"I intend to do what little one man can do to awaken the public conscience, and in the meantime I am not frightened by your menaces. I am not a giant physically; I shrink from pain and filth and vermin and foul air, like any other man of refinement; also, I freely admit, when I see a line of a hundred policemen with drawn revolvers flung across a street to keep anyone from coming onto private property to hear my feeble voice, I am somewhat disturbed in my nerves. But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country." -- Pulitzer Prize winning author of the groundbreaking expose "The Jungle,", "muckraking'" journalist Upton Sinclair (9/20/1878 - 11/25/1968), from his "Letter to the Louis D. Oaks, Los Angeles Chief of Police "(17 May 1923). Sinclair was speaking on behalf of free speech rights for the International Workers of the World, reading from the Bill of Rights, when he was arrested by an LAPD officer saying "we'll have none of that Constitution stuff."
Sinclair was also known for his observation, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
(photo: Murray Garrett / Getty Images)
No comments:
Post a Comment