Douglass×Baldwin

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   From the studio at Reborn Radio — next on TITANS, Frederick Douglass and James Baldwin. They take up This may be the last time you hear my voice': Political executions surge in Iran since start of war.
2. 00:13
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   We have just received word. Iran. Thirty-two political prisoners executed since the end of February. The United Nations has confirmed it. Thirty-two human beings, silenced by the state.
3. 00:27
   James Baldwinshare moment

   This may be the last time you hear my voice. That's what one of them said. Imagine knowing that. Imagine having to say it.
4. 00:34
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   I have imagined it, Mr. Baldwin. I stood on platforms in the 1840s and knew there were men with warrants who would drag me back to Maryland in chains. Every speech might be the last. Every word a wager with one's life.
5. 00:50
   James Baldwinshare moment

   But you're here. You made it. These thirty-two won't.
6. 00:53
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   I made it because others did not. Because men and women whose names we do not know went to the gallows, the whipping post, the auction block. The mathematics of freedom are written in blood, and the ledger is never balanced.
7. 01:13
   James Baldwinshare moment

   The state kills people it's afraid of. That's the formula. It doesn't execute the powerless. It executes the ones who might wake others up.
8. 01:22
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   Precisely. Tyranny does not fear the slave who accepts his chains. It fears the slave who teaches others to read. Who speaks. Who refuses the premise of his own degradation.
9. 01:33
   James Baldwinshare moment

   Iran is calling them criminals. That's what states do. They criminalize consciousness. They make it illegal to see clearly.
10. 01:41
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    I was a criminal under the Fugitive Slave Act. My very existence north of the Mason-Dixon line was a federal offense. The law named me property in rebellion.
11. 01:51
    James Baldwinshare moment

    And you kept talking.
12. 01:52
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    I had to. Silence is complicity when one has witnessed what I witnessed. When one has borne the lash, eaten from the trough, seen mothers torn from children. The moral obligation is to testify.
13. 02:05
    James Baldwinshare moment

    But you were also... you were also in danger every single day. That's the part I want to sit with. These people in Iran, they knew. They kept speaking anyway.
14. 02:15
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    To remain silent would have been a death of another kind. A death of the soul. Better to die with one's humanity intact than to live as a breathing monument to cowardice.
15. 02:26
    James Baldwinshare moment

    I don't know if I believe that. I want to, but I don't know if I believe that.
16. 02:30
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    You don't believe it? You, who wrote that to be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time?
17. 02:37
    James Baldwinshare moment

    I wrote that. I meant it. But I also left the country, Frederick. I went to France. I took breaks from the rage because the rage would have killed me.
18. 02:46
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    And I went to England. To Ireland. I spent two years abroad because to return meant risking capture. We both know the cost of this work. We both chose to pay it, though we managed the payments differently.
19. 03:02
    James Baldwinshare moment

    These thirty-two people. They didn't get to manage anything. The state decided for them.
20. 03:07
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    The state decided the timing, yes. But they decided to speak in the first place. That decision was theirs. No executioner can take that from them.
21. 03:20
    James Baldwinshare moment

    This may be the last time you hear my voice. That sentence is going to stay with me. Because it means they knew. And they recorded it anyway. They wanted us to know they knew.
22. 03:30
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    It is a message in a bottle thrown from the gallows. It says: bear witness. It says: do not forget. It says: we were here, we saw clearly, and we refused to lie.
23. 03:44
    James Baldwinshare moment

    It also says the state is terrified. You don't execute thirty-two people unless something is slipping out of your control.
24. 03:51
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Despotism in its final stages becomes frantic. It multiplies its cruelties because it senses the ground shifting beneath it. I have seen it. The slaveholder who beats his slaves most savagely is the one who fears the system is dying.
25. 04:05
    James Baldwinshare moment

    So you think Iran is dying?
26. 04:07
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    I think this particular form of governance is dying. I think when a government must kill this many voices in this short a span, it has already lost the argument. What remains is the violence.
27. 04:19
    James Baldwinshare moment

    But the violence is real. The violence takes real lives. We can't console ourselves with the arc of history when thirty-two people just died.
28. 04:28
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    I do not offer consolation, Mr. Baldwin. I offer context. Those thirty-two died in a struggle that will outlive their executioners. That is not comfort. That is fact.
29. 04:40
    James Baldwinshare moment

    And what do we do with that fact? Those of us sitting here, alive, with our voices still working?
30. 04:45
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    We say their names when we learn them. We repeat what they said. We continue the testimony. The state can stop a voice. It cannot stop an idea whose time has come.
31. 04:56
    James Baldwinshare moment

    I want to believe that.
32. 04:58
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Belief is not required. Only action. They spoke. We must speak. That is the covenant between the dead and the living.
33. 05:07
    James Baldwinshare moment

    This may be the last time you hear my voice. Alright. We heard you. We're hearing you. That's what I want to say to whoever recorded that. We're hearing you.
34. 05:16
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    And we will not forget. That is the promise we make. That is the only promise worth making.