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Arundhati Roy - May 13 - New York

Democracy Now (alternative news show) presented roughly fifty minutes of a speech by Arundhati Roy to a packed audience at Riverside Church in Harlem (New York, USA) on May 13, 2003. The speech was sponsored by the Center for Economic and Social Rights and the Lannan Foundation.

"What is to be done?...

"The US government has already displayed in no uncertain terms the range and extent of its capability for paranoid aggression. In human psychology, paranoid aggression is usually an indicator of nervous insecurity. It could be argued that it's no different in the case of the psychology of nations. Empire is paranoid because it has a soft underbelly.

" Its homeland may be defended by border patrols and nuclear weapons, but its economy is strung out across the globe. Its economic outposts are exposed and vulnerable. Already the Internet is buzzing with elaborate lists of American and British government products and companies that should be boycotted. Apart from the usual targets – Coke, Pepsi, McDonald's – government agencies like USAID, the British DFID, British and American banks, Arthur Andersen, Merrill Lynch, American Express could find themselves under siege. These lists are being honed and refined by activists across the world. They could become a practical guide that directs the amorphous but growing fury in the world.Suddenly, the 'inevitability' of the project of Corporate Globalisation is beginning to seem more than a little evitable."

" It would be naive to imagine that we can directly confront Empire. Our strategy must be to isolate Empire's working parts and disable them one by one. No target is too small. No victory too insignificant. We could reverse the idea of the economic sanctions imposed on poor countries by Empire and its Allies. We could impose a regime of Peoples' Sanctions on every corporate house that has been awarded with a contract in post-war Iraq, just as activists in this country and around the world targeted institutions of apartheid. Each one of them should be named, exposed and boycotted. Forced out of business. That could be our response to the Shock and Awe campaign. It would be a great beginning.

"Another urgent challenge is to expose the corporate media for the boardroom bulletin that it really is. We need to create a universe of alternative information. We need to support independent media like Democracy Now, Alternative Radio, South End Press.

"The battle to reclaim democracy is going to be a difficult one. Our freedoms were not granted to us by any governments. They were wrested from them by us. And once we surrender them, the battle to retrieve them is called a revolution.It is a battle that must range across continents and countries. It must not acknowledge national boundaries, but, if it is to succeed, it has to begin here. In America. The only institution more powerful than the US government is American civil society. The rest of us are subjects of slave nations. We are by no means powerless, but you have the power of proximity. You have access to the Imperial Palace and the Emperor's chambers. Empire's conquests are being carried out in your name, and you have the right to refuse. You could refuse to fight. Refuse to move those missiles from the warehouse to the dock. Refuse to wave that flag. Refuse the victory parade.

"You have a rich tradition of resistance. You need only read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States to remind yourself of this.

"Hundreds of thousands of you have survived the relentless propaganda you have been subjected to, and are actively fighting your own government. In the ultra-patriotic climate that prevails in the United States, that's as brave as any Iraqi or Afghan or Palestinian fighting for his or her homeland.

"If you join the battle, not in your hundreds of thousands, but in your millions, you will be greeted joyously by the rest of the world. And you will see how beautiful it is to be gentle instead of brutal, safe instead of scared. Befriended instead of isolated. Loved instead of hated.
I hate to disagree with your president. Yours is by no means a great nation. But you could be a great people.

"History is giving you the chance.

"Seize the time."

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Arundhati Roy is the author of the novel The God of Small Things, for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize. It has sold six million copies and has been translated into over 20 languages worldwide.

She has also written three non-fiction books: The Cost of Living, Power Politics and her newest book War Talk, a collection of essays analyzing issues of war and peace, democracy and dissent, racism and empire.

A year ago Arundhati Roy was the recipient of the 2002 Lannan Foundation Prize for Cultural Freedom.