Quotes About Solidarity

Being women together was not enough. We were different. Being gay-girls together was not enough.We were different. Being black together was not enough. We were different. Being black women together was not enough. We were different. Being black dykes together was not enough. We were different.

Oppressed peoples are always being asked to stretch a little more, to bridge the gap between blindness and humanity.

You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other. I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the same. What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work towards that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order to do this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness.

You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other.

We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid.

We share a common interest, survival, and it cannot be pursued in isolation from others simply because their differences make us uncomfortable.

What woman here is so enamoured of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman's face?

But as Adrienne Rich pointed out in a recent talk, white feminists have educated themselves about such an enormous amount over the past ten years, how come you haven't also educated yourselves about Black women and the differences between us – white and Black – when it is key to our survival as a movement?

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color remains chained. Nor is any one of you.

Once it was easy to know who were my people... I do not believe our wants have made all our lies holy.

And yes, it is very difficult to stand still and to listen to another woman's voice delineate an agony I do not share, or one to which I myself have contributed.

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of colour remains chained. Nor is any one of you.

For it is not the anger of Black women which is dripping down over the globe like a diseased liquid. It is not my anger that launches rockets, spends over sixty thousand dollars a second on missiles and other agents of war and death, slaughters children in cities, stockpiles nerve gas and chemical bombs, sodomises our daughters and our earth.

Staples sees in Ntozake Shange's play For Colored Girls a collective appetite for black male blood. Yet it is my female children and my black sisters who lie bleeding all around me, victims of the appetites of our brothers.

This continued blindness between us can only serve the oppressive system within which we live.

if I fail to recognize them as other faces of myself, then I am contributing not only to each of their oppressions but also to my own, and the anger which stands between us then must be used for clarity and mutual empowerment, not for evasion by guilt or for further separation. I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color remains chained. Nor is any one of you.

am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

Part of my anger is always libation for my fallen sisters.

My silences had not protected me. your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences. And it was the concern and caring of all those women which gave me strength and enabled me to scrutinize the essentials of my living.

Om tegen de weersomstandigheden bestand te zijn moesten we steen worden, en nu stoten we ons bont en blauw aan de dichtstbijzijnde ander.

when we look at our differences and not allow ourselves to be divided, when we own them and are not divided by them, that is when we will be able to move on.

It is based upon the false notion that there is only a limited and particular amount of freedom that must be divided up between us, with the largest and juiciest pieces of liberty going as spoils to the victor or the stronger. So instead of joining together to fight for more, we quarrel between ourselves for a larger slice of the one pie.

This kind of action is a prevalent error among oppressed peoples. It is based upon the false notion that there is only a limited and particular amount of freedom that must be divided up between us, with the largest and juiciest pieces of liberty hging as spoils to the victor or the stronger. So instead of joining together to fight for more, we quarrel between ourselves for a larger slice of the one pie.

You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other. I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the same. What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order to do this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness.