People :
Author : Bartolomeo Vanzetti
Tags : man, sacco, worker, lover, work, heart, mankind, sacrifice, remembering, failure.
Text :
This arrangement of Vanzetti's speech first appeared in Labor Action.I have talk a great deal of myself but I even forget to name Sacco. Sacco too is a worker, from his boyhood a skilled worker, lover of work with a good job and pay, a bank account, a good and lovely wife, two beautiful children and a neat little home at the verge of a wood, near a brook. Sacco is a heart, a faith, a character, a man; a man, lover of nature, and mankind. A man who gave all, who sacrifice all to the cause of liberty and to his love for mankind: money, rest, mundane ambition, his own wife, children, himself and his own life.
Sacco has never dreamed to steal, never to assassinate. He and I have never brought a morsel of bread to our mouths, from our childhood to today which has not been gained by the sweat of our brows. Never...
Oh yes, I may be more witfull, as some have put it; I am a better babbler than he is, but many, many times in hearing his heartfull voice ringing forth sublime, in considering his supreme sacrifice, remembering his heroism I felt small at the presence of his greatness and found myself compelled to fight back from my eyes the tears, and quench my heart trobling to my throat to not weep before him: this man called thief and assassin and doomed. But Sacco's name will live in the hearts of the people and in their gratitude when Katzmann's bones and yours will be dispersed by time; when your name, his name, your laws, constitutions and your false god are but a dim remembering of a cursed past in which man was wolf to the man...
If it had not been for these thing I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have die, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure.
This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for men's understanding of man, as now we do by accident. Our words, our lives, our pains - nothing! The taking of our lives - lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fishpeddler - all! That last moment belongs to us - that agony is our triumph.
From : Anarchy Archives.
Chronology :
February 10, 2017 : Vanzetti's Last Statement -- Added.
December 30, 2021 : Vanzetti's Last Statement -- Updated.
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