https://sellfy.com/MalcolmX https://sellfy.com/MalcolmX The Militant Labor Forum (May 29, 1964) If we’re going to talk about police brutality, it’s because police brutality exists. Why does it exist? Because our people in this particular society live in a police state. A black man in America lives in a police state. He doesn’t live in any democracy, he lives in a police state. That’s what it is, that’s what Harlem is. The police in Harlem, their presence is like occupation forces, like an occupying army. They’re not in Harlem to protect us, they’re not in Harlem to look out for our welfare, they’re in Harlem to protect the interests of the businessmen who don’t even live there. And I would be other than a man to stand up and tell you that the Afro-Americans, the black people who live in these communities under these conditions, are ready and willing to continue to sit around nonviolently and patiently and peacefully looking for some good will to change the conditions that exist. No. And you are out of your mind if you think that our people…it’s easy for you to live in another neighborhood and be sympathetic to the cause, and then come in with some nonviolent tactics and think that we too will think that that’s sufficient. But if you had to live under those conditions and suffer what our people suffer, you would have gotten rid of that nonviolence a long time ago. If those of you who are white have the good of the black people in this country at heart, my suggestion is that you have to realize now that the day of nonviolent resistance is over, that the day of passive resistance is over, that the day of peaceful demonstration…what kind of demonstration is a peaceful demonstration? It’s over. Anything that is so much an injustice that you are justified to demonstrate against it, then the one who is the author of the injustice is not qualified to lay the ground rules to you and me on how we’re supposed to go about removing that injustice. I can’t see it. The next thing you’ll see here in America—and please don’t blame it on me when you see it. You will see the same things that have taken place among other people on this earth whose condition was parallel to that of the 22 million Afro-Americans in this country. The people of China grew tired of their oppressors and the people rose up against their oppressors. They didn’t rise up nonviolently. It was easy to talk about the odds were against them, but eleven of them started out and today those eleven control 800 million. They would have been told back then that the odds were against them. As the oppressor always points out to the oppressed, “The odds are against you.” When Castro was up in the mountains of Cuba, they told him the odds were against him. Today he’s sitting in Havana and all the power that this country has can’t remove him. They told the Algerians the same thing: “What do you have to fight with?” Today they have to bow down to Ben Bella. He came out of the jail that they put him in, and today they have to negotiate with him because he knew that the one thing he had on his side was truth and time. Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it’s against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it’s against the oppressor. You don’t need anything else. So I would just like to say this in my conclusion. You’ll see it. You’ll see terrorism that will terrify you, and if you don’t think you’ll see it, you’re trying to blind yourself to the historic development of everything that’s taking place on this earth today. You’ll see other things. Why will you see them? Because people will realize that it’s impossible for a chicken to produce a duck egg, even though they both belong to the same family of fowl, so-called fowl. A chicken just doesn’t have it within its system to produce a duck egg. It can’t do it. It can only produce according to what that particular system was constructed to produce. The system in this country cannot produce freedom for an Afro-American. It is impossible for this system, this economic system, this political system, this social system, this system, period. It is impossible for it as it stands, to produce freedom right now for the black man in this country. It’s impossible. And if ever a chicken did produce a duck egg, I’m quite sure you’d say it was certainly a revolutionary chicken! https://sellfy.com/MalcolmX

• published: 06 Sep 2014
• views: 4112