I remember walking down the street in downtown Gangnam many years ago and someone trying to give me a pamphelt with “The Pledge of Resistance” and “Not in Our Names” on it. I took the pamphlet, glanced at it, and figured it was some nonsense socialist garbage. I wasn’t interested in yet another “save the children” bit of nonsense that was “probably” the exact opposite of what it purported to be. I already “knew” that whatever cause was being pimped out was 99% likely to be doing the exact opposite.
After all, aren’t all the “activists” socialist assholes? I don’t know what I did with it. I probably threw it out.
But I was wrong and I missed out then.
Jeff Berwick used that as the intro to his Anarchast show on Youtube. It’s powerful.
Pure, power.
SAUL WILLIAMS PLEDGE OF RESISTANCE
We believe that it is our
responsibility to resist the injustices
done by our government,
in our names.Not in our name
will you wage endless war
there can be no more deaths
no more transfusions
of blood for oil.Not in our name
will you invade countries
bomb civilians, kill more children
letting history take its course
over the graves of the nameless.Not in our name
will you erode the very freedoms
you have claimed to fight for.Not by our hands
will we supply weapons and funding
for the annihilation of families
on foreign soil.Not by our mouths
will we let fear silence us.Not by our hearts
will we allow whole peoples
or countries to be deemed evil.Not by our will
and Not in our name.We pledge resistance.
We pledge alliance with those
who have come under attack
for voicing opposition to the war
or for their religion or ethnicity.We pledge to make common cause
with the people of the world
to bring about justice,
freedom and peace.Another world is possible
and we pledge to make it real.
The music in the Anarchast intro really adds a lot to that. It’s really well done.
I recently won the AllCrypt t-shirt slogan contest. I put forth 43 different slogans with several of them being variations of quotes from that poem by Saul Williams. I’m very happy to say that AllCrypt has chosen several of the entries I submitted, and one of them was based on that poem by Saul Williams:
Another world is possible, and we pledge to make it real.
– Saul Williams, The Pledge of Resistance
That’s some pretty powerful stuff.
The winner blog post is here:
https://www.allcrypt.com/blog/2014/04/winner-of-the-t-shirt-slogan-contest/
They’ve chosen 4 of my entries (some edited):
Silly: Mega Doge Sex Nuts. Yeah, we have those.
Drugs: Wanna legally buy some POT and METH with Bitcoin? (Tweaking wording before it goes to print. We’ve gone through 8 revisions. We’re indecisive)
Political: Another world is possible, and we pledge to make it real. – Saul Williams, The Pledge of Resistance
Suggestive: We do it DOGE style.
Now, I really like all of those. And they’re going to send me a t-shirt, so I have to choose one… That’s a tough call. I want to promote crypto. I want to promote so many things, but to choose just one… I have to go with #3 there. Saul Williams has such a beautiful piece of spoken poetry there.
I don’t want to just make people laugh; I want to make them think.
As Jeff Berwick would say…
Peace, love, and anarchy.