Let’s hope that Greg Iles’ speech has a shelf life longer than a gallon of milk.

Throwing strips of paper into the air like confetti, Iles started his talk to the Natchez Chamber of Commerce with an explanation of how his paperback books are pulped into tiny bits of paper after sitting on the store shelf for only four weeks.

The illustration began a speech that caught the attention of the entire room — maybe the entire community.

Questioning everything from the unfulfilled promise of Natchez-Under-the-Hill to the squabbling medical community to inept leadership in City Hall, Iles painted a picture of a city adrift.

Seventeen times Iles’ call to arms was interrupted by enthusiastic applause.

He caused quite a stir. In a week when the primary topic of conversation usually is whether the weather will allow balloons to fly, the town buzzed instead with talk of Iles’ remarks.

“It was the best speech Natchez has heard in a long time,” one resident was overheard saying as he reached for his latte at the local coffee shop.

“It was something that needed to be said,” another resident said to a local lunch crowd.

While crime news regularly outpaces other stories, early morning Web site statistics Tuesday showed Iles’ speech outperforming 2 to 1 the story of a murder suspect’s capture in Texas. The story and its accompanying video were being e-mailed from our site at an equally impressive rate.

I think Iles’ remarks hit the mark over and over again Tuesday night.

If the speech had been one of his trademark thrillers, you couldn’t have kept the book on the shelf.

Unlike his books, however, Iles’ speech requires its hearers to do more than simply consume his words. His speech requires a response from us in exchange.

Without a response from the community, we risk leaving Iles’ ideas gathering dust before being pulped with the rest of the good ideas that have come and gone.

There is no question that Iles is committed to seeing Natchez thrive and grow. The biggest question may be how committed the rest of us are.

How many people who applauded enthusiastically and laughed are willing to stand up and publicly join Iles to seek answers to the hard questions he posed?

My guess from talking to those in attendance is that most people are not willing to stick their necks out that far for fear of economic and social retribution.

“Iles doesn’t have to depend on this community for his livelihood,” one local businessman told me Tuesday night.

Yet our livelihoods are the very reason we should stand up. Because it will take more than Iles to turn things around in this town. It will take leadership — the leadership Iles described in his speech.

“What we need is leaders with a vision of what the city can be, with the ability to articulate that vision, with the guts to make tough decisions and stick by them hell or high water and the ability to understand that compromise doesn’t always equate with weakness,” Iles said.

Notice Iles didn’t say elected leaders. He said leaders — young and old, rich and poor, black and white.

My hope is that those who agreed with Iles Tuesday night will find the inspiration no longer to stand idly on the bank while our future drifts away.

If we stand up for what is right, the story of Natchez stands the chance of being as exciting as an Iles thriller and will surely outlast the gallon of milk in my refrigerator.

Ben Hillyer is the Web editor of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3540 or by e-mail at ben.hillyer@natchezdemocrat.com.