Quotes About Activism

I wasn't a particularly brilliant student, but on the other hand, I was very active in Student Union affairs and in student politics.

I grew up in the 1960s in Memphis, and my father was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union. I was born three years before Martin Luther King was killed, and I think that history of civil action was something that I had in my blood.

I remember a time when you were protesting on the street together with your professors, with your union, with your school organizations. Everybody was in the streets. Now, everybody is kept alone in his box, in this fragile condition, afraid of losing tenure.

As the son of a union activist and a lifelong Democrat, I've always thought that privatizing our public schools is not the answer. We must strengthen public schools.

My mother was really involved with the Refusenik campaign with Soviet Union Jews. They would come and stay at our house, some of them, after they managed to get out of the Soviet Union at the time. There were things that were Jewish-related happening in my house quite consistently, but it was much more from a kind of activist standpoint.

According to Colombia's respected Escuela Nacional Sindical, as of April 2015, 105 union activists had been executed in the four years since Clinton's free-trade treaty went into effect. That's just trade unionists.

Civil rights activists and union activists shared not just common values and objectives but also common enemies.

I worked at the New York Civil Liberties Union as a starving actor in the early '80s. I was in love with what they were doing.

I'm a passionate trade unionist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist.

My training was with some old British communists who had organized unions in the '60s and '70s. And their philosophy was, if you can't drink a pint with a man, how are you gonna get him to go on strike and risk his life?

In a democracy, in a functioning democracy, what would be happening is that popular organizations, unions, political groupings, others would be developing their programs, putting them forth, insisting that their representatives implement those programs.

Many people feel that unions aren't militant enough for them and don't do anything.

Getting political representation is important, but change comes through using direct action, campaigning, and trade unions.

The Women's Sports Foundation holds a unique position in developing opportunities for girls and women of all abilities to be active whether recreationally or competitively, and I'm excited to help lead the organization to impact even more lives. It is an honor to continue to build the legacy created by Billie Jean King and all of our leaders.

It is a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations.

Wyclef is a musician that tried to unite as many musicians at once as possible. I am trying to be successful at that. The greatest challenge is that, I just got arrested for protesting in NYC for cutting the school budgets... And I think that it's important to stand up. Schools are important.

The anti-nuke movement has important and far-reaching implications for grassroots organizing. It can unite kids and musicians, everybody, whether they're leftist or rightist, or radical, or Republican, because energy is energy. But in fact, it is a real political struggle - it shows people that it's big business against the people.

So black people all across this country are uniting. They must unite, and they must organize themselves.

The Woman's Party is made up of women of all races, creeds and nationalities who are united on the one program of working to raise the status of women.

I was in high school in 1953 when the Committee of One Million circulated a petition urging that Red China - one third of the world's population - be excluded from the United Nations. And I remember I refused to sign it, at 14 or 15 years old.

One day, I know the struggle will change. There's got to be a change - not only for Mississippi, not only for the people in the United States, but people all over the world.

We are fighting for an unapologetic movement for economic, social, and racial justice in the United States.

This is the basis, and I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist, I am being tried for fighting for the rights of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America.