| Details for Final Unity Address (Jocunda) |
| Summary: | Jocunda officially steps back from Unity, leaving some heft accusations in her wake. |
| Date: | 1939-01-27 |
| Location: | Podium, London |
| Related: | A Most Important Meeting, and a direct reaction to; Unity Against The Violence. |
| Characters |
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Jocunda slowly steps towards the podium, looking at the lectern with frustration. This is not a moment she’s been looking forward to. It’s the first speech she’s ever taken to with notes, a parchment that she places upon the wooden surface. She clears her throat, taps it with her wand, and then begins. Reading from the piece of parchment, rather than making eye contact with her audience.
“… When I was first approached about speaking for the Unity Movement, I embraced it. I didn’t look out at the world through rose-tinted glasses – My dream was not to bring love and equality to all. I wanted something I felt that was far simpler, something I thought should have been a common goal, shared by all of us. I dreamed of a safe tomorrow. A world where yes, we could live together, embracing our differences, our cliques and forge a future of peace and prosperity.
Today, I don’t look at two worlds joining, to live together. I see one world, bristling for war and violence. I see ignorant masses with weapons capable of evils we do not want to comprehend. I see tension… I see fear. I see another world – Our world. Where Witch and Wizard argue whether or not to reveal ourselves to Muggles, on how to broach our existence with them. Today, I have thought of the arguments put forward by those who claim they know the answer.
Preservation, they scream. Keep the Statute, and try and dodge the fallout of the Muggles Wars. A few Wizards as collateral damage, a few Witches to stray bullets. A few households to Muggle incendiaries. A few villages to Muggle gas attacks.
The Truth, they proclaim. Dominate the Muggle by force. Subjugate them, show them we are to be feared. Show them that we are better. Give them a new enemy. Pressure them to use their most devastating weapons. Turn their kin that live in our world, into saboteurs and watch the impurities burn away, until only the purest remain.
Unity, they insist. Show the Muggle how fractured we are. That we have existed, that we could have helped, that we have not. Show what we could offer them, how we could make them more deadly, more efficient. Extend them a hand of peace, and watch as they bite and tear at us, for our absence. For our inability to offer them anything more than a new threat.
My belief was simple. Some of us are more than others. This is not dictated by blood, this comes from values, morales. That which we are taught and that which we retain, that which we teach others. The value we attach to life – Any life. The value we attach to the innocence of children – And adults. The morals that keep the essential good of Wizardkind alive.
These morals have failed us. These values are in ruins. As of this moment, I am no longer affiliating myself with Unity, nor am I declaring for the ‘Truth’ or even ‘Preservation.’ As of this moment, I am nothing more than Jocunda Sykes; and I will not endorse a massacre in anyone’s name, for anyone’s belief. I am a sister, afeared for her siblings. I am a friend, afeared for those she holds dear. I am a woman, afeared for her safety.
In the coming times, when blood is shed, spare a thought for those who we will not be mourning. Those that live in ivory towers, making broad decisions about who might live, and who might die, having never met their ‘victims’ and classifying them as acceptable losses. Spare a thought for Gellert Grindlewald, for Cassius Malfoy, for Rhyeline Diderot, for Gilbert Sullivan. Spare a thought for those who decide who lives and who dies, for what /they/ believe.
Spare a thought; and hope that they’re capable of sleeping each night. Spare a thought; and hope that they’re worth dying for. The Sykes family have buried two dear friends. Spare a thought; that I’ll not next be burying my kin.”
Jocunda takes a breath, placing her hands upon the lectern. The parchment is shifted, and she looks back down at it, rather than the assembled press.
“It is apparent to me that people will look for answers. I can only say that they need to follow their hearts, and think first of their friends, families, and the consequences of their decisions before they stand so steadfastly behind any particular viewpoint. Before you ask who it is you will pray to, decide just what it is you will pray for. Violence? Coercion? Lies? No. Hell no.”
Jocunda’s knuckles whiten a little, as she grasps the wood tightly. She’s finishing her statement.
“An old associate of mine describes the incoming conflict as a storm. I lack her tact – I cannot, and will not distance myself from the reality of what awaits. Death is coming. War is coming. And there will be no winners, here.”
The woman turns, and begins to walk down from the podium, leaving a sea of stunned reporters in her wake. There aren’t any questions, just an awkward shuffling of parchments.