Quotes About Social justice

Little movements of communities of ordinary radicals are committed to doing small things with great love.

Love has no limits. Compassion has no party. It is the responsibility of every human being and every institution to end poverty and to interrupt injustice.

Here in the United States we appear to be becoming more and more a country devoted to amenities for the rich, more and more neglectful of the poor.

All I got to do is stay black and die.

The plague of racism is insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our bloodstreams.

Baby, let me tell you what's going to happen. In a few years, there are going to be beautiful posters of Malcolm X, and his photographs will be everywhere. The same people who don't give a damn now will lie and say they always supported him.

Image letting some white woman rename you for her convenience.

There's no accountability anymore, Pierce, no one holds anyone accountable for what they do. It's always someone else's fault. Usually people just blame the victim.

As Thomas Wright writes in an article from the book Co-Dependency, An Emerging Issue, "I suspect codependents have historically attacked social injustice and fought for the rights of the underdog. Codependents want to help. I suspect they have helped. But they probably died thinking they didn't do enough and were feeling guilty.

Without justice there can be no love.

Our] struggle for liberation has significance only if it takes place within a feminist movement that has as its fundamental goal the liberation of all people.

Indeed, all the great movements for social justice in our society have strongly emphasized a love ethic.

To understand feminism it implies one has to necessarily understand sexism.

Before contemporary feminist movement was less than 10 years old, feminist thinkers began to talk about the way in which patriarchy was harmful to men. Without changing our fierce critique of male domination feminist politics expanded to include the recognition that patriarchy stripped men of certain rights, imposing on them a sexist masculine identity.

The principle of equality, which is at the core of democratic values, has very little meaning in a world in which global oligarchy is taking over.

White feminists so focused on the disparity between white male/white female economic status as an indication of the negative impact of sexism that they drew no attention to the fact that poor and lower-class men are as able to oppress and brutalize women as any other group of men in American society.

Most black people are anti-racist (even those who have internalized racial self-hatred) and will not argue that whites are better, superior, and should rule over us. Yet most black people are not anti-sexist (even those whose life circumstance may make it impossible for them to rigidly conform to sexist roles) and will argue the natural superiority of men, supporting their right to dominance in the family and in the world outside the home.

It was an accepted fact among black people that the leaders who were most revered and respected were men. Black activists defined freedom as gaining the right to participate as full citizens in American culture; they were not rejecting the value system of that culture. Consequently, they did not question the rightness of patriarchy.

loving practice is not aimed at simply giving an individual greater life satisfaction; it is extolled as the primary way we end domination and oppression.

Every women's movement in America, from its earliest origin to the present day, has been built on a racist foundation, a fact which in no way invalidates feminism as a political ideology. The racial apartheid social structure that characterized 19th and early 20th century American life was mirrored in the women's rights movement. The first white women's rights advocates were never seeking social equality for all women. They were seeking social equality for white women.

Feminism is not anti- male, Feminism is anti-sexism

Indeed, all the great movements for social justice in our society have strongly emphasized a love ethic. Yet young listeners remain reluctant to embrace the idea of love as a transformative force.

In the late fifties and sixties, our nation had not yet become a place where the poor would be regarded solely with contempt. In the growing up years of my life, my siblings and I were constantly told that it was a sin to place ourselves above others. We were taught that material possessions told you nothing about the inner life of another human being, whether they were a loving, a person of courage and integrity. We were told to look past material trappings and find the person inside.

Young progressives committed to social justice who had found it easy to maintain radical politics when they were living on the edge, on the outside, did not want to do the hard work of changing and reorganizing our existing system in ways that would affirm the values of peace and love, or democracy and justice. They fell into despair. And that despair made capitulation to the existing social order the only place of comfort.