Quotes About Activism

I think I was a feminist before being born. I had a feminist chromosome somewhere.

My art and poetry is very political now. Because you've got to find that truth within you and express yourself. Somewhere out there, I know, there will be people who will listen.

'Basmati Blues' deals with a great social issue, GMOs, but it's told through love and song and dance.

In the '60s, when I was growing up, one of the great elements of American culture was the protest song. There were songs about the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, the antiwar movement. It wasn't just Bob Dylan, it was everybody at the time.

The President can pardon us again... and again and again, but... picketing will continue, and sooner or later, he will have to do something about it.

Injustice has exhausted people but also pushed them to organize and fight back in very sophisticated ways.

If my art has nothing to do with people's pain and sorrow, what is 'art' for?

But, you know, I'm sorry, I think democracy requires participation. I mean, I don't want to proselytize but I do feel some sort of duty to participate in the process in some way other than just blindly getting behind a political party.

I read a lot of W.E.B. Du Bois, who wrote 'The Souls of Black Folk.'

I do my best to make every word from my pen a cry from the heart for the souls of the dead.

I get a bit depressed if I walk into a restaurant and see shark-fin soup on the menu.

Well, I've been politically involved for a really long time. Growing up in the segregated South, it was a very painful experience for me to live through the open racism of the time.

Everybody now admits that apartheid was wrong, and all I did was tell the people who wanted to know where I come from how we lived in South Africa. I just told the world the truth. And if my truth then becomes political, I can't do anything about that.

We want Nelson Mandela and the people of South Africa to know that we will stand shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, until apartheid is eradicated.

In America we talk about South Africa, but I tell people that apartheid is nothing compared to what is happening in my country where black oppresses black.

We were a very politically active family. My father was one of the first lawyers in South Africa to have a black partner, so I grew up very aware of the struggle going on. Coming from that background, it really gave me chills to have my music be a part of the election of the first black American president.

I engaged upon those activities because I believed that, in the dangerous circumstances which have been created in South Africa, it was my duty to do so.

Do you think that the people of South Africa, or anywhere on the continent of Africa, or India, or Pakistan are longing to be kicked around all over again?

I don't want to talk about apartheid... I'm going to South Africa to play tennis and to see the country. That's as far as it goes.

My problem in calling for pressures on South Africa is to convince the youth to convince their governments and people that it is not the South African goods that are cheap, but the forced labor of the Africans.

I helped found Artists for New South Africa, but it used to be called Artists for Free South Africa. Alfre Woodard and a bunch of us started this.

As far as those kinds of things, I also played at the concert to call for the release of Nelson Mandela when he was a political prisoner in South Africa. We were celebrating his 70th birthday and calling for his release.

There is no more apartheid in South Africa than in the United States.

From Mozambique to Chad, South Africa and Liberia, Sierra Leone to Burkina Faso, feminism is the buzzword for a generation of women determined to change the course of the future for themselves and their families.