Quotes About Activism

In 1986, I had gone on a hunger strike with Anand Patwardhan rooting for an alternative land for slum dwellers. My mother got very nervous and told my father to tell me that, 'what am I doing?' He sent me a telegram that read: 'Best of luck, comrade!'

I'm telling you there is hope. I have seen it, but it does not come from the governments or corporations. It comes from the people.

Burnout is a way of telling you that your form of activism was perhaps not very full circle.

What kind of government is this? This is a human being. This is not right, and I'm telling everybody you better call your congressman, because they're going to run your life.

When I think about protest, I worry so much that people think about it only as standing in the streets. And I say that as someone who has been standing in the streets of cities across the country - but at the root of it is this idea of telling the truth in public.

My spirit tells me I cannot be silent.

I lose film roles because I'm a person who doesn't keep quiet about certain things. But if my heart tells me something is wrong, I'm going to go and do something about it.

I don't have the activist temperament. I like listening to divergent points of view and hearing people out. I like getting along. I even like being liked, although activists of any stripe should get rid of that handicap at the outset.

The Progressives] outlook was activist and optimistic, not fatalist and despondent. The distinctive characteristic of the Progressives was their conviction that social evils would not remedy themselves and that it was foolhardy to wait passively for time's cure. As Herbert Croly put it, they did not believe that the future would take care of itself. Neither should we.

We have spoken out against inhuman slaughters perpetrated by the Nazis and the Communists. But will we speak out also against the inhuman slaughter in Indonesia, where over 100,000 alleged Communists have been not perpetrators, but victims?

En marzo del 2003, Rachel Corrie, una joven estadounidense que había viajado a Gaza para intentar evitar que los israelíes destruyeran hogares palestinos, se plantó frente a una excavadora Caterpillar israelí para obligar al conductor a detenerse. Pero la arrolló. Y volvió a pasar por encima de ella. Cuando sus amigos corrieron en su ayuda, dijo: «Me he partido la espalda», y murió.

At the very back she found a cupboard. Opening it, she saw a plaque to suffragette Emily Davison. Apparently, she had slept there overnight so that she could give her place of residence as the House of Commons on the census of 1911, seven years before women were given the vote. Emily Davison, she could not help but feel, would not have approved of Robin's choice to place a failing marriage above freedom to work.

her activism had mostly taken the form of enthusiastic exhibitionism. Not for Leda the tedious toil of door-to-door canvassing, the difficult business of compromise, or the painstaking work structural change entailed. Never a deep or critical thinker, she'd been a sucker for what Strike thought of as intellectual charlatans.

and 'woman as she is now in this eon… armed and militant.'" "A radical feminist witch." "Which sounds quite cool when you say it,

Mainstream politicians will continue to protect existing systems of power, corporate executives will continue to maximize profit without concern, and the majority of people will continue to avoid these questions. It's the job of people with critical sensibilities—those who consistently speak out for justice and sustainability, even when it's difficult—not to back away just because the world has grown more ominous.

Feminism remains a crucial element of any program for social justice today, which is why patriarchal forces attempt to eliminate or marginalize feminist ideas.

He was also active in his local community, a tireless worker for the Democratic Party and, for three consecutive years, director of Chicago's annual Polish Constitution Day Parade. Through this latter activity, he was introduced to (and photographed with) First Lady Rosalynn Carter on May 6, 1978. Mrs Carter signed the photo: "To John Gacy. Best wishes. Rosalynn Carter.

of the USA. When the Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound, one of the pioneering prepaid group health plans, was organized in the late 1930s, its founders included activists in trade unions and producer co-ops. Because health co-ops were fiercely opposed by organized medicine, their leaders and members necessarily had to become active in progressive politics.

These are the tranquillized Fifties,and I am forty. Ought I to regret my seedtime?I was a fire-breathing Catholic C.O.,and made my manic statement,telling off the state and president, and thensat waiting sentence in the bull penbeside a Negro boy with curlicuesof marijuana in his hair.

As early as 1775, Philadelphia Quakers had launched the world's first antislavery society, followed by others in the north and south.

Junior welcomed this firsthand exposure to urgent social problems.

The incredible women around the world who do stand up for justice can in fact transform the planet.

Emily Hobhouse

The voluntarist worship of mindless action may be designated by the term "activism." Activism is the form of irrationalism which extols direct physical action, based on will or instinct or faith, while repudiating the intellect and its products, such as abstractions, theory, programs, philosophy. In a very literal sense, activism is irrationalism—in action. "We approach the realities of the world only in strong emotion and in action ... ," says Hitler.