Emma
Goldman, Address to the Jury in U.S. v. Emma Goldman and Alexander
Berkman (July 9, 1917)
I
wish to say emphatically that no such expression as "We believe
in violence and we will use violence" was uttered at the meeting
of May 18th, or at any other meeting. I could not have
employed such a phrase, as there was no occasion for it. If for no
other reason, it is because I want my lectures and speeches to be
coherent and logical. The sentence credited to me is neither.
I
have read to you my position toward political violence from a lengthy
essay called "The Psychology of Political Violence."
But
to make that position clearer and simpler, I wish to say that I am a
social student. It is my mission in life to ascertain the cause of
our social evils and of our social difficulties. As a student of
social wrongs it is my aim to diagnose a wrong. To simply condemn the
man who has committed an act of political violence, in order to save
my skin, would be as unpardonable as it would be on the part of the
physician, who is called to diagnose a case, to condemn the patient
because the patient has tuberculosis, cancer, or some other disease.
The honest, earnest, sincere physician does not only prescribe
medicine, he tries to find out the cause of the disease. And if the
patient is at all capable as to means, the doctor will say to him,
"Get out of this putrid air, get out of the factory, get out of
the place where your lungs are being infected." He will not
merely give him medicine. He will tell him the cause of the disease.
And that is precisely my position in regard to acts of violence. That
is what I have said on every platform. I have attempted to explain
the cause and the reason for acts of political violence.
It
is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the
bottom. It is the accumulated indignation against organized wrong,
organized crime, organized injustice which drives the political
offender to his act. To condemn him means to be blind to the causes
which make him. I can no more do it, nor have I the right to, than
the physician who were to condemn the patient for his disease. You
and I and all of us who remain indifferent to the crimes of poverty,
of war, of human degradation, are equally responsible for the act
committed by the political offender. May I therefore be permitted to
say, in the words of a great teacher: "He who is without sin
among you, Jet him cast the first stone." Does that mean
advocating violence? You might as well accuse Jesus of advocating
prostitution, because He took the part of the prostitute, Mary
Magdalene.
Gentlemen
of the jury, the meeting of the 18th of May was called primarily for
the purpose of voicing the position of the conscientious objector and
to point out the evils of conscription. Now, who and what is the
conscientious objector? Is he really a shirker, a slacker, or a
coward? To call him that is to be guilty of dense ignorance of the
forces which impel men and women to stand out against the whole world
like a glittering lone star upon a dark horizon. The conscientious
objector is impelled by what President Wilson in his speech of
February 3, 1917, called "the righteous passion for justice upon
which all war, all structure of family, State and of mankind must
rest as the ultimate base of our existence and our liberty." The
righteous passion for justice which can never express itself in human
slaughter—that is the force which makes the conscientious
objector. Poor indeed is the country which fails to recognize the
importance of char new type of humanity as the "ultimate base of
our existence and liberty." It will find itself barren of that
which makes for character and quality in its people....
Gentlemen
of the jury, we have been in public life for twenty-seven years. We
have been hauled into court, in and out of season—we have never
denied our position. Even the police know that Emma Goldman and
Alexander Berkman are not shirkers. You have had occasion during this
trial to convince yourselves chat we do not deny. We have gladly and
proudly claimed responsibility, nor only for what we ourselves have
said and written, but even for things written by others and with
which we did not agree. Is it plausible, then, chat we would go
through the ordeal, trouble and expense of a lengthy trial to escape
responsibility in this instance? A thousand times no! But we refuse
to be tried on a trumped-up charge, or to be convicted by perjured
testimony, merely because we are Anarchists and hated by the class
whom we have openly fought for many years....
Whatever
your verdict, gentlemen, it cannot possibly affect the rising ride of
discontent in this country against war which, despite all boasts, is
a war for con-quest 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?"
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