Public Power in the Age of Empire
Transcript of full speech by Arundhati Roy in San Francisco, California on August 16th, 2004.

If you would like to listen to or watch the speech please visit Democracy Now!

I’ve been asked to speak about “Public Power in the Age of Empire.” I’m not used to doing as I’m told, but by happy coincidence, it’s exactly what I’d like to speak about tonight.

When language has been butchered and bled of meaning, how do we understand “public power”? When freedom means occupation, when democracy means neo-liberal capitalism, when reform means repression, when words like “empowerment” and “peacekeeping” make your blood run cold - why, then, “public power” could mean whatever you want it to mean. A biceps building machine, or a Community Power Shower. So, I’ll just have to define “public power” as I go along, in my own self-serving sort of way.

by Greg Rollins
Christian Peacemaker Teams

There is a gap in my memory that feels like it is a year, but is less than a second long. It stems from the thought of when will David and Mabel get here, “to what was that explosion?” The explosion shook me, made my ears ring and made time unstable. I turned around and twenty meters away a wall of dust enveloped the street. The dust dispersed quickly. In the middle of the road where someone placed the explosive device, the concrete medium lay burst.