Quotes About Activism

When I started giving talks about women's history, one of the things that bothered me was the tendency to say, 'Well, everybody was totally oppressed and suddenly in 1964 we rose up, got our freedom, and here we are.' It dismisses the women who fought for rights for several hundred years of our history up to that point.

We have a tendency to sugar coat the Civil Rights movement by showing arm in arm and everyone singing 'Kumbaya'. We don't really always show the resistance from the government, the resistance from the status quo, from the majority to silence the movement.

Today's average American is more apt to rebel against a tennis shoe not coming in the right color than against the slow erosion of our democratic freedom.

The days of a tennis champion as a gender rights leader are over.

The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.

We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

We need some creative tension; people crying out for the things they want.

One of the tensions in XR are people who want to slow down and be strategic and then people who think it's an emergency, let's get out on the street now. There have been conflicts and disagreements.

We need a real tent city in the heart of Moscow.

I think the Women's March is actually reflective of this idea that you can create a big tent, but that doesn't mean the people inside of the tent are going to agree on everything. In fact, they might have very public fights about the things that they don't agree with.

When I was 15 years old and in the tenth grade, I heard of Martin Luther King, Jr. Three years later, when I was 18, I met Dr. King and we became friends. Two years after that I became very involved in the civil rights movement. I was in college at that time. As I got more and more involved, I saw politics as a means of bringing about change.

I consider myself a feminist because I believe women should have equal rights. Of course. It's just that the term 'feminism' conjures up other things for people.

Feminism is a word that I identify with. The term has become synonymous with vitriolic man-hating but it needs to come back to a place where both men and women can embrace it. It is particularly important for women in developing countries.

Everything that feminism stands for is everything American, white, red and blue democratic. It is all the same stuff. So, I am boggled that I should have to give up this term that encapsulates what I want for my children, for my world, culture, brothers and sister because someone else thinks it means I don't shave my armpits.

I met my future husband Andy fighting for trans equality, and we fell in love. A couple of months after we started dating, Andy was diagnosed with cancer, and despite getting a clean bill of health several months later, eventually his cancer came back, and it was terminal.

My issue with all sort of social justice stuff and leftie stuff, and I would put myself on a social justice leftie side, is some of the terminology is jargon.

I collaborated with so many people from Chicago - so many Black people, young Black women organizations like BYP100 and Assata's Daughters. Just being out there, I saw what a community mobilizing can accomplish in terms of freedom and how music and my words in my music can play a significant part in that.

I have always thought it was a terrible shame that the women's movement didn't realise how much easier it was to reach people by making them laugh than by shaking a fist and saying, 'Don't you see how oppressed you are?'

One day, I made a remark that I might work with people with mental illness, and somebody in the press heard it, and it was in the paper. And the more I thought about it and found out about it, the more I thought it was just a terrible situation with no attention. And I've been working on it ever since.

When a political advocacy network hires a former CIA analyst and starts tailing save-our-parks activists, you know there's something terribly dangerous happening to our democracy.

It seems to me that any reason for people getting more active in running or taking part in politics and government I think is just terrific.

I see guys like Colin Kaepernick in the NFL. Guys like Marshawn Lynch, they're sitting down; they're making statements. They're standing up for what they believe in, and I think it's terrific.

When you have corporate influence on our government outweighing the influence of citizens, that's terrifying. This is something we have to make a big, big noise about.

Back in 2014, my fellow Hong Kongers and I hoped to use nonviolent means to fight for our territory's democratic system - a simple right, promised by Beijing, to choose our own leader.