Alderperson Alex Schultz’s Invocation At 02/17/2021 Common Council Meeting – I Know That I Have To Find My Own Courage To Engage Each Other In Meaningful Ways That Are More Mutually Beneficial And Not Mutually Destructive

Alderperson Alex Schultz gave the invocation at the 02/17/2021. He read a poem about the arrest, trial, and conviction of Eugene Debs, a socialist, union supporter, and political activist, who was charged with 10 counts of sedition for giving a speech urging people to resist the draft.

Mayor: Tonight’s invocation will be delivered by Alderperson Schultz.

Alderperson Schultz: Thank you, Mayor. February 28 is Ellen Kort Day. And, uh, as I was thinking about this invocation I thought about what Ellen might say or make about where we are today as we continue to work our way through the grip of this Covid crisis and, you know, what it has on our state of normalcy. And also the last month of political attitude that, at times, feels like we just haven’t woken up yet from a strange and disturbing sleep. I know I can get all soap-boxy and up in here and I was tempted to dive into the machinations of the political maelstrom we suffered through the last weeks, months, last four years. Um, kinda like the layer dream in the moving Inception, and we’re all still waiting for the kick to pull us out, but I realize that’s just my perspective and it’s just that–my own biased interpretation of, you know, how I felt about it and witnessed. Um. But I know other–others in our community see things differently, and feel differently. And I know that I have to find my own courage to engage each other in meaningful ways that are, you know, more mutually beneficial and not mutually destructive, and it’s, it’s a challenge I think about every time I consider where we are as a society and the things we’re struggling through.

Ellen probably would have picked something a little bit more uplifting and spiritual to share in this moment from what I have chosen, but, uh, that’s just who she was. Um. But tonight I just want to share a poem that speaks to our times we’re in and the cause of social justice and personal interpretation.

This is a poem call “The Old Agitator” from Poems of War Resistance published in 1969. A little long, so bear with me.

So they could do it after all

They locked him up
The good old man
Behind the grated window in the wall
Stole in upon his sick bed
And whisked him off
Before the rumor and the wrath began
Without one woodland flower of early spring
Pressed to his big palm by some workman’s child.
And said the honest warden, welcoming,
“Why you’re rather raggy, Mr. Debs, and tall”
Embarrassed by a momentary cough,
“But we’ll fit you out as best we can.”
And the great proletarian
He straightened up and smiled.
Ten years, so let it be
He was not wise
While shut he would not, could not keep
Those lips, close shorn and thin
Below those keen, unflinching eyes
And just above the unbearded fighting chin
Those lips with furoughs either side so deep
From mirth and sorry and unresting sleep.
And so they deemed to fit, he learned
Like Jeremiah silence in the pit.
So let it be. A state must have firm laws
And watchful citizens that balk
Against the wagging tongue
And one grown gray and gaunt with too much talk
Who has long since forgotten when to pause
Or how to please
May trip at last, even in democracies.
And chiefly if you tamper with the young
And worship not the old divinities
And when the charge is read him clause by clause
And he replies with scanty penitence, he’ll find
As found that worthy man at whose incecent lips one’s essence took offense
The gentry of his latter audience
Most honestly niggard of applause
And though, even though, then he talk as talk he can
He lights, like Socrates, on no defense
Except reiteration of his cause.
So be it
His was fair trial and due appeal
Under those just majestic guarantees
That give the Stars and Stripes their destinies
Over a free but ordered commonwealth
That incorruptible and austere court
Of old men to this old man made repute.
They made report, this row of staunch patricians,
Unto the bald lone tall man of the plebs
They bore no grudge. They took no gold.
They may have loved him for they too were old
But seated in their ancient nine positions
They sealed the prison sunset years for Debs
As vindicators of those stern traditions
That tore from black Dredd Scott his freeman’s shirt
And locked free child in factory dark and dirt
So let it be. There’s nothing for surprise
There’s nothing so old, so wearying [something] grim
Nothing for grief
Except the shame
Grief for the nation not for him
For he has but begun his enterprise
And in this silence finds
The licks of flame”

The Old Agitator

That poem was about Eugene Debs the great socialist and pacifist who was sentenced to ten years in prison in 1918 for making anti-war speech. Thank you.