Robert Hunter 'Charge' Monologue

Look, I don't want you or anybody else to tell me about me. I don't want you to think that without your help, I wouldn't be where I am today. I can do fine by myself. I got a GED. I went to a community college with the money that I earned at a warehouse. I didn't go to Harvard. I didn't get a scholarship. And I'll be damned if you think that you can take any credit for where I am today. When I was a boy, I lived in a bathroom. Broken down cars, broken down refrigerators, and broken down lives were on half of the front lawns of my street. She wanted people to see color before they went to work. She wanted to send the message that beauty can grow where it wants. She worked from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. She'd come home, cook me and my siblings dinner, help us with our homework. She came home pissed half the time and tired the rest. But we ate and got our homework done. Whenever we went to sleep, she went out to that garden for hours fixing it up. Pissed off and tired. But it was worth it all for five minutes of beauty to start a day. Then whatever or whoever drove onto the garden, crashed onto the side of our room and looted whatever they could. My mom fixed the room. She fixed the garden. But she was forced to cover it all up with a giant ugly iron fence. And what do you think that told the people in the morning? That beauty cannot be shared? Beauty is a commodity? Beauty! And from then on, they see that iron fence and the flowers all jailed and wanting. Free hope. And I want you to get beauty too, but we gotta do this together. We gotta do it together. You don't control me, and I don't control you. Got it?