Quotes About Activism

It was an accepted fact among black people that the leaders who were most revered and respected were men. Black activists defined freedom as gaining the right to participate as full citizens in American culture; they were not rejecting the value system of that culture. Consequently, they did not question the rightness of patriarchy.

Significantly, I am among those rare feminist theorists who believe that it is crucial for feminist movement to have as an overriding agenda ending all forms of violence.

The dismantling of consciousness-raising groups all but erased the notion that one had to learn about feminism and make an informed choice about embracing feminist politics to become a feminist advocate.

Effectively imitating the model of AA meetings, feminist consciousness-raising groups will take place in communities

Imagine a mass-based feminist movement where folks go door to door passing out literature, taking the time (as do religious groups) to explain to people what feminism is all about.

Had all feminist thinkers expressed outrage at patriarchal violence perpetrated by women, placing it on an equal footing with male violence against women, it would have been and will be harder for the public to dismiss attention given patriarchal violence by seeing it as an and-male agenda.

If women and men want to know love, we have to yearn for feminism. For without feminist thinking and practice we lack the foundation to create loving bonds.

Feminism is for everybody.

Every women's movement in America, from its earliest origin to the present day, has been built on a racist foundation, a fact which in no way invalidates feminism as a political ideology. The racial apartheid social structure that characterized 19th and early 20th century American life was mirrored in the women's rights movement. The first white women's rights advocates were never seeking social equality for all women. They were seeking social equality for white women.

Feminism is not anti- male, Feminism is anti-sexism

Those feminist activists who refuse to accept men as comrades in struggle — who harbor irrational fears that if men benefit in any way from feminist politics women lose — have misguidedly helped the public view feminism with suspicion and disdain.

As more women begin to opportunistically lay claim to feminism

In the early stages of feminist movement we used the phrase "woman-identified woman" or "man-identified woman" to distinguish between those activists who did not choose lesbianism but who did choose to be woman-identified, meaning their ontological existence did not depend on male affirmation.

We cannot have a wolrd of great environmentalism while we maintain the violence of whtie supremacy and racism.

Her brave crusade was, put simply, to "woke" up the past. She did not simply wish to consign sexism to history. She wanted to remove sexism from history.

We should celebrate that many more women are reconfiguring feminism and that grassroots activism is spreading like wildfire and millions of women are waking up to the possibility of taking ownership of our world as fully-entitled human beings How's can we argue with that?

In Labor movements generally, success through violence can hardly be expected except in circumstances where success without violence is attainable.

O.K., helplessness is repugnant to me, as a father, as a piece of protoplasm. My parents were activists. I don't believe you can't do anything.

The planet doesn't require saving, and actually hasn't asked Greenpeace to save it.

I was taught the value of everyday activism and showing up by my grandma, who wasn't a public official, but was a breast cancer researcher and would mentor students of color in her lab at UC Berkley. She taught me when I was 4 years old what the word boycott meant.

I don't care if it's Saudi Arabia or if it's Israel or any other country. I can't imagine our members of Congress or even the residents back in the day that pushed back against apartheid in Africa not to be able to boycott.

Big-city police chiefs feel more pressure from race activists than from the hard-working residents of high-crime areas, who fiercely want more policing but have no spokesmen to defend their interests.

With support from techies, designers, artists and thousands of activists across the country, Black Lives Matter is now an online-to-offline political movement, affirming the humanity and resilience of black communities.

If we don't get gun-control laws in this country, we are full of beans. To have the National Rifle Association rule the United States is pathetic. And I agree with Mayor Michael Bloomberg: It's time to put up or shut up about gun control for both parties.