This audio production features original music by sound artist OIYA and an image from John Carpenter’s film, They Live. The man speaking is Kenneth Cockrel, Sr., a prominent Marxist attorney and politician who served on the Executive Committee of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, a Detroit-based labor union that formed in 1969.

Here is a transcript of Cockrel’s monologue, originally delivered in the League’s 1970 film Finally Got the News:

[Capitalists] give you little bullshit amounts of money for working — wages and so forth — and then they steal all that shit back from you, in terms of the way he got his other thing set up, his whole credit gimmick society, man — consumer credit: buy shit, buy shit on credit. He gives you a little bit of shit to cool your ass out, and then steals all that shit back, with shit called interest: the price of money. Motherfuckers are nonproducing, non-existing . . . motherfuckers who deal with paper. There’s a cat who will stand up and say to you he’s in “mining.” And he sits in an office, man, on the 199th floor in some motherfucking building on Wall Street, and he’s in “mining.” And he has papers, certificates, which are embroidered and shit, you know, stocks, bonds, debentures, obligations, you know. He’s in “mining.” And he’s sitting up on Wall Street and his fingernails ain’t been dirty in his motherfucking life. He went to Phillips Andover or Exeter. He went to Harvard, he went to Yale, he went to the Wharton School of Business, and he’s in “mining”? And the motherfuckers who deal with intangibles are the motherfuckers who are rewarded in this society. The more abstract and intangible your shit is, i.e., stocks — what is a stock? A stock certificate is evidence of ownership in something that’s real. Ownership. He owns and controls and therefore receives, you know, the “benefit from.” That’s what they call profit. He fucking with stuff in Bolivia, he fucking with shit in Chile. He’s Kennecott. He’s Anaconda. He’s United Fruit. He’s in “mining.” He’s in what? He ain’t never in his life produced shit. Investment bankers, stockbrokers, insurance men — it’s motherfuckers who don’t do nothing. We see that this whole society, man, exists and rests upon workers, and that this whole motherfucking society controlled by this ruling clique is parasitic, vulturistic, cannabilistic, and it’s sucking and destroying the life of motherfucking workers and we have to stop it because it’s evil.

// Tatiana Hofmans (a.k.a. OIYA) is a sound and visual artist, DJ, Reiki healer, and social justice activist. Originally born in Montego Bay, Jamaica and migrating to Detroit, Michigan at the age of eight, OIYA experienced at a young age the harmful impacts that systems based in Colonialist White Supremacy and Patriarchy have on Black and immigrant communities. Through their life experience, education in Social Theory and Practice at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2014, and civil rights organizing work around the country, OIYA quickly understood that in order for Black people to sustainably rise and feel empowered from within, tools of healing and creative expression must be accessible. For this reason, OIYA is currently a Masters student at the California Institute of the Arts, studying music and design. By combining their knowledge of sound, visual design, organizing work, and Reiki, OIYA creates immersive soundscapes and art installations that cultivate healing, collective reflection, and time travel through self and spirit. Collective Liberation and Unity Consciousness is at the center of OIYA's work.