Upstaged but Not Silenced, A UC Berkeley Senior Speaks Truth to Power

Fadia Rafeedie was the year 2000 recipient of the University of California Berkeley's prestigious University Medal, and gave the student address at the University's commencement ceremony this May. Rafeedie is an activist for Palestinian independence, and was scheduled to speak first in a convocation lineup that also included US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. After a last-minute schedule change placed Albright first and moved Rafeedie to the end of the program, Rafeedie determined to lay aside her prepared talk, and instead use her time to give an impromptu response to Albright's speech and to the protests that had been voiced from the audience while Albright was on stage. Reprinted here are edited versions of Rafeedie's address, and of her reflections on the day. The bracketed explanations are hers.

[First, even for the people who were at the Greek Theatre that afternoon in the blinding sun, you cannot imagine what the audience looked like from our vantage point on stage. It was like fireworks! The images are imprinted in my head forever.

At the moment when the administrators announced, after we were all sitting on stage, that they'd changed the schedule around so that Albright would speak first and not last, I knew that the "powers that be" were frightened of what was to come--embarrassment and exposure to a woman whose administration and policies deserve it.

As soon as she stood up at the podium, a 15-foot bright red and black banner--signature of the International Socialist Organization--unfurled itself in the distance, directly across from her in the center of the theater, with the clearly written slogan, "Madeleine Albright is a War Criminal." Then, in unison, hundreds of voices (or at least they sounded like it), interrupted her before she could begin, with chants of "End the sanctions now! End the sanctions now!"

The 'security' forces, dressed in loud yellow jackets, were quick to rip down every poster that surfaced in the crowd and escort the protesters outside of the theater, but there was no way to get at all of them. As I said, it was like fireworks!

Convocation 2000, UC Berkeley. Seated, Fadia Rafeedie

The loud condemnation continued to the very end of Albright's hackneyed speech, but she received a standing ovation nonetheless. Happy with her victory, she turned to the students and faculty sitting (actually, now standing) most near her, and smiled as she shook each of their hands in self-congratulation. She was going in a row until she got to me. I stayed sitting, my hands clasped in my lap, and gave her a serious, angry look.

I don't take credit for the turn of events at the convocation. They probably wanted her out of there as quickly as possible to circumvent the flurry of stunts that audience members had planned. (The longer she stayed, the more protracted the embarrassment, I think.) That the movement of resistance was successful in subverting an entire program and turning it on its head is in itself a victory.]

Fadia Rafeedie's Convocation Address

I had a speech and it's right here. It took me so long to draft it and I kept re-drafting it, and this morning I changed it again, but I'm just going to put it to the side and I'm going to talk from my heart because what I witnessed here today, I have mixed feelings about.

I don't know why I'm up here articulating the viewpoints of a lot of my comrades out there who were arrested, and not them. It's not because I got, you know, straight A's, or maybe it is. Maybe that's the way the power structure works, but I'm very fortunate to be able to give them a voice. I think that's what I'm going to do, so if you give me your attention, I'd really appreciate it. I was hoping to speak before Secretary Albright, but that was also a reflection of the power structure, I think, to change things around and make it difficult for people who are ready to articulate their voice in ways they don't usually get a chance to.

So I'm going to improvise, and I'm going to mention some things that she didn't mention at all in her speech but which most of the protesters were actually talking about. You know, I think it's really easy for us to feel sorry for her, and I was looking at my grandmothers who are actually in the audience--who weren't really happy with all the protesters, and I think they thought that wasn't respectful of them, and a lot of you didn't, I don't think, because you came to hear her speak. But I think the protesters did not embarrass our university. I think they dignified it.

Because Secretary Albright didn't even mention Iraq, and that's what they were here to listen to. And I think sometimes not saying things--not mentioning things--is actually lying about them. [Applause]

And while she was sitting on the stage with me, I was going to remind her--and I was going to remind you--that four years ago from this Friday when we were freshmen, I heard her on 60 Minutes talking to a reporter who had just returned from Iraq. The reporter was describing that a million children were dead or dying due to the sanctions this country was imposing on the people of Iraq. And she told her, "that's more children than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Do you think the price is worth it?" [Albright] looked into the camera and she said, "the price is worth it."

And I was going to tell her, "do you really think the price is worth it??!" Since that time, three times that number of people have died in Iraq. I mean, we're about 5000 here today. In the next month, by the time we graduate, that many people are going to die in Iraq because of the sanctions.

Now, I don't want to make the mood somber here because this is our commencement, but commencement means beginning, and I think it's important for us to begin where civilization itself began, and where it's now being destroyed. [Applause]

Let me talk to you a little bit more about the sanctions, because I think it's very important. Now, I'm a Palestinian, I would really love to talk about the struggle for the liberation of my country, and to talk about a whole bunch of other things and I see some people maybe rolling their eyes, and other people nodding--these are controversial issues, but I need to speak about Iraq because I think what's happening there is a genocide. It's another Holocaust.

And I'm a history major, and sometimes I look back at history and I see things like the slave trade, the Holocaust, I see people dropping atomic bombs and not thinking what the ramifications are, and I don't want us to think about Iraq that way. It's already a little too late because 2.5 million people have died and yet these sanctions continue.

For the last ten years, you wouldn't imagine the kinds of things that aren't being let into this country: heart machines, lung machines, needles, infrastructural parts to build the economy. Even cancer patients, sometimes some of the medicine will be let in, but not all of the medicine. It's very strategic what's let in at what time, because what it does is it prolongs life, but it doesn't save it. In Iraq, in the hospitals they clean the floors with gasoline because detergent isn't even allowed in because of the sanctions. These are all United States policies.

Iraq used to be the country in the Arab World that had the best medical services and social services for its people, and now look at it. It's being obliterated. And a lot of times you might hear it's because of Saddam Hussein and I'd like to talk a little bit about that. He's a brutal dictator--I agree with her, and I agree with many of you. But again, I'm a history major, and history means origins. It means beginnings. We need to see who's responsible for how strong Saddam Hussein has gotten.

When he was gassing the Kurds, he was gassing them using chemical weapons that were manufactured in Rochester, New York. And when he was fighting a long and protracted war with Iran, where one million people died, it was the CIA that was funding him. It was US policy that built this dictator. When they didn't need him, they started imposing sanctions on his people. Sanctions should be directed at people's governments, not at the people.

The cancer rate in Iraq has risen by over 70 percent since the Gulf War. The children who are dying from these malicious cancers [and here the front row walked out of the theater so I was blabbering incoherently] um... and diseases, they weren't born when the Gulf War happened.

The reason that the cancer rate is so high is because every other day our country is bombing Iraq still. We're still at war with them. They have no nuclear capabilities. In fact, just last week, the United Nations inspectors found [again] that Iraq has no nuclear capabilities and yet we are bombing them every other day with depleted uranium.

I'm embarrassed that I don't even get to talk about Colombia, because I saw a few signs about that, too. And my colleague here, Darren Noy, who's also a Finalist, is very interested in these issues. We don't stand alone. I'm on stage with allies, I'm looking out at allies, we need allies, my allies have been taken away [today].

I'm speaking to a crowd that gave a standing ovation to the woman who typifies everything against which I stand, and I'm still telling you this because I think it's important to understand. And I think that if I achieve nothing else, if this makes you think a little bit about Iraq, think a little bit about US foreign policy, I've succeeded.

I don't want to take too much of your time, but I want to end my speech with a slogan that hangs over my bed in Arabic. It says, "Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it." I think our future is going to be the future of truth, and we're going to walk on that path, and we're going to fill it with travelers.

Thank you very much. [Standing ovation from the stage, with the faculty members, the senior class council, and the student award-winners. And, of course, standing ovation from my cheering section in the crowd.]