AMAZING Speech From June 1917 -
So
Much of it Applies TODAY !
Emma
Goldman was a leader in the American
anarchist movement and cofounder
with Alexander Berkman of the
anarchist monthly Mother Earth.
After she and Berkman
distributed a manifesto urging young
men to resist the military draft
during World War I (1914-1918), the
two were charged with conspiracy to
violate U.S. conscription laws. In
June 1917 Goldman addressed her
jury, calling for free speech and
the right to resist tyranny. The two
were convicted, sentenced to two
years in prison, and fined $10,000.
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2008. ©
1993-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All
rights reserved.
'Progress Is Never Within the Law'
By Emma Goldman
Gentlemen, when we asked whether
you would be prejudiced against us
if it were proven that we propagated
ideas and opinions contrary to those
held by the majority, you were
instructed by the Court to say, 'If
they are within the law.' But what
the court did not tell you is, that
no new faith—not even the most
humane and peaceable—has ever been
considered 'within the law' by those
who were in power. The history of
human growth is at the same time the
history of every new idea heralding
the approach of a brighter dawn, and
the brighter dawn has always been
considered illegal, outside of the
law.
Gentlemen of the jury, most of you,
I take it, are believers in the
teachings of Jesus. Bear in mind
that he was put to death by those
who considered his views as being
against the law. I also take it that
you are proud of your Americanism.
Remember that those who fought and
bled for your liberties were in
their time considered as being
against the law, as dangerous
disturbers and trouble-makers. They
not only preached violence, but they
carried out their ideas by throwing
tea into the Boston harbor. They
said that 'Resistance to tyranny is
obedience to God.' They wrote a
dangerous document called the
Declaration of Independence. A
document which continues to be
dangerous to this day, and for the
circulation of which a young man was
sentenced to ninety days prison in a
New York Court, only the other day.
They were the Anarchists of their
time—they were never within the law.
Your Government is allied with the
French Republic. Need I call your
attention to the historic fact that
the great upheaval in France was
brought about by extra-legal means?
The Dantes, the Robespierres, the
Marats, the Herberts, aye even the
man who is responsible for the most
stirring revolutionary music, the
Marseillaise (which unfortunately
has deteriorated into a war tune),
even Camille Desmoulins, were never
within the law. But for those great
pioneers and rebels, France would
have continued under the yoke of the
idle Louis XVI, to whom the sport of
shooting jack rabbits was more
important than the destiny of the
people of France …
Never can a new idea move within the
law. It matters not whether that
idea pertains to political and
social changes or to any other
domain of human thought and
expression—to science, literature,
music; in fact, everything that
makes for freedom and joy and beauty
must refuse to move within the law.
How can it be otherwise? The law is
stationary, fixed, mechanical, 'a
chariot wheel' which grinds all
alike without regard to time, place
and condition, without ever taking
into account cause and effect,
without ever going into the
complexity of the human soul.
Progress knows nothing of fixity. It
cannot be pressed into a definite
mold. It cannot bow to the dictum,
'I have ruled,' 'I am the regulating
finger of God.' Progress is ever
renewing, ever becoming, ever
changing—never is it within the law.
If that be crime, we are criminals
even like Jesus, Socrates, Galileo,
Bruno, John Brown and scores of
others. We are in good company,
among those whom Havelock Ellis, the
greatest living psychologist,
describes as the political criminals
recognized by the whole civilized
world, except America, as men and
women who out of deep love for
humanity, out of a passionate
reverence for liberty and an
all-absorbing devotion to an ideal
are ready to pay for their faith
even with their blood. We cannot do
otherwise if we are to be true to
ourselves—we know that the political
criminal is the precursor of human
progress—the political criminal of
today must needs be the hero, the
martyr and the saint of the new age.
But, says the Prosecuting Attorney,
the press and the unthinking rabble,
in high and low station, 'that is a
dangerous doctrine and unpatriotic
at this time'. No doubt it is. But
are we to be held responsible for
something which is as unchangeable
and unalienable as the very stars
hanging in the heavens unto time and
all eternity?
Gentlemen of the jury, we respect
your patriotism. We would not, if we
could, have you change its meaning
for yourself. But may there not be
different kinds of patriotism as
there are different kinds of
liberty? I for one cannot believe
that love of one's country must
needs consist in blindness to its
social faults, in deafness to its
social discords, in inarticulation
of its social wrongs. Neither can I
believe that the mere accident of
birth in a certain country or the
mere scrap of a citizen's paper
constitutes the love of country.
I know many people—I am one of
them—who were not born here, nor
have they applied for citizenship,
and who yet love America with deeper
passion and greater intensity than
many natives whose patriotism
manifests itself by pulling,
kicking, and insulting those who do
not rise when the national anthem is
played. Our patriotism is that of
the man who loves a woman with open
eyes. He is enchanted by her beauty,
yet he sees her faults. So we, too,
who know America, love her beauty,
her richness, her great
possibilities; we love her
mountains, her canyons, her forests,
her Niagara, and her deserts—above
all do we love the people that have
produced her wealth, her artists who
have created beauty, her great
apostles who dream and work for
liberty—but with the same passionate
emotion we hate her superficiality,
her cant, her corruption, her mad,
unscrupulous worship at the altar of
the Golden Calf.
We say that if America has entered
the war to make the world safe for
democracy, she must first make
democracy safe in America. How else
is the world to take America
seriously, when democracy at home is
daily being outraged, free speech
suppressed, peaceable assemblies
broken up by overbearing and brutal
gangsters in uniform; when free
press is curtailed and every
independent opinion gagged. Verily,
poor as we are in democracy, how can
we give of it to the world? We
further say that a democracy
conceived in the military servitude
of the masses, in their economic
enslavement, and nurtured in their
tears and blood, is not democracy at
all. It is despotism—the cumulative
result of a chain of abuses which,
according to that dangerous
document, the Declaration of
Independence, the people have the
right to overthrow.
The District Attorney has dragged in
our Manifesto, and he has emphasized
the passage, 'Resist conscription.'
Gentlemen of the jury, please
remember that that is not the charge
against us. But admitting that the
Manifesto contains the expression,
'Resist conscription', may I ask
you, is there only one kind of
resistance? Is there only the
resistance which means the gun, the
bayonet, the bomb or flying machine?
Is there not another kind of
resistance? May not the people
simply fold their hands and declare,
'We will not fight when we do not
believe in the necessity of war'?
May not the people who believe in
the repeal of the Conscription Law,
because it is unconstitutional,
express their opposition in word and
by pen, in meetings and in other
ways? What right has the District
Attorney to interpret that
particular passage to suit himself?
Moreover, gentlemen of the jury, I
insist that the indictment against
us does not refer to conscription.
We are charged with a conspiracy
against registration. And in no way
or manner has the prosecution proven
that we are guilty of conspiracy or
that we have committed an overt act.
Gentlemen of the jury, you are not
called upon to accept our views, to
approve of them or to justify them.
You are not even called upon to
decide whether our views are within
or against the law. You are called
upon to decide whether the
prosecution has proven that the
defendants Emma Goldman and
Alexander Berkman have conspired to
urge people not to register. And
whether their speeches and writings
represent overt acts.
Whatever your verdict, gentlemen, it
cannot possibly affect the rising
tide of discontent in this country
against war which, despite all
boasts, is a war for conquest and
military power. Neither can it
affect the ever increasing
opposition to conscription which is
a military and industrial yoke
placed upon the necks of the
American people. Least of all will
your verdict affect those to whom
human life is sacred, and who will
not become a party to the world
slaughter. Your verdict can only add
to the opinion of the world as to
whether or not justice and liberty
are a living force in this country
or a mere shadow of the past.
Your verdict may, of course, affect
us temporarily, in a physical
sense—it can have no effect whatever
upon our spirit. For even if we were
convicted and found guilty and the
penalty were that we be placed
against a wall and shot dead, I
should nevertheless cry out with the
great Luther: 'Here I am and here I
stand and I cannot do otherwise.'
And gentlemen, in conclusion let me
tell you that my co-defendant, Mr
Berkman, was right when he said the
eyes of America are upon you. They
are upon you not because of sympathy
for us or agreement with Anarchism.
They are upon you because it must be
decided sooner or later whether we
are justified in telling people that
we will give them democracy in
Europe, when we have no democracy
here? Shall free speech and free
assemblage, shall criticism and
opinion—which even the espionage
bill did not include—be destroyed?
Shall it be a shadow of the past,
the great historic American past?
Shall it be trampled underfoot by
any detective, or policeman, anyone
who decides upon it? Or shall free
speech and free press and free
assemblage continue to be the
heritage of the American people?
Gentlemen of the jury, whatever your
verdict will be, as far as we are
concerned, nothing will be changed.
I have held ideas all my life. I
have publicly held my ideas for
twenty-seven years. Nothing on earth
would ever make me change my ideas
except one thing; and that is, if
you will prove to me that our
position is wrong, untenable, or
lacking in historic fact. But never
would I change my ideas because I am
found guilty. I may remind you of
two great Americans, undoubtedly not
unknown to you, gentlemen of the
jury; Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry
David Thoreau. When Thoreau was
placed in prison for refusing to pay
taxes, he was visited by Ralph Waldo
Emerson and Emerson said: 'David,
what are you doing in jail?' and
Thoreau replied: 'Ralph, what are
you doing outside, when honest
people are in jail for their
ideals?' Gentlemen of the jury, I do
not wish to influence you. I do not
wish to appeal to your passions. I
do not wish to influence you by the
fact that I am a woman. I have no
such desires and no such designs. I
take it that you are sincere enough
and honest enough and brave enough
to render a verdict according to
your convictions, beyond the shadow
of a reasonable doubt.
Please forget that we are
Anarchists. Forget that it is
claimed that we propagated violence.
Forget that something appeared in Mother Earth when I was
thousands of miles away, three years
ago. Forget all that, and merely
consider the evidence. Have we been
engaged in a conspiracy? has that
conspiracy been proven? have we
committed overt acts? have those
overt acts been proven? We for the
defense say they have not been
proven. And therefore your verdict
must be not guilty.
But
whatever your decision, the struggle
must go on. We are but the atoms in
the incessant human struggle towards
the light that shines in the
darkness—the Ideal of economic,
political and spiritual liberation
of mankind!
Source: The Penguin Book of
Historic Speeches.
MacArthur, Brian, ed. Penguin
Books, 1996.
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2008. © 1993-2007
Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.