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make-believe union, party, workers-of-the-world-unite! game, and I could see that they were all comfortably fat, and so I decided that I was finished with all of that running-in-place bullshit, and I dropped out of the lie and into the truth of myself.

"Then I was lucky enough to meet my brothers here, and ever since I've been working with them to change things. To change things not by demanding that things be changed by protest marches or by demonstrations that ask that the changes be given to the people. No! But by changing things ourselves.

"It's as simple as that. We see a change that has to be made, we don't ask or demand that someone else make it happen. We just fucking well make it happen, and if anyone tries to stop us, then we're prepared to defend our right to make those changes that are relevant to our lives and the way we live them.

"I'm talking now about immediate, localized changes, like stopping poor kids from being hungry by getting food for them to eat, or letting a landlord know that he better fix his slum buildings up with heat and hot water in the winter, or we'll burn his own family's fucking suburban house down for him. And he understands, because we let him know that we know where he lives. You dig? And all sorts of real, actual, relevant things like that, like the Free Stores, where a poor person who can't afford something might find it, and not secondhand either, but brand fucking new, so's she or he can get a taste of what it could be like, if we worked together to change things, instead of just jerking off together, masturbating highfalutin' words all over each other--words that sound real good, but don't do nothin'! Nothin' for nobody, never! Like I done for those twelve years, those boxcar years of my life, when I tricked myself into standing still because I was getting good pay for it--for making believe, mister! For making believe that, because I was a worker and a Communist party member, I had the integrity of a true, revolutionary human being, when in reality I was a stone liar, lying to myself and everyone else and not even capable of gettin' a nigger a gig with my own union or any other union for that matter, except the janitors' union.

"I was just like you, mister! Like most of you people right here, playing trick-the-tricker, but only succeeding in tricking myself. I'd still be throwin' those same boxcars and crappin' out on history if I hadn't accepted the truth that I was doing nothing for nobody but my own goddamn selfish self, and if I hadn't met these men here who're now my brothers. This one's gonna speak to you next now, [end page 398]