Quotes from Joy James

We charge the American Government with genocide. In clear, unequivocal terms, we charge the American government with genocide against the captive Black people in America who are perpetually under siege.

Now in speaking like this, it doesn't mean that we're anti-white, but it does mean we're anti-exploitation, we're anti-degradation, we're anti-oppression. And if the white man doesn't want us to be anti-him, let him stop oppressing and exploiting and degrading us.

I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a Republican, and I don't even consider myself an American. If you and I were Americans, there'd be no problem. Those Hunkies that just got off the boat, they're already Americans; Polacks are already Americans; the Italian refugees are already Americans. Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren't Americans yet.

Furthermore, it is natural for caring people to sympathize with and support those who resist being oppressed. However, when the white anti-imperialists do get involved in the resistance and are placed in prison, a racist government can discourage other whites from aligning themselves with Blacks in struggle by the severe, at times cruel, treatment it inflicts on anti-imperialists.

The world can see what goes on in the tombs of America as Black people are being slowly strangled and suffocated to death. . . .

He may be friendly, but he's not your friend.

There's little difference between a lynching by the KKK and a police officer who puts a bullet in the head of a young Black man, and it happens time and time again.

Reading and rereading this collection, I encounter the generosity, frailties and strengths, contradictions and contributions of "disappeared" rebels and heretics, of prophets and soldiers and healers. I am reminded of the noncanonical Gnostic Gospels suppressed by state religion; the heart of this work seems to pulse with the Gospel of Thomas (113): The disciples said to Him, "When will the Kingdom come?" [Jesus said,] "It will not come by waiting for it.

one tower falls the other follows do chickens come home to roost? enormity crashes dazed disbelief (chickens won't roost here again pigeons either)