Quotes About Activism

I was very much a part of the civil rights era, so, of course, my fantasy was to marry some outstanding black gentleman, a leader - someone like Martin Luther King who was doing something for black people.

When you can attack legislation and get laws and the system changed, that's going to bring a real impact, but we can't expect that to happen overnight.

The issue of civil rights was too much for the establishment to handle. One of the chapters of history that's least studied by historians is the 300 to 500 riots in the U.S. between 1965 and 1970.

The Chinese leadership hoped that the world would soon forget the Tiananmen Square massacre. Our job in Congress is to ensure that we never forget those who lost their lives in Tiananmen Square that day or the pro-democracy cause for which they fought.

We had to be seen because we couldn't be heard.

Silence equals death.

Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause it is also a personal affair. It is not only about us it is also about me and you. Just the two of us.

We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.

Smokers of the world unite! On t'count o' three, all light up, right? 1-2-3... You've all been cowed. I've changed the law and it's allowed. Try again then. 1-2-3: all light your fags now after me.

A handful of works in history have had a direct impact on social policy: one or two works of Dickens, some of Zola, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and, in modern drama, Larry Kramer's 'The Normal Heart.'

My father has a pragmatic mind. He marched with Dr. King in the '60s, and he's very much for women's rights.

And I can imagine Farmer saying he doesn't care if no one else is willing to follow their example. He's still going to make these hikes, he'd insist, because if you say that seven hours is too long to walk for two families of patients, you're saying that their lives matter less than some others', and the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that's wrong with the world.

The goofiness of radicals thinking they have to dress in Guatemalan peasant clothes. The poor don't want you to look like them. They want you to dress in a suit and go get them food and water. Comma.

But when things are obviously not right—wherever people are being overcharged and underserved, wherever sloth or downright discourtesy is offered—it is up to each and every one of us to protest.

Well-meaning friends suggest that I should drop the word "feminist," and perhaps the entire concept, because feminism is so "old hat." Young women today have lost interest in feminism because they believe it's antisex and that all feminists are man haters. Let me tell you something, girlfriends. That's exactly what the powers-that-be want us to think and do.

If I win and get the money, then the Oakland Police department is going to buy a boys' home, me a house, my family a house, and a Stop Police Brutality Center.

If I were a woman I should march out with a flaming torch and a sword; I should emasculate right and left.

What can you do to ensure your magazines will "survive" a future hi-cap magazine ban? Don't vote for people who will ban them and assist those who oppose them.

I used to try to patch up the whole world. For thirty-six years I worked for different groups, promoting world government, setting up conferences on pacifism, raising money, stuffing envelopes. Not that I've given up the fight. I've just switched battlefields, from the entire planet to this corner of Cleveland. Sometimes I've actually had more effect on the world since I [have].

This protest, the rebellion, was a tonic.

the combination of killing, mutilation, and mass forced disappearance—was targeted directly at the students for being radical, organized, poor; rural and indigenous students of a school noted for its anti-government organizing

In an uncommon move, a young US Border Patrol officer in El Paso, Francisco Cantú, disenchanted with his job, quit to become an activist on border abuses.

The problem I've had all my dating life is that the guys who drive me crazy sexually never seem to care much about being a part of the righteous forward motion of all peoples of the world toward peace and freedom. This is part of my parents' revolutionary curse. I have to consider politics even in the midst of passion.

White folks don't have to do anything to you specifically. After they do it to a couple of other people that you know about, you are so incapacitated by fear that you ain't no use to the struggle anyhow.