

What do you call what all these people saw? What I saw, what Mr. Kirby saw, what Mr. Mitchell, what Mr. Gregory, what Mr. Smith, what Mr. Giles, what Mr. Todd, what were they looking at? I'm having a battle at the moment with senior academics in Australia, which I'm losing profoundly because I'm not an academic. I'm just a bloke who lives in the bush, but I can read. These are the things I've read. I'm saying to people, as I'm saying to you, I'm proselytising, I'm using you, it looks to me as if these are not the habits of hunter-gatherers.

Aboriginal people are called hunter-gatherers. What's all this business of irrigating crops, harvesting crops, having granaries of over a tonne and several parcels, trading grain, cultivating yam pastures, having 3,000 kilometres of eel races around the town of Koroit in Victoria? What is going on? This isn't hunter-gathering. I'm asking you what you think. If we can't use words like horticulturist, because I've had the ruler over my knuckles for suggesting such a thing, we can't say tilling, I was admonished for that, we can't say, apparently, farming, we can't say cultivation, what is going on?

I know it's not hunter-gathering. Aboriginal people in that era knew it wasn't hunter-gathering. Maybe the term hunter-gathering is just very convenient for people that wanted to take the land, because if you're hunting and gathering, your possession of the soil is itinerant.

Valerie Kaur: "What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?", Interfaith Watch Night Service - 2016

31 December 2016, Metropolitan AME Church, Washington State, USA

Valerie Kaur is a Sikh activist and lawyer. The interfaith service was called after a series of hate crimes in the United States, including earlier that week when a 39-year-old Sikh man shot in his driveway in Kent, Wash., by a man wearing a mask. The man said, “Go back to your own country' before pulling the trigger.

Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh. (The beloved community belongs to divine Oneness, and so does all that it achieves.)

On Christmas Eve 103 years ago, my grandfather waited in a dark and dank cell. He sailed by steamship across the Pacific Ocean from India to America leaving behind colonial rule, but when he landed on American shores immigration officials saw his dark skinned, his tall turban worn as a part of his Sikh faith, and saw him not as a brother but as foreign, as suspect, threw him behind bars where he languished for months until a single man, a white man, a lawyer named Henry Marshall filed a writ of habeas corpus that released him on Christmas Eve 1913.

My grandfather Kehar Singh became a farmer, free to practice the heart of his Sikh faith — love and oneness. So when his Japanese American neighbors were rounded up and taken to their own detention camps to the deserts of America he went out to see them when no one else would. He looked after their farms until they returned home. He refused to stand down.

In the aftermath of September 11th when hate violence exploded in these United States, a man that I called uncle was murdered. I tried to stand up. I became a lawyer like the man who freed my grandfather and I joined a generation of activists fighting detentions and deportation, surveillance and special registration, hate crimes and racial profiling. And after 15 years with every film, with every lawsuit, with every campaign, I thought we were making a nation safer for the next generation.

And then my son was born. On Christmas Eve, I watched him ceremoniously put the milk and cookies by the fire for Santa Claus. And after he went to sleep, I then drink the milk and ate the cookies. I wanted him to wake up and see them gone in the morning. I wanted him to believe in a world that was magical. But I am leaving my son a world that is more dangerous than the one I was given. I am raising — we are raising — a brown boy in America, a brown boy who may someday wear a turban as part of his faith.

And in America today, as we enter an era of enormous rage, as white nationalists hail this moment as their great awakening, as hate acts against Sikhs and our Muslim brothers and sisters are at an all-time high, I know that there will be moments whether on the streets or in the school yards where my son will be seen as foreign, as suspect, as a terrorist. Just as black bodies are still seen as criminal, brown bodies are still seen as illegal, trans bodies are still seen as immoral, indigenous bodies are still seen as savage, the bodies of women and girls seen as someone else’s property. And when we see these bodies not as brothers and sisters then it becomes easier to bully them, to rape them, to allow policies that neglect them, that incarcerate them, that kill them.

Yes, rabbi, the future is dark. On this New Year’s Eve, this watch night, I close my eyes and I see the darkness of my grandfather’s cell. And I can feel the spirit of ever rising optimism in the Sikh tradition Chardi Kala (ever-rising high spirits) within him.

So the mother and me asks what if? What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb? What if our America is not dead but a country that is waiting to be born? What if the story of America is one long labor? What if all of our grandfathers and grandmothers are standing behind now, those who survived occupation and genocide, slavery and Jim Crow, detentions and political assault? What if they are whispering in our ears “You are brave”? What if this is our nation’s greatest transition?

What does the midwife tell us to do? Breathe. And then? Push. Because if we don’t push we will die. If we don’t push our nation will die. Tonight we will breathe. Tomorrow we will labor in love through love and your revolutionary love is the magic we will show our children.

Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh. (The beloved community belongs to divine Oneness, and so does all that it achieves.)

Assaf Harel: 'Apartheid has been here for ages!', last monolgue, Layla Tov with Assaf Harel - 2017

1 March 2017, Channel 10, Israel

Assaf Harel is a comedian who hosted the long running 'Good Night' program. This was his last monolgue.

I don’t want to dedicate this last monologue to a specific issue from the last few days, but to something more general: If you look at our life in Israel, it’s pretty great. Yeah, it’s expensive, and we’re far from earning what we would have liked. Clearly, the healthcare system could be better, and yeah, the politicians could be more impressive and less embarrassing, but if you look at our life from a bird’s eye view, we’re doing pretty great. Great weather, great food, great people, great beaches. It’s not so bad here, in general, and that’s exactly the point: that we’re doing great, but there are a couple of million people that we’re responsible for, and they’re in a horrible state. Infrastructure, food, healthcare, education. Millions who are living in abject poverty. Gaza is on the verge of plague. Hours on end without electricity or water. Israel controls everything that goes in or out.

“But they chose Hamas! Let them pay for it! Humanness? What does that have to do with us? What are we? Arab lovers?” Ever since the right wing took power, more and more voices are warning of apartheid. Are you kidding? Apartheid has been here for ages. Ages. It’s just that we’re on its good side, so it doesn’t really bother us. We’ve been abusing the Palestinians on a daily basis for years, denying them their basic rights. In Judea and Samaria, we’re taking their lands from them. Once, we used the Jewish National Fund to raise money to buy the lands. Today? We just pass a law saying we can just take their lands and that’s it. Soldiers shoot at stone-throwers because they’re a real threat, but if in Israel, someone throws stones, they won’t even be charged. Palestinian journalists are put on administrative detention without trial, because they wrote something. Every time we have a holiday, they’re under closure. God forbid they ruin it for us. For years, we’ve been deepening the hatred, the same hatred that we later complain about in peace talks. “Why do you incite your children against us?” “Why don’t you teach them to love us?”

Israel’s most impressive innovation, more than any high-tech project, or Rafael weapon, is our amazing ability to ignore what is happening mere kilometers away to our neighbours. A whole people, transparent, like it doesn’t exist. Not in the news, not online, not on social media, and definitely not in the hearts of the people. Nothing. We’ve got a great country, and great restaurants, and it’s fun to travel abroad. Just don’t tell us what’s really happening. We’re good. Don’t bum us out. But there are a few righteous in Sodom. People who see the Matrix and are trying to yell, to let us know what’s happening. Maybe we’ll wake up. Breaking the Silence, B’Tselem, Yesh Din. Dozens of organizations that are only trying to tell Israeli society what is happening, and what do people say about them in return? Extremist left. Illegitimate organizations. Now, understand, anyone who says ‘extremist left’ is trying to create an equivocation with the extreme right. And this way, the delegitimization of murderers like Baruch Goldstein, or the murderers of the Dawabshe family, will stick to organizations like Breaking the Silence of B’Tselem.

“Because we must condemn the extremists on both sides, right?” But they’re forgetting one small detail: On one side, the extremists kill, and on the other side, the “extremists” talk. On one side, the extremists burn people alive, and on the other side, the extremists demand human rights. There is no comparison between the extreme left and extreme right, because there is no such thing as extreme left. It’s fiction; an invention of the last few years. When we speak of rape, do we also speak of extremists on both sides that must be condemned? Those that rape and those who are embarrased to even touch a girl? Both are problematic, or only one side? When we speak of animal abuse, do we also condemn extremists on both sides? Those that abuse animals, and those that adopt them? No, because anyone who calls for humanness will never be extreme, but the people in the camp in which there are murderers will look for equal sides.

The human rights organizations are the most legitimate and healthy thing today in Israeli society. They are trying to wake a dormant society, a blocked society, and are benefitting our security more than any settlement or outpost, and the reason that Bennett and Bibi are so busy saying that they’re illegitimate is because they’re saying the truth about the occupation and of what’s happening, and Bibi and Bennett know that on the day Israeli citizens wake up and discover what’s happening beyond the Green Line, what it does to our soldiers, to the children that are raised there, to the elderly, to the families, to the millions of innocent people, what it costs our budget, our society, our economy. On that day, people will ask themselves if the occupied territories are really worth it. Because, from a security point of view, every Commander-in-Chief and all the generals have been saying for years that it’s nonsense. “The territories don’t defend us!”

That’s why I believe — Perhaps I’m convincing myself — that in the end, the the right wing will lose, becuase they’re afraid of the truth; of reality. They try to suppress it; to hide it; to prevent people from hearing it; prevent people from talking. But, in the end, it doesn’t take much to sedate the satiated side of the apartheid. But there’s a whole other side; a whole other people, and they’re here even if we don’t speak of them or recognize them, and we’ll pretend like it’s only us and God and the Promised Land.

If only once, we can wake up before the war, because up until now, we only wake up after. We had to have the Yom Kippur war to have peace with Egypt. We had to have the intifada for the Oslo Accords. If only for once, we could be smart enough to reach a peace agreement before the war. Worse case: after it, or another one after that, but in the end, we’ll wake up.

Martin Luther King Jr. - 'The arc of the moral universse is long, but it bends towards justice', Our God is Marching On (How Long, Not Long) - 1965

25 March 1965, Montgomery Alabama, USA

Speech delivered on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery at the end of the march from Selma to the State capital. .

My dear and abiding friends, Ralph Abernathy, and to all of the distinguished Americans seated here on the rostrum, my friends and co-workers of the state of Alabama, and to all of the freedom-loving people who have assembled here this afternoon from all over our nation and from all over the world: Last Sunday, more than eight thousand of us started on a mighty walk from Selma, Alabama. We have walked through desolate valleys and across the trying hills. We have walked on meandering highways and rested our bodies on rocky byways. Some of our faces are burned from the outpourings of the sweltering sun. Some have literally slept in the mud. We have been drenched by the rains. Our bodies are tired and our feet are somewhat sore.

But today as I stand before you and think back over that great march, I can say, as Sister Pollard said—a seventy-year-old Negro woman who lived in this community during the bus boycott—and one day, she was asked while walking if she didn’t want to ride. And when she answered, "No," the person said, "Well, aren’t you tired?" And with her ungrammatical profundity, she said, "My feets is tired, but my soul is rested." And in a real sense this afternoon, we can say that our feet are tired, but our souls are rested.

They told us we wouldn’t get here. And there were those who said that we would get here only over their dead bodies, but all the world today knows that we are here and we are standing before the forces of power in the state of Alabama saying, "We ain’t goin’ let nobody turn us around."

Now it is not an accident that one of the great marches of American history should terminate in Montgomery, Alabama. Just ten years ago, in this very city, a new philosophy was born of the Negro struggle. Montgomery was the first city in the South in which the entire Negro community united and squarely faced its age-old oppressors. Out of this struggle, more than bus [de]segregation was won; a new idea, more powerful than guns or clubs was born. Negroes took it and carried it across the South in epic battles that electrified the nation and the world.

Yet, strangely, the climactic conflicts always were fought and won on Alabama soil. After Montgomery’s, heroic confrontations loomed up in Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, and elsewhere. But not until the colossus of segregation was challenged in Birmingham did the conscience of America begin to bleed. White America was profoundly aroused by Birmingham because it witnessed the whole community of Negroes facing terror and brutality with majestic scorn and heroic courage. And from the wells of this democratic spirit, the nation finally forced Congress to write legislation in the hope that it would eradicate the stain of Birmingham. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave Negroes some part of their rightful dignity, (Speak, sir) but without the vote it was dignity without strength.

Once more the method of nonviolent resistance was unsheathed from its scabbard, and once again an entire community was mobilized to confront the adversary. And again the brutality of a dying order shrieks across the land. Yet, Selma, Alabama, became a shining moment in the conscience of man. If the worst in American life lurked in its dark streets, the best of American instincts arose passionately from across the nation to overcome it. (Yes, sir. Speak) There never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes.

The confrontation of good and evil compressed in the tiny community of Selma generated the massive powerto turn the whole nation to a new course. A president born in the South (Well) had the sensitivity to feel the will of the country, (Speak, sir) and in an address that will live in history as one of the most passionate pleas for human rights ever made by a president of our nation, he pledged the might of the federal government to cast off the centuries-old blight. President Johnson rightly praised the courage of the Negro for awakening the conscience of the nation.

On our part we must pay our profound respects to the white Americans who cherish their democratic traditions over the ugly customs and privileges of generations and come forth boldly to join hands with us. From Montgomery to Birmingham, from Birmingham to Selma, from Selma back to Montgomery, a trail wound in a circle long and often bloody, yet it has become a highway up from darkness. Alabama has tried to nurture and defend evil, but evil is choking to death in the dusty roads and streets of this state. So I stand before you this afternoon with the conviction that segregation is on its deathbed in Alabama, and the only thing uncertain about it is how costly the segregationists and Wallace will make the funeral.

Our whole campaign in Alabama has been centered around the right to vote. In focusing the attention of the nation and the world today on the flagrant denial of the right to vote, we are exposing the very origin, the root cause, of racial segregation in the Southland. Racial segregation as a way of life did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the races immediately after the Civil War. There were no laws segregating the races then. And as the noted historian, C. Vann Woodward, in his book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, clearly points out, the segregation of the races was really a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land. You see, it was a simple thing to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in the years that followed the Civil War. Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro slaves and pay him even less. Thus, the southern wage level was kept almost unbearably low.

Toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant happened. That is what was known as the Populist Movement. The leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses and the former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests. Not only that, but they began uniting the Negro and white massesinto a voting bloc that threatened to drive the Bourbon interests from the command posts of political power in the South.

To meet this threat, the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society. I want you to follow me through here because this is very important to see the roots of racism and the denial of the right to vote. Through their control of mass media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the thinking of the poor white masses with it, thus clouding their minds to the real issue involved in the Populist Movement. They then directed the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for Negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level. And that did it. That crippled and eventually destroyed the Populist Movement of the nineteenth century.

If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. He gave him Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. And he ate Jim Crow. And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, (Speak) their last outpost of psychological oblivion.

Thus, the threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and the white masses alike resulted in the establishment of a segregated society. They segregated southern money from the poor whites; they segregated southern mores from the rich whites; they segregated southern churches from Christianity); they segregated southern minds from honest thinking; and they segregated the Negro from everything. That’s what happened when the Negro and white masses of the South threatened to unite and build a great society: a society of justice where none would pray upon the weakness of others; a society of plenty where greed and poverty would be done away; a society of brotherhood where every man would respect the dignity and worth of human personality.

We’ve come a long way since that travesty of justice was perpetrated upon the American mind. James Weldon Johnson put it eloquently. He said:

We have come over a way

That with tears hath been watered.

We have come treading our paths

Through the blood of the slaughtered.

Out of the gloomy past,

Till now we stand at last

Where the white gleam

Of our bright star is cast.

Today I want to tell the city of Selma, today I want to say to the state of Alabama, (Yes, sir) today I want to say to the people of America and the nations of the world, that we are not about to turn around. We are on the move now.

Yes, we are on the move and no wave of racism can stop us. We are on the move now. The burning of our churches will not deter us. The bombing of our homes will not dissuade us. We are on the move now. The beating and killing of our clergymen and young people will not divert us. We are on the move now. The wanton release of their known murderers would not discourage us. We are on the move now.  Like an idea whose time has come,  not even the marching of mighty armies can halt us. We are moving to the land of freedom.

Let us therefore continue our triumphant march to the realization of the American dream. Let us march on segregated housinguntil every ghetto or social and economic depression dissolves, and Negroes and whites live side by side in decent, safe, and sanitary housing. Let us march on segregated schools until every vestige of segregated and inferior education becomes a thing of the past, and Negroes and whites study side-by-side in the socially-healing context of the classroom.

Let us march on poverty until no American parent has to skip a meal so that their children may eat. March on poverty until no starved man walks the streets of our cities and towns in search of jobs that do not exist. Let us march on poverty until wrinkled stomachs in Mississippi are filled, and the idle industries of Appalachia are realized and revitalized, and broken lives in sweltering ghettos are mended and remolded.

Let us march on ballot boxes, march on ballot boxes until race-baiters disappear from the political arena.

Let us march on ballot boxes until the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs will be transformed into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.

Let us march on ballot boxes until the Wallaces of our nation tremble away in silence.

Let us march on ballot boxes until we send to our city councils, state legislatures, and the United States Congress, men who will not fear to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God.

Let us march on ballot boxes until brotherhood becomes more than a meaningless word in an opening prayer, but the order of the day on every legislative agenda.

Let us march on ballot boxes until all over Alabama God’s children will be able to walk the earth in decency and honor.

There is nothing wrong with marching in this sense. The Bible tells us that the mighty men of Joshua merely walked about the walled city of Jerichoand the barriers to freedom came tumbling down. I like that old Negro spiritual, "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho." In its simple, yet colorful, depiction of that great moment in biblical history, it tells us that:

Joshua fit the battle of Jericho,

Joshua fit the battle of Jericho,

And the walls come tumbling down.

Up to the walls of Jericho they marched, spear in hand.

"Go blow them ramhorns," Joshua cried,

"‘Cause the battle am in my hand."

These words I have given you just as they were given us by the unknown, long-dead, dark-skinned originator. Some now long-gone black bard bequeathed to posterity these words in ungrammatical form, yet with emphatic pertinence for all of us today.

The battle is in our hands. And we can answer with creative nonviolence the call to higher ground to which the new directions of our struggle summons us. The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways that lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. But we must keep going.

In the glow of the lamplight on my desk a few nights ago, I gazed again upon the wondrous sign of our times, full of hope and promise of the future. And I smiled to see in the newspaper photographs of many a decade ago, the faces so bright, so solemn, of our valiant heroes, the people of Montgomery. To this list may be added the names of all those who have fought and, yes, died in the nonviolent army of our day: Medgar Evers, three civil rights workers in Mississippi last summer, William Moore, as has already been mentioned, the Reverend James Reeb, Jimmy Lee Jackson, and four little girls in the church of God in Birmingham on Sunday morning. But in spite of this, we must go on and be sure that they did not die in vain. The pattern of their feet as they walked through Jim Crow barriers in the great stride toward freedom is the thunder of the marching men of Joshua, and the world rocks beneath their tread.

My people, my people, listen. The battle is in our hands. The battle is in our hands in Mississippi and Alabama and all over the United States. I know there is a cry today in Alabama, we see it in numerous editorials: "When will Martin Luther King, SCLC, SNCC, and all of these civil rights agitators and all of the white clergymen and labor leaders and students and others get out of our community and let Alabama return to normalcy?"

But I have a message that I would like to leave with Alabama this evening. That is exactly what we don’t want, and we will not allow it to happen, for we know that it was normalcy in Marionthat led to the brutal murder of Jimmy Lee Jackson. It was normalcy in Birmingham that led to the murder on Sunday morning of four beautiful, unoffending, innocent girls. It was normalcy on Highway 80 that led state troopers to use tear gas and horses and billy clubs against unarmed human beings who were simply marching for justice. It was normalcy by a cafe in Selma, Alabama, that led to the brutal beating of Reverend James Reeb.

It is normalcy all over our country which leaves the Negro perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of vast ocean of material prosperity. It is normalcy all over Alabamathat prevents the Negro from becoming a registered voter.  No, we will not allow Alabama to return to normalcy.

The only normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy that recognizes the dignity and worth of all of God’s children. The only normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy that allows judgment to run down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. The only normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy of brotherhood, the normalcy of true peace, the normalcy of justice.

And so as we go away this afternoon, let us go away more than ever before committed to this struggle and committed to nonviolence. I must admit to you that there are still some difficult days ahead. We are still in for a season of suffering in many of the black belt counties of Alabama, many areas of Mississippi, many areas of Louisiana. I must admit to you that there are still jail cells waiting for us, and dark and difficult moments. But if we will go on with the faith that nonviolence and its power can transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows, we will be able to change all of these conditions.

And so I plead with you this afternoon as we go ahead: remain committed to nonviolence. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man.

I know you are asking today, "How long will it take?" Somebody’s asking, "How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?" Somebody’s asking, "When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?" Somebody’s asking, "When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?"

I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because "truth crushed to earth will rise again."

How long? Not long,  because "no lie can live forever."

How long? Not long, (All right. How long) because "you shall reap what you sow."

How long? (How long?) Not long:

Truth forever on the scaffold,

Wrong forever on the throne,

Yet that scaffold sways the future,

And, behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow,

Keeping watch above his own.

How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

How long? Not long, because:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword;

His truth is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat.

O, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant my feet!

Our God is marching on.

Glory, hallelujah! (Yes, sir) Glory, hallelujah!

Glory, hallelujah! Glory, hallelujah!

His truth is marching on.

Jesse Williams: 'Police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm and not kill white people every day', BET Humanitarian Award - 2016

26 June 2016, Black Entertainment Television Awards, California, USA

This award, this is not for me. This is for the real organisers all over the country. The activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers, the students, that are realising that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do. It's kind of basic mathematics, the more we learn about who we are and how we got here, the more we will mobilise. Now this is also in particular for the black women, in particular, who have spent their lifetimes dedicated to nurturing everyone before themselves. We can and will do better for you. 

Now what we've been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm and not kill white people every day. So what's going to happen is we are going to have equal rights and justice in our own country or we will restructure their function and ours.

Yesterday would’ve been young Tamir Rice’s 14th birthday, so I don’t want to hear anymore about how far we’ve come when paid public servants can pull a drive-by on a 12-year-old playing alone in a park in broad daylight, killing him on television then going home to make a sandwich. Tell Rekia Boyd how it’s so much better to live in 2012 than 1612 or 1712. Tell that to Eric Garner. Tell that to Sandra Bland. Tell that to Darrien Hunt.

Now the thing is though, all of us in here getting money, that alone isn’t going to stop this. Now dedicating our lives to get money just to give it right back for someone’s brand on our body, when we spent centuries praying with brands on our bodies and now we pray to get paid for brands on our bodies.

There has been no war that we have not fought and died on the front lines of. There has been no job we haven't done, there's been no tax they haven't levied against us, and we've paid all of them. But freedom is somehow always conditional here, 'You’re free,’ they keep telling us, ‘But she would’ve been alive if she hadn’t acted so… free'.

Freedom is always coming in the hereafter, but, you know what though, the hereafter is a hustle. And let's get a couple of things straight, just a little sidenote, the burden of the brutalised is not to comfort the bystander. That's not our job, stop with all that. If you have a critique for the resistance, our resistance, then you better have an established record of critique of our oppression. If you have no interest in equal rights for black people than do not make suggestions to those who do. Sit down.

We’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries, and we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind, while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil, black gold. Ghettoising and demeaning our creations then stealing them, gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit. The thing is, just because we’re magic, doesn’t mean we’re not real.