Quotes About Advocacy

I wholeheartedly believe that we can't organize just as women. There has to be specific messaging and an issue prioritization based on identity groups. Because when you ask a black woman what her top priority issues are versus a white woman versus a Muslim woman versus an undocumented woman, you're going to get... different answers.

What excites me is that I'm an ambassador for poetry, which is something that I wholeheartedly believe in and that has been an anchor and a force of stability and consolation throughout my life. I think that's good news.

The candle burns not for us, but for all those whom we failed to rescue from prison, who were shot on the way to prison, who were tortured, who were kidnapped, who 'disappeared'. That's what the candle is for.

Solutions will not be found while Indigenous people are treated as victims for whom someone else must find solutions.

It just seems to be a human trait to want to protect the speech of people with whom we agree. For the First Amendment, that is not good enough. So it is really important that we protect First Amendment rights of people no matter what side of the line they are on.

Of course, the majority of us would speak up in the face of outrageous bigotry, but do we speak up in a social situation when someone casually refers to something as 'gay'? If we don't, we are standing with the homophobes whom we are quietly fighting.

Books and opinions, no matter from whom they came, if they are in opposition to human rights, are nothing but dead letters.

Why is it that the very people who have fought so hard and so long for the simple entitlement to love whom they choose to love are the very ones denied that right by those who routinely take their vows for granted?

As one whose husband and mother-in-law have died the victims of murder and assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses... An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation.

I cannot doubt that women will line up, like the men elected, with the groups whose political thinking and convictions are in accord with their own political convictions.

People with mental illnesses are dying on our streets. More than 350,000 are in jails and prisons. Most are people whose only real crime is they got sick.

I personally don't have anything to say to Mike Pence. I'm very lucky because legislation that he's pushed hasn't affected my life at all. I spoke out because there are people out there whose lives have been affected by change that he's tried to make.

Politics changes lives. You would expect me, as a politician, to say that. But I don't say it as a politician: I say it as someone whose own life was changed.

Often I feel powerless when I hear stories about animals in shelters across the country whose lives are taken simply because they have no safe place to call home, but raising funds through Strut Your Mutt helps people help these pets.

When working at Women's Aid, I met countless women whose families had not believed them when they spoke of their abuse at the hands of another loved one.

I feel a real sense of duty to use the voice and the platform I've been afforded by my fame to speak out for those whose voices don't get a chance to be heard.

Today, many people take for granted the notion that people whose lives are going to be very heavily affected by public policies should have a say in how they are formulated and carried out.

Do we care about these people that are HIV-positive whose lives have been ruined? Those are the people I'm the most concerned about. Every night I think about this.

Washington, D.C. is full of think tanks, theoreticians and advocacy groups. Governors are the ones whose feet are on the ground.

I am representing here - the sound of silence. The cry of innocence. And, the face of invisibility. I represent millions of those children who are left behind, and that's why I have kept an empty chair here as a reminder.

Gay marriage is absolutely something that I am in full support of and a big advocate of, and I think it's an important issue, but there's a reason that I don't talk about politics and why I'll never be in politics. I am not the person to ever do that.

Some people ask, 'Why the word 'feminist'? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?' Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general - but to choose to use the vague expression 'human rights' is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender.

Here in the United States, corporations has human rights. And then why not - why not nature also, if corporations can defend themselves, saying, 'We have human rights?' Well, let's admit that nature also should be protected.

I do think that same gender partners should be able to be married. Why not? If you share a life together than who in the world should have anything to say about it?