I don’t understand the reason why
You tellin’ us all that we need to unify
Rally round the flag
And beat the drums of war
Sing the same old songs
Ya know we heard ’em all before
You tellin’ me it’s unpatriotic
But I call it what I see it
When I see it’s idiotic
The tears of one mother
Are the same as any other
Drop food on the kids
While you’re murderin’ their fathers
But don’t bother to show it on CNN
Brothers and sisters don’t believe them
It’s not a war against evil
It’s really just revenge
Engaged against the poorest by the same rich men
Fight terrorists wherever they be found
But why you not bombing Tim McVeigh’s hometown?
You can say what you want propaganda television
But all bombing is terrorism

(chorus)
We can chase down all our enemies
Bring them to their knees
We can bomb the world to pieces
But we can’t bomb it into peace
Whoa we may even find a solution
To hunger and disease
We can bomb the world to pieces
But we can’t bomb it into peace

911
Fire in the skies
Many people died
And no one even really knows why
They tellin’ lies of division and fear
We yelled and cried
No one listened for years
But like, “who put us here?”
And who’s responsible?
Well, there’s no debatin’
Cause if they ask me I say
It’s big corporations
World Trade Organization
Tri-Lateral action
International sanctions, Satan
Seems like it’ll be an endless price tag
Of wars tremendous
And most disturbingly
The death toll is so horrendous
So I send this to those
Who say they defend us
Send us into harm’s way
We should all make a remembrance that
This is bigger than terrorism
Blood is blood is blood and um
Love is true vision
Who will listen?
How many songs it takes for you to see
You can bomb the world to pieces
You can’t bomb it into peace
– Michael Franti and Spearhead, “Bomb The World (Armageddon Version)”, Everyone Deserves Music, Track 11 (2003)

As if it weren’t enough that National Guard and military troops have already been deployed to cities such as Washington DC, Chicago Illinois, Memphis Tennessee and Los Angeles California, with threats to further invade cities such as Portland Oregon, Minneapolis Minnesota and New York City (if the people have the nerve to elect the “socialist” Zohran Mamdani as mayor), US President Donald Trump and “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth called a sudden, mandatory meeting of US military commanders, generals and admirals from around the world in Quantico, Virginia to “lay down the law” with their new plan to destroy perceived enemies of the US abroad without restraint and to quell insurgencies, crush dissent and implement the equivalent of martial law at home.

A recent Facebook post about an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid in Chicago stated the following:

A shocking incident unfolded in Chicago when about 300 ICE agents descended from Blackhawk helicopters onto an apartment building, rounding up everyone living there. Many residents, according to witnesses, were pulled outside in zip ties, wearing little or no clothing, and children were among those caught up in this mass operation. With President Trump reportedly obtaining direct authority to deploy armed federal agents in Chicago, the move feels like an extension of what he has described as a war on blue states and cities, making the event feel as if it were ripped from a dystopian novel.

Across the country, these federal raids are being viewed as part of an escalating campaign to assert central power over communities that do not support the administration. The use of military tactics in domestic spaces looks less like a law enforcement effort and more like an outright attack on places that tend to vote Democratic. For many, the message is clear: cities that disagree with the current administration are being singled out for intimidation and collective punishment.

Perhaps the most alarming aspect is the deafening silence from major national media outlets. Instead of launching investigations or demanding accountability, mainstream networks have focused their energy on profit driven mergers and tax schemes to benefit their wealthy CEOS. That leaves local communities bearing the full weight of unchecked federal power and everyday people more vulnerable, as the role of the media as the public’s watchdog is abandoned.

It seems this administration is intent on securing its grip on power at the expense of their perceived enemies around the world and their invented enemies on the home front, in accordance with the Fascists’ Playbook. Purify the citizenry here through deportations of “illegals” (the definition of whom seems to be expanding) and detention of “insurgents” (anyone not sufficiently loyal to the Dear Leader) in internment camps, silence dissenters in the areas of news, analysis, commentary, entertainment and other mass media, cancel elections to ensure that the regime will never be replaced, militarize the cities to ensure against rebellion or even protest, while “taking the gloves off” the world’s deadliest military force to crush any potential resistance from outside (or possibly inside).

“Hi America, my name is Authoritarianism. Thanks for letting me into your house last November. These are my friends, Fascism and Martial Law. We’re here to keep you safe from the invaders, but also from your neighbors and yourselves, because enemies are everywhere. So just be compliant and let us handle everything.”

The recent assassination of right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk provoked calls for a “war on the left” before the identity of the shooter was even determined, and such calls have persisted even as the shooter was revealed to be another White right-winger and alleged follower of ultra-right-wing pundit Nick Fuentes who felt Kirk’s politics, as cruel as they were, did not go far enough. As a result, the “war on woke” continues despite the internecine violence on the right and the preponderance of mass shooters, terrorists and murderers over the years who have been determined to emanate from right-wing enclaves. Thus, Trump and Hegseth have been mobilizing military and paramilitary units to crack down almost exclusively on cities run by Black mayors or that have largely Black populations under the guise of “cleaning up crime”, despite the clear evidence that crime in these cities has decreased tremendously over the last several years, not because of over-policing or military intervention but because of investment in community and anti-violence efforts in communities and neighborhoods.

An increasing number of analysts, activists and “regular citizens” are becoming convinced that fascism and martial law are not coming; they are already here. In the interest of not exposing these activists to the potential retaliation of the emerging police state, we will not post their comments here, but if you are connected to Pan Afrikan organizations and concerned citizens, you probably already know some of them.

Check out social media for a few minutes and you will run across one or another Facebook or TikTok post describing last Tuesday’s meeting at Quantico as a call for martial law, and emphasizing that Black people in particular need to prepare for the time when the military invades your town or city, allegedly to support ICE raids but ultimately stopping, detaining and sometimes imprisoning citizens of the United States who happen to speak too much Spanish, “look Haitian” or “look Hispanic”, or have gone on record as members of the “woke (radical) left”.

Those who attempt to intervene on behalf of those who are wrongly accosted and “disappeared” also risk abuse at the hands of often-masked and heavily armed right wing militias and military personnel who have suddenly been tasked with policing duties for which they have not been qualified, trained or prepared and which they have nonetheless been empowered to carry out with impunity.

But this crisis is not just recognized by Pan Afrikanists, Black Nationalists and leftists for the xenophobic purge that it threatens to become. There are a number of White activists and commentators that have been sounding the alarm from the beginning and are increasing in frequency and intensity, especially since Trump has reiterated his “enemy from within” comments and held his meeting with US military commanders from around the world to reinforce that sentiment, made even clearer by Hegseth’s comments decrying the “stupid … politically correct and overbearing” rules of engagement (known to the rest of us as the Geneva Conventions and the Conventions Against Genocide) and calling on military commanders present to dispose of such inconvenient rules and “intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill” enemies on foreign soil as well as “quell civil disturbances” in US cities, attacking American civilians on American soil who have dared to speak out against Trump’s authoritarian aims which he is apparently willing to institute war on the streets to enforce. While these White critics may expose themselves to right-wing retaliation in time, they are somewhat insulated from the worst abuses (at least for now) by the fact of their Whiteness. Still, their commitment to sound the alarm for their followers and the larger White community are appreciated, as that is what Tim Wise, one of the most politically-aware public speakers, has done, and it is also what Ancestor Malcolm X stated in his autobiography that he would advise White activists that consider themselves allies of the Black Struggle to do.

A Facebook post from “Stuart H2O” speaks specifically about Trump and Hegseth’s meeting with the military commanders: https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1CSSCaye3p/

Robert Arnold, who also goes under the heading “Defiance 13”, provides regular video commentaries about US abuses at home and abroad, with particular emphasis on American racism, xenphobia and authoritarianism. His piece on the Trump-Hegseth meeting, titled “The Silence of Generals”, can be viewed here: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1Cw6UBrX6N/

The race is on. Many of us ignored the time for vigilance and thus have squandered much of the breathing room we thought we had. The time for building the resistance has come. People in the Pan Afrikan community are finally seeing the urgent need for organizing and building unity. White “mainstream” commentators are increasingly aware of the unhinged nature of their political leaders. And members of the grassroots Black community, watching the rants by right-wing pundits like Charlie Kirk and Nick Fuentes railing against everything from affirmative action to anti-discrimination to historical Black leaders to simple empathy as they fan the flames for the very violence that will also consume them, are listening and watching as their so-called leaders “rally round the flag and beat the drums of war.”

On October 1, Sis. Tomiko spoke with recurring guest Grandmother Walks On Water. Also known as Mama Nataska Hasan and the mother of local Baltimore recording artist Maimouna “MuMu Fresh” Youssef, Grandmother Walks On Water regularly presents her analysis on issues of Afrikan centered health and spirituality. Their discussion, which always promises to be thought-provoking, can be found here as well as on our Media Page under Current Radio and Podcasts.

On September 24, show host Sis. Tomiko interviewed Washington, DC-based activist Dr. Baruch Ben-Yehudah, who is the proprietor of ELife Restaurant in Capitol Heights, Maryland, just outside of Washington DC.  ELife seeks to nourish the mind, body and spirit, offering a variety of healthy foods and products as well as regularly bringing in lecturers on Afrikan history and Pan Afrikan organizing such as historian Dr. Ashra Kwesi.  Her interview with him can be found here and on our Media Page under Current Radio and Podcasts.

There has been a rather disturbing trend among Black political activists that seemed to accelerate after Donald Trump retook the White House in January of this year.  I have watched political activists who I had once regarded as intellectual pro-Black thinkers suddenly start acting as cheerleaders for practically every draconian, authoritarian and downright dictatorial policy enacted by Trump, in accordance with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 (https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf; https://www.factcheck.org/2024/09/a-guide-to-project-2025/), while demonstrating a surprising attitude of uncritical support and unabashed celebration. 

National and local Black celebrities, from Judge Joe Brown to Maryland Republican political candidate Kim Klacik, partied in the White House in February to celebrate Trump’s victory.  Activists who had once uncompromisingly opposed authoritarian overreach and right-wing dictatorship began cheering as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) accosted people at court-mandated immigration hearings, at work on work visas, in college on student visas and on the street without warrants, uniforms or badges, in apparent blissful acceptance of the scattered cases of United States citizens being detained for their political activism as collateral damage, the price that must be paid to get the immigrants out of ‘Murica.  And now, I’ve seen Black people pointing to marginal “Black MAGA” groups as evidence that Black America as a whole really supports the Trump agenda.  This, for now at least, is my answer to them.

At the urging of a Sista who had posted on Facebook, I took some time away from my actual organizing work and watched the Angela Gets Answers (https://www.youtube.com/@AngelaGetsAnswers) YouTube video with Chicago Flips Red co-founder Danielle Carter-Walters (I’m a Black Woman Supporting Trump & Troops, which I’m sharing here just so you’ll know), as well as a Fox News video (Chicago resident goes after city’s ‘progressive Democratic gang’ for refusing Trump’s federal help on crime) featuring Zoe Leigh, the other co-founder of Chicago Flips Red (apparently more of an objective or a wish than an actual documented fact).

Chicago Flips Red is described by Angela Gets Answers host Angela Brown as “Black MAGA”, and she describes co-founder Danielle Carter-Walters as “an outlier, not one of the 92% of Black female voters who voted for Kamala Harris.”  It seems that independent Black political organizing is embodied these days by us eschewing classical “liberal” and “moderate” politics, rejecting Pan Afrikan (Black) organizing as “divisive” and zooming right past “traditional conservative” concepts to embrace hard-right-wing MAGA ideology.  This appears to be not inconsistent with the percentage of Black voters who backed Trump (some of whom I suspect have already FAFO’ed), either because of dissatisfaction with Democrats’ broken promises and weak leadership or because of Trump’s celebrity and shameless swagger which still seems to impress us for some reason.  Ms. Carter-Walters states in the video that she initially faced pushback and then tapped into the concerns of some of the more conservative Black constituents about “young Black thugs” and immigrants who White racists have often successfully turned us against. 

As often happens when someone pushes against the “political mainstream”, Chicago Flips Red’s Website (https://www.chicagoflipsred.com) has made claims that its members have been harassed and even threatened with violence.  While I personally decry such acts of intimidation against those who disagree politically and prefer to engage such people on the merits of their positions in the hope of showing them the error of their perspectives, I must also note that such acts of intimidation, against those on the so-called “far left” (which really does not exist in the United States) or the “far right” (which we used to think didn’t exist but seems to be making a comeback thanks to hard-right ideologues such as Stephen Miller) have apparently increased since Trump took office and the accepted mode of debate has turned increasingly superficial, anti-factual, aggressive, disrespectful, xenophobic, ugly and downright violent.

As so often seems to happen, the backlash against “Vote Blue No Matter Who” and the furor over sanctuary cities (“They’re getting free everything here”, a charge usually made without evidence) was followed not by truly independent Black-led political organizing (which I could support) but by Black folks running to support a political party that actively seeks to marginalize us (elimination of essential services, hypocritical imposition of federal power on local communities — “don’t tread on me” be damned — gerrymandering, voter suppression, criminalization and mass incarceration, anti-Black History in the name of “anti-wokeness”, and now militarizing policing in largely Black and Black-led cities up to and including unleashing the actual military in direct violation of Posse Comitatus). 

The efforts of mayors such as Los Angeles’s Karen Bass, Chicago’s Brandon Johnson and Baltimore’s Brandon Scott to find ways to decrease crime through empowering community and anti-violence groups (a plan which seems to be working, as crime is reported to have decreased in these cities to levels not seen in decades) stand in stark opposition to Trump’s plan to “send in the troops” in military gear brandishing automatic weapons to police the streets even though their primary training is to act in times of outright war.  It should also be noted that when Trump was last in the White House, he refused to “send in the troops” in accordance with the Insurrection Act when actual insurrectionists in support of Trump attacked the Capitol building (beating police with rails, breaking windows, carrying Confederate flags, defecating in the halls, chanting “Where’s Nancy” and calling for the hanging of his own vice president) on January 6, 2021.  Trump’s intended rebranding of the Department of Defense as the Department of War as he unleashes them on America’s Black-run and largely Black-populated cities seems to make his intentions clear.  But our Brothers and Sisters who have embraced the political hard right seem to be ignoring this, not too different from White citizens ignoring the racism and sexism of Trump and many in his party, as long as their specific “wish list” of eliminating crime, kicking out the immigrants and promoting “conservative values” (whatever that means) is addressed.  In any case, these Black activists are of the opinion that our freedom and uplift will come from uncritically embracing the Red, White and Blue instead of building up the Red, Black and Green.

Instead of leaving one (Democrat) political plantation and choosing real freedom and Black self-determination (independent Black political organizing) which apparently is too much like hard work (so much for MAGA calling Black people “lazy”), they run to another plantation (Republicans) where we will be treated worse.  Enough of this “Party of Lincoln” hogwash that so many MAGA folks love to push; the Republican Party abandoned that anti-slavery credo when southern racist Dixiecrats left Harry Truman because of his pro-civil rights policies in the 1950’s and joined the Republican Party en masse, turning what had been a mildly progressive political party into a right-wing reactionary one in support of White supremacy.  The Republican Party has effectively been our political enemy ever since.  Who used the “Southern Strategy” in 1968 to bring in even more White southern racists, empowered J. Edgar Hoover to launch COINTELPRO against Black organizations in the late 60’s, inundated our communities with marijuana when it was illegal in the 70’s and overthrew democratically-elected leaders like Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973 (Richard Nixon, a Republican)?  Who dumped cocaine into South Central Los Angeles and supercharged the cocaine epidemic as well as mass incarceration in the 80’s (Ronald Reagan, a Republican)?  Who mismanaged the federal response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and used “weapons of mass destruction” and false media reports in 2003 to gin up support for the illegal war on Iraq, directly causing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths (George W. Bush, a Republican)?  Who ignored the COVID pandemic from 2020 to 2024 and called it a “hoax”, leading to the current estimates of over 1 million deaths in the US and over 7 million worldwide (Donald Trump, a Republican)?  Who inspired an insurrection on January 6, 2021 and did nothing to stop it (Trump again)?  Sure, Bill Clinton (a Democrat) signed the Crime Bill and the Effective Death Penalty Act, former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (a Democrat) had called young Black males “super predators”, Joe Biden (a Democrat) had backed several onerous bills as a Senator, and even Barack Obama (a Democrat) increased drone strikes in Afghanistan, prosecuted whistleblowers and bombed Libya leading to the assassination of Muamar Gaddafi, but that only underscores my point.  We keep bouncing from one oppressor to the other like a shooting gallery duck.  “The Democrats ignore us and break promises to stop ignoring us, so let’s run to the Republicans who beat us and at least keep their promises to continue beating us.”  Reject the Democrats because of transgender and immigrant support and run to the Republicans who strip agencies like FEMA, NOAA and the National Weather Service of critical personnel and infrastructure, wage “culture wars” against Black books, Black institutions and even the Public Broadcasting System (“Sesame Street”), invade our cities, take the regulatory chains off industrial polluters, close public services for poor people to give tax breaks to the filthy rich and eliminate inspectors general and community control boards to allow police brutality to once again run unchecked and unwatched throughout our communities.  I am not saying the Democrats are good (though there are at least progressive-minded legislators like Jasmine Crockett and others, the Democratic Party supports the genocide in Gaza and opposes reparations and independent Afrikan nations too), just that the Republicans are worse.  We continue to behave as though there are only two possible courses of action, so we keep running from one Massa to another.  We should be building our own independent, Black-led, grassroots-responsive, non-partisan political machine but Noooooo.  Apparently that would require too much reading (hence the Black book bans going unnoticed by “Black MAGA”), too much real research (as opposed to just watching Fox and a few counter-culture YouTube shows) and too much real work with real Black organizers, Black historians and Black activists, and we can’t have that, can we?  As for Angela Brown, she counters her interview with Ms. Carter-Walters with a White former MAGA member in her follow-up episode, her show’s tag line is “Decoding MAGA” and “Decoding Liberals”, and she clearly recognizes that Ms. Carter-Walters is “an outlier”.  So any implication that Black people are “begging” Trump to come in with the military, despite the propaganda from Fox News in their interview with Zoe Leigh, a self-described “suburb kid” originally from Albany, NY, egged on by the host (“please bring us help”, which does not mean bring in the military to turn the city into a war zone), is disingenuous at best.

I don’t know whether some people are just trying to gain political favor from whoever is in power, whether some are intoxicated by the notoriety that comes from taking a confrontational, controversial or counter-cultural position, whether some have had the bucks waved in front of their faces or whether they truly believe in what they are saying, but too many of us are apparently allured by the feeling of superiority that comes from finding an obscure position through shallow research and running with it for the likes and follows, and are addicted to political posturing and the attention and fame (however fleeting) it gives them.  If that is not their motivation, then why not work with anti-imperialist, anti-racist grassroots activists to truly build the “better place” we all claim to desire for ourselves, our families, our people and humanity?

Every year at this time, as Americans break out the red, white and blue bunting, the American flags, the Uncle Sam outfits and the grill for some nice patriotic backyard barbecue, we feel the need to post this little reminder that the United States still has a lot of work to do if it is to, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “live out the meaning of its creed.” There is no better time than this to share the speech given by Ancestor Frederick Douglass on July 5, 1852 in Rochester, New York.

The Web site https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/frederick-douglass-what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july-1852 describes Douglass’s speech thus:

Frederick Douglass’s speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”, delivered on July 5, 1852, addresses the stark contrast between the celebration of freedom on Independence Day and the ongoing oppression of enslaved people. Douglass states that for the American slave, the Fourth of July is a day that highlights the “gross injustice and cruelty” they endure, making it a painful reminder of their lack of freedom and rights. He critiques the hypocrisy of a nation that celebrates liberty while denying it to a significant portion of its population.

The Web site https://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/more/douglass.html offers its own introduction and a reasonably complete text of the essential points of Douglass’s speech:

Douglass delivered this speech before a crowd in Rochester, NY on July 5, 1852. The poem at the end was written by famed abolitionist and colleague William Lloyd Garrison, and published on March 17, 1845 in the Signal of Liberty an anti-slavery newspaper.

Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too — great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.

Fellow Citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the “lame man leap as an hart.

But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can today take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”

Fellow Citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!”

To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery Ñ the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse”; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, “It is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, an denounce less; would you persuade more, and rebuke less; your cause would be much more likely to succeed.” But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look today, in the presence of Amercans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival….

…Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from “the Declaration of Independence,” the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. — Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other.

The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. “Ethiopia, shall, stretch. out her hand unto God.” In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it:

God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o’er!
When from their galling chains set free,
Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom’s reign,
To man his plundered rights again
Restore.

God speed the day when human blood
Shall cease to flow!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of human brotherhood,
And each return for evil, good,
Not blow for blow;
That day will come all feuds to end,
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.

God speed the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant’s presence cower;
But to all manhood’s stature tower,
By equal birth!
That hour will come, to each, to all,
And from his Prison-house, to thrall
Go forth.

Until that year, day, hour, arrive,
With head, and heart, and hand I’ll strive,
To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
The spoiler of his prey deprive —
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate’er the peril or the cost,
Be driven.