I need stories for my speech!

October 25, 2007 1:57 PM

I need anecdotes/ideas/something for a speech I will be giving at an antiwar protest this Saturday. Please help!

This Saturday I'll be speaking at an antiwar protest. I'll likely be in front of a crowd of at least nine hundred and maybe a lot more.

I'm definitely not the main speaker, and I don't want to spend the ten minutes I've been allotted "preaching to the choir", as they say. I'm going to go ahead with the assumption that the people who turn out in sincerity already know why the Iraq war is bad.

So I guess I'd to include maybe a story/news item/anecdote/fable/proverb that will hopefully be new to most of the crowd that will be appropriate for an antiwar rally. It can be thought provoking, touching, or hopefully both.

Any other ideas or suggestions for my speech would be welcome too!

Keep in mind, I'm a 24 year old girl without a college degree yet and I'll be speaking alongside people a lot more important and experienced (including veterans from Iraq and Vietnam) so I don't want to come off as self-important.

posted by skjønn to grab bag (6 comments total)

Ask the biggest question never asked. Who benefits from this war?

Children?....no

Families?....no

The planet?...no

Just who might be the real winners here?...
posted by Freedomboy at 2:38 PM on October 25, 2007

A couple of thoughts.

What about a personal anecdote of what made you against the war and decide to become an activist? Was there a specific news report or anecdote that compelled you?

Another one might be the case of Youssif, a 5-year-old Iraqi boy who was grabbed by insurgents and set on fire earlier this year. CNN highlighted his story, and the outpouring of support (warning: graphic image of injured child) enabled his family to come to the states last month for desperately needed surgery.

The relevant angles for your speech might be -- from my perspective, at least -- twofold: first, the horror of instability and almost incomprehensible violence that the war/occupation has unleased (think of all the families with similar terrible stories who don't make it out); and more broadly, to highlight the fact that for all the trillions of dollars being spent by the U.S. government to wage war, regular people (of all political stripes) will donate out of their own pockets to try to wage a little peace. Think of the real changes that could happen (domestically and internationally) if the government put those trillions of war dollars instead to health care, development, education, infrastructure, etc. But of course, we have to ask the question as to why those trillions don't go to such services and goods in the first place? (On preview, just as Freedomboy says: who profits?)

By the way, speaking as someone who made activism a way of life for many years, don't sell yourself short for "just" being a student or not having a lot of experience. Movements depend -- have always depended -- on countless regular women and men who decide they will simply no longer stand idly by in the face of injustice.

Finally, I'll leave you with a quote from the great Frederick Douglass that I often used (in abbreviated form -- the parts I usually quoted are highlighted) during many of my speeches:

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.

- Frederick Douglass, 1857

Good luck and kick ass!
posted by scody at 2:45 PM on October 25, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

"Think of the real changes that could happen (domestically and internationally) if the government put those trillions of war dollars instead to health care, development, education, infrastructure, etc."

YES, scoody has it right. Spend a little time on google, and you can amass a barrage (or a few selected and powerfully stated) facts about how those dollars (that we're borrowing against our childrens' future) could be used to build up the poor and oppressed, reduce our carbon footprint, etc., etc., etc.

Maybe this is preaching to the choir, but it might provide some room for originality in your delivery.

Good luck!
posted by man on the run at 3:55 PM on October 25, 2007

scody has given an excellent suggestion about content. Let me give you one about tone:

You say
I'm a 24 year old girl without a college degree yet and I'll be speaking alongside people a lot more important and experienced (including veterans from Iraq and Vietnam) so I don't want to come off as self-important.

I realize you're trying to be appropriately modest here, but seriously: when you're up at a podium, you're not a little girl, you're a woman, and you shouldn't think of what you have to say as less than important. Let your manner of speaking and the way you carry yourself onstage demonstrate that you are speaking for a reason, and you have worthwhile things to say. (If you don't believe that, then don't speak. But you have every reason to believe it!)
posted by LobsterMitten at 4:00 PM on October 25, 2007

How many days of the Iraq war would pay for children's health care?

1 Day = $300 Million = 246,000 Kids
1 Week = $2.1 Billion = 1.7 Million Kids
1 Month = $9.1 Billion = 7.4 Million Kids
41 Days = $12.2 Billion = 10 Million Kids

Also, remind them that the Democrats we sent to D.C> to stop this war for Halliburton have done two things... jack and shit. And that we need to hold them accountable as well.
posted by Hugh2d2 at 6:04 PM on October 25, 2007

During the 1990-91 Gulf War our university had a big anti-war rally. One guy gave a nice speech laying out the logical reasons against the war. At the end, he slowed down:

"And guys ... The main reason why you should be against the war ... Is that all the cute chicks are peace chicks!"

The crowd went wild.
posted by GarageWine at 8:37 PM on October 25, 2007