Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 21,
2005
Michael Neumann
Startegies
in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky
February 19
/ 20, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Back
to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"
Kathleen Christison
Struggling
for Justice in Palestine
Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata
Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to
Commit Suicide
Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues
Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior
Scott Richard
Lyons
Ward
Churchill and the Identity Police
Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage
George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in
Oregon
Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels
Manuel García,
Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?
Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War
Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?
John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past
Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?
Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal
Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark
Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard
CounterPunch
News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland
Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller
Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin
February 18,
2005
Ben Moxham
In
East Timor, the Nightmare Continues
Dave Lindorff
The
Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte
Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery
Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy
Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads
Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward
Churchill
Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?
Mickey Z.
"One
Man Has Stopped Killing"
February 17,
2005
Joshua Frank
Hogtying
of the Deaniacs
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media
Robert Fisk
Under
the Shadow of Death in Lebanon
Christopher
Brauchli
Where
Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military
Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be
Cannon Fodder?
Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"
Saul Landau
An
Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples
the Laws It Wrote"
Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill
February 16,
2005
Robert Fisk
Lebanon:
a Battlefield for the Wars of Others
Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect
Retirement
Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...
Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration
Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff
Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities
in Texas
Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre
Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel
Website of the Day
The
World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch
February 15,
2005
CounterPunch
News Service
Dean
a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch
Robert Fisk
The
Killing of Mr. Lebanon
Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again"
Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
Mickey Z.
Radio
Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook
Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean
Nadia Martinez
Ending
World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now
Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of
Magical Thinking in Politics
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
American Job Sell Out
February 14,
2005
Robert Jensen
Ward
Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11
Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style
Patrick Cockburn
Outcome
of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War
Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?
Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?
Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood
Elaine Cassel
The
Lynne Stewart Verdict
February 12
/ 13, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill's Genes
Saul Landau
Alarcon
Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba
Paul Craig
Roberts
Nothing
to Fear But Bush Himself
Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All
Major Roads into Baghdad
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak
Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!
Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich
Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)
John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll
Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"
Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice
Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin
Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour
Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado
Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?
Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan
Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting
Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman
February 11,
20055
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
The
Eight Percent War
Kurt Nimmo
Ann
Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need
Him?
Dave Lindorff
Guckert
or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In
Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott
Abrams
Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz
Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Lynne
Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All
February 10,
2005
Dave Lindorff
What
Academic Freedom?
Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed
Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?
Suzan Mazur
More
on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha
Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition
Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little
Hope"
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
Website of
the Day
The Missionary Positions
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
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WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
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I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
February 21, 2005
"I
Drove My Picket Stake, My Picket Pin Is In."
What Did I Really Say? And Why
Did I Say It?
By
WARD CHURCHILL
Editors'
Note: The
following is a the first written transcript of Ward Churchill's
February 8, 2005 speech at the University of Colorado. CounterPunch
thanks Clarke Iakovakis for laboriously transcribing the introductions
by Emma Perez and Russell Means, Churchill's speech and the rowdy
Q&A. A video of the event is available online at: http://www.c-span.org/.
--AC / JSC
Emma Perez: I'm Emma Perez; I'm the new chair of
the Department of Ethnic Studies [applause]. I'm very
proud to be the chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies; I'm
very proud of my colleagues; I'm very happy and proud to stand
here with my colleague Ward Churchill, as well. So this is how
it's gonna run tonight, OK? First, we'll be Russell Means
will be introducing Ward Churchill, Ward will speak for a little
less than an hour, for about 50 minutes, the we'll [inaudible]
to questions. We're gonna ask you to go to the mics and stand
at the mics, and then where are the mics, folks? OK, stand
in line at the mics, OK? And please be as orderly as possible.
Also, we'll ask you to be as succinct as possible, so don't stand
up there and give us a monologue, OK? [Laughter, applause]
Be respectful. We're here also to be respectful of each other,
of each other's ideas and thoughts. Also, this is a student sponsored
event; the students have worked very hard and all people need
to do is look around. Certainly I want the media to look around
to see the kind of support there is for Ward Churchill at this
university [loud & long applause]. Thank you. The
students have been amazing, and I also want to put in what we
did at the Regent's meeting last week, the students were silently
and quietly protesting. [inaudible]
We're a small department, Ethnic
Studies, we're a small unit, but we're all very good scholars,
and Ward is certainly one of those. Now I also want to stress
I'm almost out of here I want to stress that we really
want to have questions from the students. This is a forum that
the students have given Ward so that he can finally state his
ideas, his opinions, his book, which has been misrepresented,
by the way, by the media. [applause] We will not be taking
questions by the media. [loud applause & cheers] We're
gonna wrap up around 9:30, OK? Because we're supposed to be out
of here by 10, so we'll start wrapping up around 9:30 after Ward
speaks for about 50 minutes.
Now I give to you Russell Means where is Russell? By now
you may have heard of him. [inaudible] He has also finished
his doctorate, he also is a lawyer, practices law, and - on his
reservation. He's an amazing man, we're very, very fortunate
to have him here tonight. Let's welcome him.
[applause]
Russell Means: Thank you my relatives. I want to,
first, apprise you before I introduce the many accomplishments
of Ward Churchill among my people. We are the only ethnic
group in the world that has to prove our degree of blood, like
the dogs and the horses. It is because we live on America's concentration
camps; the 'little Iraqs' called reservations, you know? We also
don't have control of our natural resources, and the corporate
might has been ripping us off from day one. That's part of the
books, and part of the education that Ward has given not
only to the university and its generations of students, but throughout
the country and indeed, throughout the world. I want you to know
that we are forbidden from choosing who are our Indian people,
by the United States government. My own twin brothers were 32
years of age, and it was only after the American Indian Movement,
and one of the leaders being Ward Churchill in the
late seventies, got the right to be enrolled on my father's reservation,
where I am enrolled. I wonder how many of Clear Channel columnists
and naysayers are gonna condemn my brothers for not being Indian.
Ward is my brother. Ward has followed the ways of indigenous
people worldwide. If you do not believe so, then go to Geneva
Switzerland, to the United Nations office of the working group
of indigenous peoples, and you will find out that we as one
people in the world, we say, if you know your ancestry, then
you are who you say you are. [applause]
In the writings of Adolf Hitler, he began his idea of separation
by race, in such a preference, by following and reading about
the Indian policy of the United States of America, and he wrote
in Mein Kampf, or in other writings, that it was a good idea
to put people in reservations; hence his labor camps, hence
which became concentration camps. And he classified people they
did not want, by race. Apartheid South Africa, in 1964, passed
the Bantu Development Act thirty years after the United States
government passed the Indian Reorganization Act. The act that
institutionalized apartheid, by race and degree of blood, in
South Africa was literally copied from the Indian Reorganization
Act of the United States. Both of those governments no longer
exist, and you have these corporate minions from Clear Channel
and the corporate media telling us who is our Indian leaders!
Telling me that my brother is not an Indian! Because he
hasn't been adequately registered.
Now I am happy to understand the media can't answer any questions
here ask questions, because if Silverman was going to ask
a question, I was going to demand he show me he's pure of Jewish
blood, before he could ask a question. [applause]
Now, understand our struggle.
Ward Churchill has understood it and you only have to read his
dozens of essays and almost two dozen books that he's written.
I know the Regents aren't going to get through them all. [laughter,
applause] Those cowards. Those cowards that cannot stand
up for women, and cannot stand up for the rights of teachers!
[loud cheers & applause]
Ward has received many, many honors from the non-Indian world;
but the biggest honor and the only honor we can give him, and
we have, for dozens of years, is to make him what we call in
my language [?], a leader, a statesman. And he's going
around the country with that label, and it is a true label.
And I don't care what Clear Channel says about or the Indianate
says about his sixteenth, or three-sixteenths he's what
counts. [applause] And his writings are proof. You
I cannot convey to you the amount of pride we have in Ward Churchill,
and the amount of pride he gives us the sovereignty
he gives us, so that we can [inaudible] our young people.
You just heard one here tonight, student here, that is walking
tall because of Ward Churchill. And the effect he's had not only
on Indian policy, but on the minds of the young people who are
activists throughout our country, from coast to coast and beyond
borders. The American Indian Movement, when we had a together
leadership, we appointed him as an ambassador, and he traveled
internationally representing us and all Indian people
because we are a free people.
So I want, from this day forward,
every media person nationally, internationally and locally to
know that we have ascertained that Ward Churchill is a
full-blooded Indian leader. Thank you.
[applause]
Ward Churchill: Hello my relatives; you humble me.
Bill Owens: do you get it now? [applause] If you can count
on your toes, you'll be able to count the percentage points of
contribution to the budget the University of Colorado you and
your ilk have reduced the taxpayer contribution to. It comes
to seven. I do not work for the taxpayers of the state of Colorado.
I do not work for Bill Owens. [applause] I work for you.
[loud student cheers & applause] That's my institutional
role and I take it very seriously; I take the institution and
its well being, its mission, it's ability to perform that mission
very seriously. That's one piece. That's where I am and that's
who's invited me to speak. But here is another reality: I am
not an abstract, detached academic. I have responsibilities and
grounding in an actual community. I take those responsibilities
very seriously in fact, they are preeminent. I don't answer
to Bill Owens; I don't answer (in the sense that they think I
do) to the Board of Regents. The Board of Regents should do its
job and let me do mine. [applause] And if Tom Lucero and
his friends want to debate the propriety of that, I welcome them
to come and join an open dialogue. I have not yet been officially
informed they are even having a meeting about me. I read it in
the Rocky Mountain News, I watch it on TV, I understand I am
being reviewed. I haven't been notified of that in any official
sense either. [audience boos]
But my [inaudible] as
I said, is that I come from an actual community and I have responsibilities
to that community. And it comes from what I was taught and the
values that were imparted to me within that community, and a
piece comes from a Muskogee elder by the name of Phillip Dare,
which some of you older people in the room may actually even
have heard speak on this campus; he's a very important man. And
he gave me certain instruction at one point, which had to do
with the way I was raised, which was outstanding outside of my
tradition; it was in my twenties before I was even allowed the
opportunity, given the nature of the experience of my people
at the hands of the United States. I was in my twenties before
I was given any opportunity to make a direct connection , and
Phil said that can be to your advantage: 'You understand our
ways you did not grow up in them, you understand them,
you understand the values, you understand the issues and you
are able to frame those because of the way you were
raised in terms that are understood by others, and it's
your job, you take that, which your Creator gave you,
and you follow that path. You make your words your weapons
and you say things that you understand to be true, and you understand
them clearly and you never, ever back up.' And that's what I
do. [applause]
That is consistent. It was
a Muskogee tradition. It's consistent with a tradition of every
person on this stage, and you know what? It's also consistent
with the tradition of Thomas Jefferson, and Akwambe Ankruma,
and of any number of people from different cultures where integrity
and truth are valued. This is held as an ideal. We share that
in common. We share that in common in terms of an aspiration,
but we also share that in common as an obligation.
Now a number of things have
been imputed to me by what shall I call this? - the Boulder-Denver
equivalent of The National Enquirer at this point, or The Star.
Couldn't make the case on the issue and so now my pedigree becomes
the issue. Can you call me I got a very important question;
I got a call today from an unregistered Irishman [laughter],
-k- very important question: "Can you put me in touch with
some of your buddies from Vietnam? We're  gonna send a film crew to
your high school." These people haven't seen me in forty
years; they have nothing to do with this. The issue was
not sustainable, so I am to become the issue, or later
for that. Later for that. My identity does not come from some
punk editorial page, editor of the Rocky Mountain News, or the
Boulder Daily Camera [loud applause]
I am the man, it is said on
the talk shock radio in the Denver area, who has called for the
deaths of millions of Americans. Someone show me where I said
that. I am the man who has justified what I consider to be natural
and inevitable. You do not justify the natural or the inevitable,
you may comment on it. You do not have to advocate it,
you don't have to justify it, you simply point to it.
And, no, I did not call a bunch
of food service workers, janitors, children, firefighters and
random passers-by 'little Eichmanns.' It says clearly in that
passage, which perhaps I should've amplified further in terms
of the connotation of 'Eichmann,' because I understood people
would understand as I did what Eichmann symbolized, but apparently
not. [laughter] It says clearly in that passage, the reference
is to a technical corps of empire, the technicians of empire.
Someone want to give me a coherent definition of technician by
which someone is eighteen months old, or someone who serves food
for a living or someone who pushes a broom or someone who is
trying to save people in the building or someone who is just
walking by, becomes a technician of any sort? Obviously I was
not talking about these people. I was talking about some very
specific technical technocrats who make this particular
system hum, and I'm going to come back to that in a second. But
the people at issue and these are the only people who have
been raised the construction is fairly clear; I've been
told it was a bad rhetorical device, well I don't think so. You
got a better rhetorical device, go use it. Make people think
about this your way. This was mine. [applause]
The people at issue, on that red herring, would be referred to
by Don Rumsfield or Norman Black I mean, Schwartzkopff,
any other people who stand at the podiums, the official forum
to make pronouncements on behalf of the federal government of
the United States, those people, or those firefighters, those
service workers, those children would be referred to as something
called 'collateral damage.' Not even as human beings. And that
was implicit to the formulation.
And now I need to come back,
a little bit, to what my argument actually was, once the
diversion to one phrase out of one sentence, out of a 120 page
essay, out of 24 published volumes, seventy book chapters and
one hundred jury journal articles. That one little phrase. I'll
come back to it. What did I really say? And why did I say it?
Well there were certain questions being posed on the day that
I wrote that essay. Before the building even came down, when
I watched it in real time, I heard the whole thing described
as 'senseless.' Not it 'seemed senseless,' it 'might be senseless,'
no. Here's how you're gonna frame and understand this:
it's 'senseless.' And I'm saying to myself, how could they possibly
know this? Did they arrange it? No, I'm not making that accusation.
The point is clear, however, they couldn't possibly know
that it was senseless. Senseless means to have no purpose. Do
you really believe that this operation was carried out for no
purpose? You can agree with the purpose, you can disagree with
the purpose, but you can't rationally consign this to having
no purpose whatsoever. What might that purpose be? [applause]
Well I come from a certain
context; I come from a certain set of experiences.
They're real experiences; they're
not abstract experiences. And based on those experiences, I do
a little kid's game called dot-to-dot. This dot connects to that
dot connects to that dot, and hey, if you connect the dots you
get a pattern, and actually on that pattern you start to understand
something. Let me take the first dot.
You were addressed by someone
from the Pine Ridge Reservation a few moments ago. There's a
county on the Pine Ridge Reservation: Shannon County. Shannon
County has been the absolute poorest county in the United States
for fifty of the last fifty years. And by poorest, I don't mean
unable to afford to get the new color TV, 'Gee whiz, I can't
trade my truck.' I'm talking about a per capita income of less
than $3,000 per year to try to survive South Dakota winters.
I'm talking about an unemployment rate that runs into the ninetieth
percentile every year. I'm talking about a life expectancy that's
one-third shorter generation-in, generation-out than
the average American. One-third truncation of a life span, and
that's the overall data with regard to reservation based native
North America. Urban based is not appreciably better. That's
thirty-fifth percentile attrition of a population, and every
generation for the last five generations. I don't know how you
define a genocidal impact of policy imposition, but that comes
real close in my book, OK? I call it genocide. [applause]
It comes to a degree of impoverishment that results in a continuous
tone of death from malnutrition, nutritionally related diseases.
Continuous tone of death and immiseration from rarely communicated
diseases. I'm talking about a third-world degree of impoverishment
of an entire people, based on the racial definition imposed on
us us by the federal government of the United
States in behalf of each imagined constituency, which includes
everybody else. Not on an even playing field, but in gradients.
And a degree of impoverishment devolves from something called
plenary power, that the federal government has assigned itself
if there's any law professors in the room, you'll know
what I'm talking about. Plenary power, in plain English rather
than legalese, means absolute, unchallengable power to make disposition
of our affairs and our assets. With that, they've assigned themselves
a trust authority over those assets. When those assets are exploited
by American corporations, they're exploited in a discount royalty
rate, discount deep ninety percent they're paying ten cents
on the dollar for what they'd be paying on the open market for
the minerals, and the money does not go to the people who's minerals
they were. It's placed in trust accounts administered by the
Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Do you wanna know where the
Indian destitution comes from? Do you wanna know why our life
spans are truncated accordingly? Do you wanna know why our children
are so desperate that they are committing suicide at fourteen
times the national average? Do you wanna know why all those things
come together? Right now there's a case in the federal courts
[inaudible], in which it is conceded that the Bureau of
Indian Affairs in combination with the Treasury Department of
the United States government has "misplaced" one hundred
and fifty billion dollars worth of assets. Cash, money.
By federal account, there's two million Indians. You wanna divide
two million into one hundred and fifty [billion] dollars and
see what our standard of living would be if it wasn't being spent
on designer overpasses? If it wasn't being spent on the accoutrements
of the quality of life that every American yuppie has decided
that they are divinely entitled to enjoy? [applause] Does
that make me angry? Yeah, it does. Churchill's angry, he speaks
angrily, he speaks forcefully. I don't think the issue however
is why Churchill would be angry about that. The question is why
Governor Bill Owens and the Board of Regents are not, and they
have nothing to say on it. [applause]
And I link that up, in my mind,
to what was then pronounced to be approximately five hundred
and sixty-five thousand Iraqi children who had died needlessly
in less than five years. By needlessly, they too were dying of
nutritionally related illnesses. They too were dying of readily
curable diseases, because of a set of sanctions that the United
States hoisted off the pretext of it being UN and
imposed in order to make the people themselves scream to the
point where they would compel their leadership to become "free,"
as defined by George Herbert Walker Bush, meaning, to understand
that "what we say, goes." This was no mystery. This
was official, UN report it was confirmed. It was known,
to be confirmed, by Madeline Albright, US ambassador, at the
time, to the United Nations, on no less public a venue than 60
Minutes in 1996. Leslie Stahl asked her, are you aware of
this, this half-million plus children of another people. And
she said, yes, we're aware, we've decided it's worth the price.
It's worth the price, in somebody else's children to ensure that
they get the message that "what we say, goes."
And I thought about my brother
Russell Means, in 1982, when we were engaged in a physical occupation
of a piece of ground outside Rapids City. I learned from Russ,
too, not just Phillip Dare. That was 1982, that was the time
of the Battle of Beirut, and they had the PLO fighters sealed
in and they were bombarding Beirut, and they were gonna kill
Arafat, OK? They had a quid pro quo arrangement where he could
go for sanctuary if he could leave, but no one could take him.
And Russ convened a press conference and he said something that
had to be pretty close to this: the Palestinians of North America
offer sanctuary to the American Indians of the Middle East. We
have that relationship; those dots are connected. [applause]
Now I was picking that up on
9/11, basically in streams of consciousness because they were
asking this question 'How could this happen? Why do they hate
us?' and my response is, look at this. How could they not? Every
Palestinian child shot in the head for throwing a rock at the
intifada is being shot with munitions provided by the United
States; the munitions are being shot by a rifle provided by the
United States. When they look up and see those helicopters that
are taking out apartment blocks because they suspect that somebody
they don't like is in there, collateral damage ensues. The helicopter
and the missile are provided by the taxpayers of the United States
and, you see, the problem is not just that the materiel, the
monetary support and the political endorsements provided by the
government of United States, but there's this overwhelming embrace
of the policy by the general citizenry of the United States,
and this tallies. This tallies in tens, and scores, and hundreds
of thousands, and then millions and tens of millions of darker
skinned others being piled up in the name of profit maximization,
stability, for the strategic interests, and ultimately, economic
interests of the United States.
Actually, I talked about 'Chickens
coming home to roost,' after Malcolm X, but these chickens, I
said, were more like ghosts. And I talked about those ghosts;
the Iraqi ghosts first, the children. But then, there's another
half-million adults in a country of twenty million people. And
I talked about the Palestinians, and I talked about the Grenadans,
and I talked about the Panamanians, and I talked about the Salvadorans
and the Nicaraguans, and I talked about the Guatemalan upland
Mayans, and I talked about the bodies that were stuffed in a
well at No Gun Ri, and I went backwards from Korea to a couple
of nuclear bombings. We're worried about weapons of mass destruction
in a country that has the largest inventory in the world, and
the only country that has ever used them on civilian targets,
and intentionally on civilian targets. [applause] And
pointed it out that while the nukes are best known, they weren't
the worst of it, Curtis Lemay's carefully orchestrated fire raids
conducted in the spring of 1945. At Tokyo, in one night alone,
they inflicted 110,000 casualties, cremated civilians intentionally,
they built burn-zones out in Utah to figure out the best way
to ignite wooden paper cities. This was deliberate, intentional;
this was a matter of policy. Probably a half-million Japanese
were burned alive in a process of sending the message so that
they too would understand that "what we say, goes."
[applause] And back to the liberation of the Philippines
from the Spanish Empire to make it an American colony and the
deaths of 600,000 of 1.5 million so-called 'moral' is a
pejorative term. [Tagaun?] speakers, called the Indians
of the Philippines, entire provinces deliberately cleared of
population by virtue of liquidating them, orders signed by American
military leadership to kill every single male over ten years
of age oh yeah, they didn't teach you that in high school
history, did they? And Bill Owens doesn't want you taught about
that now. [applause]
And that happened ten years
after Wounded Knee, and the reconstituted Seventh Cavalry [inaudible]
disarmed it's guns and immobilized people, butchered in the snow
and dumped into a mass grave. And I actually used the imagery
from Wounded Knee in a book on comparative genocide, juxtaposing
the dumping of the bodies into the mass grave at Wounded Knee
and the dumping of the bodies into mass graves by the Einsatz
group in Eastern Europe, and people sometimes get them confused
which is which. The symbolism and the reality are confused.
The reality is what's at issue, and taking that string of massacres,
running all the way back to when a group of people now known
as the Wappinger, who supposedly sold Manhattan Island to the
Dutch for a handful of glass beads and trinkets, objected to
the idea that they sold their land, because what they understood
they did, was accept rental payment for use of a particular portion
of Manhattan Island as a trading center, which they could do
business with the Dutch. And the Dutch, who knew fully well that
this had not been a sale, but rather a rental, resolved the issue
by sending a military expedition up the island to dispense with
the Wappingers. Doing so, so rapidly, that they felt that no
one would believe how successful they'd been when they went back,
so they took the heads of the fighting age males and the leadership,
and carried them back in woven baskets to display to make
proof of the fact that they had butchered the lot. And the citizenry
was so happy they gathered around to watch a jolly sporting contest,
kickball, in which the heads of the slain owners of the land
were used as a ball. Roughly on a place where the foundation
of the World Trade Center was situated.
That's the history of the place,
which sits approximately at the end of Wall Street; we know about
Wall Street in terms of its economic importance, its influence,
its symbolic value. What most of us don't know is that it takes
its name from the wall of a slave enclosure, which formed the
economy of the city, which is now considered the economic head
of empire. That's the history of those ghosts; those transatlantic
ghosts were there, too. And the Chinese that laid the track of
the railroad and did the deep shaft mining, who had not a 'Chinaman's
chance' of surviving yeah, that's where that term comes
from. Oh yeah, they were all there. There was a load of karma
too.
And what I said was when you treat people this way, when you
kill their babies as a matter of force and say it has no consequence,
when you devalue, deviate and degrade others to this point, naturally
and inevitably what you're putting out will blow back on you,
and that's what happened on that day. [loud cheers & applause]
And the question, the question
was in everybody's lips as they wind 'innocent American' as if
they fused it into all one word. If by American, by definition,
we're innocent; that no matter what it is we do in the world,
what we embrace, what the consequences are: we're Americans,
we're innocent; we're consequential, they're valueless; get the
symmetry straight. How do we keep ourselves safe from this sort
of thing coming back? Oh, how could they do this? They hate our
freedom, they're evil. Tiger cages in Guantanamo Bay,
licensing of torture techniques (which we have Harvard constitutional
lawyers now arguing should be permissible), deploying of more
and more Delta units, commando teams, assassination squads, counter-terrorism,
wanding the people, they wanded me apparently to see that I wouldn't
commit suicide while standing at the podium tonight. [laughter]
Actually I've got my 357 terrorism weapon right here in my bed
for all the good it did impounding my tweezers did not
save anyone. Who heard the last time an aircraft was kidnapped
by a terrorist using tweezers, plucking the eyebrows of a frantic
stewardess? I mean, that's the level of insanity we are; when
you get serious about security and some aspects of it are
security you think that's gonna work against people who
are embittered and hate you for the (very good) reason that you're
butchering their children with presumed impunity? Ask the Israelis.
They've got the most highly perfected, developed security state
on the planet, and you got fourteen year old kids walking in
there with bundles of dynamite and blowing them right out [inaudible].
You want to put your well being, and that of your children, on
a system and structure and a set of priorities like that? Go
ahead, but count me and mine out, OK? [applause]
If you want to be secure, if
you want to be able to live a human life, in all of its full
dimension, if you want to have the security of that to pass along
to your children, if you want to be valued, in other words, as
a human being, I don't want to get Biblical here, but do unto
others as you would expect to have done unto yourself. That's
my first proposition. [applause] If you want to be secure
from that natural and inevitable response to what it is America's
putting out on the world, start with stopping the killing of
their babies. Afford them the fundamental dignity of being human,
not 'collateral damage.' And America's been able to provide the
world with an endless stream of glowing rhetoric, but how, on
that basis since they've violated all of it, since they've
always said one thing but acted precisely the opposite
is anyone out there going to believe anyone here if those insurances
are made? Here's my real, crushing blow. Here's the real radical
finale of the whole thing: let's just try pretending for a moment
that the United States of America, like every other entity on
the planet, is bound to obey the law. [loud applause, standing
ovation]
That's my argument reduced
to its bare bones. I can flesh it out in Q & A; I'm not the
Board of Regents, we will have interchange, you will not be arrested
for attempting to engage in it. [loud applause] But understand,
since that is as it was, I had every right to say it, indeed
the obligation, not only as a citizen but under the terms of
my contract, and as a human being. I'm not backing up an inch;
I owe no one an apology. [loud applause]
Clarification's one thing;
that's my job, too. Apology's another. For those who have been
trying to elicit that, in some cases, I think, have simply been
asking the wrong question. Wanting to know if I experienced sorrow
or mourning; something like that with regard to the children
who died on the aircraft and in the buildings on 9/11 that day.
And the answer is: Yes, of course; and for the firefighters and
for all the food service workers, and for the broom pushers and
for the random passers-by; yeah, I do. And it's absolute, it's
unequivocal, and it's not one whit more proportionally significant
than the mourning, the sorrow I experience for every single one
of those Iraqi children, for every single one of those Palestinian
children; [applause] none of whom have been mentioned
in the criticism in any way at all, it's a one track record leading
back to 9/11 victims and nothing else. I even had an Air Force
colonel tell me about the last group of people who [inaudible]
a civilian occupied facility, meaning the hijackers of 9/11.
Afghanistan and Iraq either didn't happen, or the people there
weren't. I'll show you that e-mail. And even if, seriously, he
did not mean it maliciously, that is a genocidal mentality;
that is the core of the problem. When I start hearing equal sorrow
for those brown skinned others out there dying in the millions,
maybe we'll get to someplace where all the children will
be saved and all the people will be saved. [applause]
And I learn from where I am.
I am not Cheyenne, but this is Cheyenne land, and I have been
here as long as many of you have been alive, and I've learned
something about their ways. It's about the picket pin and stake.
Sometimes you stand up because there's an attack coming, and
you stake yourself to the ground so you can't get out; you can't
retreat. That's your statement. It comes with red paint. Well,
there's no red paint here literally, but see it now. I drove
my picket stake, my picket pin is in. I'm staked out, there is
not an inch of give in this, not at this level of whether
I get to speak, what I say when I speak, or what
the function of this institution is, all right? This institution
needs to be protected from the ravages of the rabid right wing,
but it has to be protected on the grounds to save the institution
itself. [loud applause, standing ovation]
With that, I think we got commonality,
we got solidarity, we got everything we need to prevail and keep
this institution what it is what it's supposed to be, and
actually to improve it. We can what doesn't kill you, they
say, gives you strength. We come out of this stronger, and clearer
about what our institutional mission and our rights are than
we went in, in the first place, and on that score, we ought to
be thanking O'Reilly, we ought to be thanking Joe
Scarborough, we ought to be thanking Kevin Flynn, we ought
to be thanking the yo-yos in the local paper, and we ought
to be thanking the Board of Regents and Governor Owens
as well. [loud applause, standing ovation]
You all give me hope! You all
give me hope. Power to the people! I'm just gonna take these
in no particular order; not feeling greatly professorial at the
moment, so you got a question, just rotate among yourselves,
back and forth. As it was requested, keep it short so more questions
can be asked.
Question #1: I'll go ahead. My name is [inaudible],
I had a question. One of the issues that have not been discussed
in recent discourse is the question of freedom of speech and
academic freedom, and what this means especially in a university
system, where ideas are supposed to be discussed openly and freely.
Would you please add comments to this?
Ward Churchill: Yeah. I won't summary, but I will
refer you to a document that's central to this institution called
The Rules of the Regents of Colorado, OK? And it says quite specifically
in intent and definitions section, that any faculty member that
says anything anything is explicitly to be
protected from political repercussions of what it is they said.
That is an impermissible gesture to intent to suppress political
speech in any form under the rubric of the University of Colorado.
That's not a guideline; that's a matter of law. Yeah. It's not
been framed that way; you need to understand that. That forms
the basis of the contract of every faculty member at the institution,
tenured or no. You are required to do, and permitted to do certain
things, contractually, in accordance with the rules of the regents.
It's called contract law. It is legally binding. There is no
magic line articulated, beyond which one steps and the people
who politically disagree with it are empowered to remove you.
That is the absolute, fundamental bedrock upon which the academic
Oedipus stands. And I have defended people who I consider to
be taking upon Nazis on that basis. And I actually find them
useful; they're the perfect foils for my arguments. Let them
carry their own case; people need to hear from them in order
to form opinions, just like they need to hear from me. [applause]
Question #2: I am not a student, I'm a father of
a student, but I'd like to make a brief statement here. In 1969,
I had the honor of sharing the stage with Russell Means at the
University of Minnesota Kaufmann Center, with him and the Ojibwa
and my Lakota brothers, as a Vietnam veteran, as a member of
the Vietnam veterans against the war. It's rather prophetic that
we're sitting here thirty years later talking about another unjustified
war. My concern is, I may or may not disagree with you, sir,
but I defend the right for you to say whatever you wish to say
in terms of academic freedom. [applause]
Ward Churchill: That's all you need to do, and in
the process of that, we can talk, and in the process of talking,
both our minds may change. But if we can't talk, if one
or the other of us is forbidden, that can't happen. [applause]
Question #2: If there is no dialogue, there is war.
[applause]
Question #3: Professor Churchill, I'm a grad student
here on campus, and, um, perhaps you can clear up a question
that I had. Is this attack upon you in any way related to the
acquittal of you and the other protesters for the protest Columbus
Day?
Ward Churchill: Funny you should ask. [laughter]
What do you think?
Question #3: Well, I believe the city is out to
get us, anyway, but I'd like to hear what you have to say on
the matter, please.
Ward Churchill: Yeah, it was a target of opportunity.
The line run on me, right now this is a weird position
to be in, OK - I don't know what their selection process was,
but this is the kickoff, and it's been stated by Newt Gingrich
and it's been stated by David Horowitz, and it's been stated
by Joe Scarborough and for that matter, it's been stated by certain
members of the Board of Regents, and the governor, and the legislature
of the state of Colorado. This is the opening round and intended
general purge of diverging ideas of which they do not approve.
And it's already happening it was mentioned that there
will be a rally for Adrienne Anderson tomorrow. I don't know
how many people know the nature of what it is that happened with
Adrienne, but her contract was non-renewed despite the fact that
there was overwhelming student enthusiasm for what it was she
was teaching. She was rated by her peers, as well as students,
as an outstanding teacher, including by the guy who deep-sixed
her, who noted in a caveat at the bottom of the evaluation that
said she is excellent classroom teacher; she engages the students,
compels critical inquiry and all the rest, but, he says, I wonder
how this information will be received by the son or daughter
of one of the upper division management at Coors. [boos]
Understand the message: if you're going to offend the offenders,
you're not to be allowed to talk about it, which means the offenses
are not to be interrogated, examined, understood, corrected.
That's the object. That's the Republican agenda they've articulated.
Frankly, I don't consider these guys to be Republicans. There's
an 'N' word, ending in 'i' that I think is more appropriate,
but hey, I use that analogy too often. [laughter, applause]
Bill Owens says I'm not qualified
for my job, excellent scholar that he is; overarching authority
on the subject matter [laughter, loud applause] Calls
for my job on that; I should resign, he says, or be fired, well
I'll return the compliment. [loud applause] At least,
Bill, learn how the budget works and how to read the constitution
before you purport to speak on behalf on about half of the voters
of the state of Colorado who voted against you, buddy. [applause]
Question #4: I'm glad I came here tonight; I've
heard a lot more than I heard on the average sound bytes we've
been hearing on the radio. I agree with some points, there are
other points that I disagree with, but I do believe you have
a constitutional right to say what you have to say. On the other
hand, do you agree that the First Amendment rights for the people
marching in the Columbus Day parade should be taken away, because
that is their freedom of expression as well, and I'm one of those
people.
Ward Churchill: Let me answer the man. No, I don't
believe you have a First Amendment right because that bounces
off against my Ninth Amendment right. You know what my Ninth
Amendment rights are? Do you know what the Ninth Amendment says?
Question #4: No, sir.
Ward Churchill: Yeah. Do we have a law professor in
here? I think this is a lesson for law school, because I addressed
another university auditorium with about this many people in
it last week, and I posed the same question to the whole group.
Professors, students, townspeople and all, not a soul, including
law professors, could tell me what the damn Ninth Amendment said.
[laughter] S'pose there might be a reason for that?
Question #4: Sir, sir, sirdoes that negate the
First Amendment?
Ward Churchill: No, no, wait a minute; let's get an
answer to it.
Audience Member: Basically it says that whatever rights
were not given to federal government are given to the states.
Ward Churchill: Actually, wrong, beep. [laughter]
What it says, in very close paraphrase, is that all rights not
otherwise enumerated herein that are inherent in people are retained
by them, OK? You can have a real entertaining time looking at
the nature of those rights as articulated, and it can be rather
nebulous and it can be debatable, but I'll tell you one place
you can look where it's not debatable at all and that's in black
letter legal articulation. That goes to human rights, particularly
the articulation of international human rights that take the
form of ratified treaties. Under Article Six of the Constitution
of the United States, those are the supreme law of the land,
and among them, are fundamental human dignity, OK? And celebration
of the conditions that I was describing as pertaining to native
people as an outcome of the process initiated by Christopher
Columbus, celebrating that guy in any respect at all is a celebration
of those conditions. That's a denial of fundamental human dignity,
that's a denial of my Ninth Amendment rights and you don't have
a right to do that, and you know exactly what you're doing. [applause]
Question #4: I beg to disagree, and I'd love to
debate that issue, and my right to be here as an American, who
is every much an American as you are, or anybody up on that podium
Ward Churchill: We're not going to debate; you asked
a question, I answered it. Next party. You want a debate, we'll
set it up; it will be separate from this forum.
Question #4: Thank you.
Ward Churchill: You're welcome.
Question #5: Uh, Ward, apparently, uh, Dustin over
here thought it'd be necessary for to send his goonies
over here to keep me from speaking, um, but I'm glad, I'm glad
he, uh, went over here and is letting me speak. Thanks, Dustin
[audience boos, laughs] Also, you seem to come down against
the 'technocratic corps,' you've called it. Uh, you've compared
them to 'little Eichmanns,' but, but not the food service workers,
not the janitors, and what not
Ward Churchill: Woah, speak slower so I can hear
you. You got time to frame your question. Don't take too much
time, but take enough time that I can understand it.
Question #5: You seem to come against the technocratic
corps. The students here, virtually every one of us, we're not
training here we aren't studying here to become food service
workers or janitors. So, are we also 'little Eichmanns?'
Ward Churchill: That's your choice.
Question #5: What about the men and women in the
towers who were your 'little Eichmanns"? Did they all choose
to be these "little Eichmann?'
Ward Churchill: That's your choice.
Question #5: And what out of us, how would
we choose not to be a "little Eichmann, what would we be
saying?
Ward Churchill: You're not to make a speech, you were
to pose a question. You posed it; I'll answer it, OK? When you
knowingly accept the collateral effects of business practice
as usual, projected by the United States into the rest of the
planet, and even if you don't agree with it, contribute your
expertise, your technical ability, your proficiency to furthering
the process of extermination of masses of children, for your
own personal gain and benefit, to fit into the structure, without
challenging it, you are, in the Hannah Arendt metaphysical sense
of Eichmann, Eichmann.
[loud cheers and applause]
Question #5: So, just for clarification
Ward Churchill: No, now you're done. You asked a question,
I answered the question, OK? Next person. That's the rule. You
don't have a special [inaudible]; I won't deny you your
speech. Same rules for everybody.
Question #5: OK, I guess if you want to shed your
responsibility, you go ahead and do it.
Question #6: Um, something that really rang true
with your speech is that you don't work for Bill Owens, you work
for us, and with that in mind, just, like, simple consumer, and
you are the producer, you supply here. If, by chance, there was
a way to work it out where the consumer could voice their opinion
in a voting manner, and, whichever way it goes, vote on whether
we want you to freely express it, (and I have faith, looking
around), would you accept that decision? If, either way?
Ward Churchill: I don't see how it would work, but
if you get some concrete plan, you come talk to me. I'm not gonna
accept something I don't understand on its face. The principle
is sound, but I don't understand the mechanism.
Question #6: If, by chance, it was in the same
student elections that happen every year and, granted, there's
not very high participation, which is a negative sign, would
you accept the results?
Ward Churchill: Actually, I think I do understand
what you're saying and, no, my position, that is my job, my responsibility,
my obligation, what I was hired to do is not a popularity contest
or subject to the political will of any constituency. I work
for you in the sense that 80% of my salary is paid by you, at
least. The taxpayers subsidize 7%. That's six thousand bucks.
The tuition formulae here is such that a faculty member teaching
twenty-five student load, breaks even, institutionally. I teach
on average eighty-five. I've returned money to the general fund
every year I've taught here. They're in the negative numbers
on me, guy. But my obligation to you is to be clear; it's not
to equivocate my position or have you remove me if you don't
like the position. If you don't like the position, there's other
classes. There are students who benefit from mine. [applause]
Okay we got about I don't know, I can't tell how many
I'm gonna take about four or five more questions and I'm gonna
quit. I'm basically fatigued, you can hear my voice is going,
I've been teaching classes all day and I'm starting to get blurry,
and I don't want to give incoherent answers. I want to give sharp
answers to as many questions as I can and then stand down. So
four, maybe five depending on the questions.
Question #7: I was just wondering, where do you
get the gall to call the people who died in 9/11 technocrats,
when you sit around and get a $90,000 paycheck from the government
you purport to hate?
Ward Churchill: To answer the question, to answer
the question yo, he's posed a question, I'll answer the
question. And it really goes to the question of "hey, sucker,
you consider yourself innocent?" No. You show me where I
ever said. What I said was I tend to fly more on these gigs than
the average American, making myself more susceptible to being
strapped in a passenger seat on a 300,000 pound cruise missile.
I've been every moment of my adult existence in flat-out
opposition, in every way I knew, to the status quo of this country,
but I have not changed it. And to that extent, I have not measured
up to the responsibility, I am not innocent, and I'm subject
to the same penalty, and that's the answer to your question,
and you don't get a second. [applause]
Question #7: You do admit your hypocrisy?
Ward Churchill: Sit down. You barely don't understand
the language, to understand, that was the opposite of hypocrisy.
Over here, sir.
Question #8: Good evening to you. First and foremost,
I want to say that Shareef Aleem couldn't make it. He was the
gentleman that was arrested, uh, for his for what they called
was a 'violent act.' And I want you to know that we were on the
Internet looking at it, and even in Saudi Arabia, they picked
it up, and they see it and they know that this was a farce, this
is a game to get rid of you. And I want you to know from [inaudible]
perspective, we down with you, we with you, we got your back,
we don't choose to be activists by choice, we're forced into
it by situations like these, for our children. And I just want
you to know, I've been to jail with you for the demonstrations
on Columbus Day, and I was proud to do it, you know, and I didn't
realize until two years ago that my grandmother was Navajo, so
I got your back more than you know. And for those out here who
got problems with it for lack of knowledge, you perish. And no
[inaudible] in this world is gonna save you when Hell
comes to you. Peace be with you. [applause]
Ward Churchill: You tell Shareef I'll be talking
to him tomorrow, anyway, I've been trying to get in touch, but
it's been hard because these guys consider their livelihood to
be my obligation to feed. They never get anything I say straight
anyway [laughter]
Question #9: First I want to, ah, thank you, Doctor
Churchill, thank you.
Ward Churchill: Thanks are not necessary, actually.
I appreciate it, but I am simply trying to meet my obligations
and responsibilities as best I can, and that's the truth of it.
Question #9: Uh, forgive me for the prepared statement;
I'm just a graduate student, I haven't figured it all out yet,
right? [laughter]
Ward Churchill: We're gonna elect you governor, you
keep it up. [laughter]
Question #9: Only if you stump for me, Ward. And
this is actually for all the, uh, the folks that have been calling
for Ward's head on a pike. It is with grave urgency and humble
deference that I approach you at this dark hour. It appears that
one of our great scholars, activists and friends is falling prey
to an antiquated government of Winthropianism. Ward Churchill
deserves support from the community which he has served with
noble courage and pioneering resolve. How can we, the community
Dr. Churchill has forged out of his own years and tears, abandon
him at the 'city on a hill' which he has sought to make level
for all. I implore you to recall the days when radical women
took to the streets to demanding their inalienable rights to
suffrage. Has history vindicated these women? Or like these women's
heroes, Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer, is Dr. Churchill to burn?
What are those people
Ward Churchill: Excuse me, no disrespect, but I've
got to be same rules for everybody, OK?
Question #9: Last sentence. It's a statement for
those of us who were shut out at the Regent's office. What are
those people who seek punitively to censor and banish the man,
who has unselfishly, for decades advocated and compromised himself
for the equality of indigenous Americans, African-Americans and
many
Ward Churchill: Really, I appreciate it and would
like to have a copy, but honestly. [applause] Two more,
one on each side, OK?
Question #10: I'll keep it quick, I promise. I'm
here tonight as a student of Ward's, both present and past, and
I just want all of the media, and all of the students here to
know this man is an excellent teacher and that's why we should
be here, and that's why we should be supporting him. I've read
just about ten of his books, and if people actually picked them
up, did the research and did the readings, they'd realize what
he was actually about. So, that's just what I wanted to say.
[applause]
Ward Churchill: Thank you.
Question #11: Good evening, sir. It's a great honor
to actually be here and to be able to talk to you. I drove from
Laramie to come see you speak because I thought that everything
that was being said about you on the news could not be true,
because if it was true, you would've never been allowed to teach.
I am the type of person I read the coverage in the paper
of the Iraqi people who have been killed and I will throw up.
I want to ask you, did you ever think that a sentence out of
your essay that you had written, out of the volumes that you
have written, would ever be taken out of context like this, would
ever have been blown out of proportion like this, and that we
would be standing here today?
Ward Churchill: Honest answer to that is no. No, it's
a weird position to be in, but it's a position I've been put
in, it's a responsibility that's been put in my face, on my shoulders,
however you want to look at it, and I'm not gonna back away from
it. I'm not gonna back away from it.
This is sort of a closing thing,
I was asked to say and it's something I should have said it myself
in my talk, so let me back off the podium with this statement.
Clarification again, if you will. I ended the piece and I ended
my presentation with a call for, take your pick, law enforcement
or obedience to law. And that begins right here. That begins
with the honoring, the obedience to the treaties with the indigenous
peoples whose land we all stand on. It begins here. If you can't
do that one, you can't do any of them. You do the one that's
toughest for you yourself first, and the rest of them is a downhill
slide. Get used to the idea. You've gotta have a lawful right,
or you gotta have a collaborative interaction with the people
whose property you occupy. You can't starve the children to death
in the name of a pretension to ownership and jurisdiction over
someone else's land.
Audience Member: Does a cowboy have a right to speak?
Ward Churchill: You would've if you'd been one further
up in the queue, guy, but it's over now, so, sorry.
[applause]
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