Quotes About Activism

At the start of my career - not just Me Too, which is not the totality of my career - I wish I would have known that you don't have to sacrifice everything for a cause. And that self-care and self-preservation is also a tool that is necessary to do the work.

I wish that I had the guts to stand up for gay rights.

When I look back on what I did for the Left, I'm in a small way quite proud of some of it - I only wish I'd done more.

Dick Gregory will be greatly missed. Humbly, and in his stead, 'Turn Me Loose' carries on to be his voice and his inspiration for all who wish to laugh at the absurdity of racism and be enlightened by his spirit of justice.

It was wrongly assumed that I wished to become some sort of leader among gay activists, whereas in reality I was happier to be a foot soldier.

Unlike national legal systems, there are precious few avenues to address judicial activism at the WTO. You pretty much have to gain consensus to change the agreements, or simply withdraw from the system. The first is nearly impossible, and the second would be - in the view of many - cataclysmic.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, in general, by putting this idea out there that the one percent is leeching off the 99 percent, is making a new discussion, making people figure out how to withhold their labor and come and put their issues on the table with the ruling class all over the country and all over the world.

We have to pick up people's issues within and outside Parliament and give a voice to their pain and problems and come across as a party which understands this.

By the time of my ninth birthday, I had become a bit of a socialist, as I am said by conservative colleagues to be to this day. I went on within the next few years to volunteer as an envelope stuffer for the American Labor Party, and my political thinking has not shifted measurably since that time.

In a bid for change, we have to take off our coats, be prepared to lose our comfort and security, our jobs and positions of prestige, and our families... A struggle without casualties is no struggle.

Without a revolutionary theory there cannot be a revolutionary movement.

Whether permitted to live to witness the abolition of slavery or not, I felt assured that, as I demanded nothing that was not clearly in accordance with justice and humanity, some time or other, if remembered at all, I should stand vindicated in the eyes of my countrymen.

I grew up a witness to gay politics in its early days. I remember seeing Harvey Milk and been moved by him.

I find it abhorrent to see a whale being slaughtered and do nothing but bear witness.

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.

A generation has witnessed the fight for racial justice from the front lines: Asian Americans have been paying attention, and they are ready to put up a fight.

My mother witnessed the martyrdom of her husband, Hajj Malik Shabazz, Malcolm X, on Sunday, February 21, 1965, at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. My older sisters, Attallah, Qubilah and I were seated with our mother up front and stage right.

I grew up in a neighborhood that was heavily policed. I witnessed my brothers and my siblings continuously stopped and frisked by law enforcement. I remember my home being raided. And one of my questions as a child was, why? Why us? Black Lives Matter offers answers to the why.

I've carried witty banners against laws that would curtail my freedoms.

It is out of the question that the task of socialist women's activity should be to alienate proletarian women from duties as wives and mothers; on the contrary, it must operate so this task is fulfilled better than before, precisely in the interests of the proletariat.

My Millennials, 'stay woke'.

Black Lives Matter started from a post that I put on Facebook after the acquittal of George Zimmerman. I woke up in the middle of the night sobbing, just trying to process what had happened and wanting to find community around being in a lot of grief and having a lot of rage.

I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire.

Women's rights are women's rights. One of the things that woke me up was equal pay. I started thinking about it: Who is the leader of women? Take me to your leader. And there were no leaders.