Youth Against Empire - A Speech From University of Maine Orono Campus
Editor's Note: This speech was submitted to the Agora by a 19 year old activist, 'LC'. Let me tell you, when I read this speech, I was struck by the tenacity, the tenacity that gives way to hope. Hopefully the words of the younger end of my generation can do the same for you.
Empires are not born, they do not simply blink into existence, but they are built overtime. Whether you are a historian or a person who has been at the receiving end of its construction, you know what empires themselves are built of. Blood, slaves, tributes and weapons.
The United States, as I was raised to believe it to be, is not a Federal Republic. It was not a Federal Republic when I was born, or even when my parents were born. The United States has always been, at its core, an empire. An empire that employs economic and political blackmail to subjugate, and when that does not work they will use intelligence collaborators to subjugate, and when that does not work they will use the full might of the most expensive and expansive military on the planet to subjugate.
What we see now in Israel, is not the actions of a simple settler colonial project born of the british empire, but the UNION of colonial projects and a UNION empires in this conflict, whose political and economic and military support by the west has enabled Israel to conduct a genocide against the Palestinian people for decades.
For a near lifetime Israel has whittled down the territorial integrity of Palestine again, and again, and again, and has brutalized its neighbors! Again, and again, and again! Incidents large and small not for the sake of protecting itself but for the sake of expansion!
For a near lifetime the United States has participated in this genocidal project for the sake of exploiting resources and undermining its international political rivals.
I ask everyone here to know that what you do right now is good work, that you must continue the good work to pursue the end of genocide, but this work will not be solely of asking the politicians to stop funding genocide, but demanding. Time and time again the empire has proven itself uncaring to the will of its citizens because its citizens exist only to support the will of the empire.
Yet again the empire has proven itself uncaring to the will of its citizens because its citizens exist only to support the will of the empire. The commonly-known illusion of political choice is dragging every person standing in these borders towards fascism.
The illusion is dragging the people of Palestine deeper into anguish, I wake up in the morning to videos of Palestinian mothers holding their children, their children in bodybags. This is what Israel has intended for the Palestinian people for as long as Israel has existed, Israel has not once had an intention for a two-state solution, but simply biding their time.
I say this as the racially, economically and socially privileged inheritor of this settler project we call the United States- that all those who dare to call themselves "progressive" or "anti-imperialist" or "anti- colonialist" or "anti-racist" take action beyond social media, beyond rally attendance.
Empires will sacrifice without remorse, if the economic elite of this empire feel threatened - they will sacrifice the illusions of choice, of democracy and of civil liberty here and it is THEN, when one day, when the far right- the right populist- the ultranationalist, the fascist whatever you must call it will come to YOUR door. To your neighborhood, and they will sacrifice you.
So I ask you, as any human of any background to know that the democratic party is not enough. You will not vote out the onslaught, you will not march out the onslaught. It is a historical truth that disobedience, unrest, the disruption of the insides of the empire is the only way the empire will check itself.
Two political parties which at the highest levels of their influence are bought and sold by their respective investors are not going to check themself. It is the people, who must check them. It is the people who must check the flow of dollars through the war machine, it is the people who must defend against the armored enforcers of the empire, it is the people of all imperial nations who bear the responsibility of solidarity.