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Quote by Henry David Thoreau

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Walden and Other Writings

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Henry David Thoreau

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“The leaders and followers of the Harlem Renaissance were every bit as intent on using Black culture to help make the United States a more functional democracy as they were on employing Black culture to 'vindicate' Black people.”

LeadershipEducationPatriotismLeadersFollowersUnited States Of AmericaCivil DisobedienceBlack History MonthLeadership StylesVindicationAfrican American HistoryDemocracy In AmericaBlack CultureHarlem RenaissanceFollowershipRace Relations In AmericaPostered Poetics By AberjhaniNational History DayBlack LeadersHarlem Renaissance HistoriansLeadership StrategiesHistoricizationAfrican American IntellectualsAfrican American LeadersBest Leadership PracticesFaith In The American PeopleHeroes Of The Harlem RenaissanceHistorical AccountabilityHistory Of DemocracyTeaching The Harlem RenaissanceWeb Du Bois
Book:Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
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“A final victory is an accumulation of many short-term encounters. To lightly dismiss a success because it does not usher in a complete order of justice is to fail to comprehend the process of full victory. It underestimates the value of confrontation and dissolves the confidence born of partial victory by which new efforts are powered.”

Civil RightsNonviolenceCivil DisobedienceMovement Of Change
Book:Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
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“Another site of Leftist struggle [other than Detroit] that has parallels to New Orleans: Palestine. From the central role of displacement to the ways in which culture and community serve as tools of resistance, there are illuminating comparisons to be made between these two otherwise very different places. In the New Orleans Black community, death is commemorated as a public ritual (it's often an occasion for a street party), and the deceased are often also memorialized on t-shirts featuring their photos embellished with designs that celebrate their lives. Worn by most of the deceased's friends and family, these t-shirts remind me of the martyr posters in Palestine, which also feature a photo and design to memorialize the person who has passed on. In Palestine, the poster's subjects are anyone who has been killed by the occupation, whether a sick child who died at a checkpoint or an armed fighter killed in combat. In New Orleans, anyone with family and friends can be memorialized on a t-shift. But a sad truth of life in poor communities is that too many of those celebrate on t-shirts lost their lives to violence. For both New Orleans and Palestine, outsiders often think that people have become so accustomed to death by violence that it has become trivialized by t-shirts and posters. While it's true that these traditions wouldn't manifest in these particular ways if either population had more opportunities for long lives and death from natural causes, it's also far from trivial to find ways to celebrate a life. Outsiders tend to demonize those killed--especially the young men--in both cultures as thugs, killers, or terrorists whose lives shouldn't be memorialized in this way, or at all. But the people carrying on these traditions emphasize that every person is a son or daughter of someone, and every death should be mourned, every life celebrated.”

LifeDeathCommunityStruggleResistanceFuneralCelebrationPalestineNew OrleansMartyrNon ViolenceCivil DisobedienceSecond Line
Book:Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six
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“But we need to search for and find, what we need to own and perfect into a magnificent, shining thing, is a new kind of politics. Not the politics of governments, but the politics of resistance. The politics of opposition. The politics of forcing accountability. The politics of slowing things down. In the present circumstances, I'd say the only thing worth globalizing is dissent.”

ProtestCivil Disobedience
Book:The New Stations of the Cross: The Way of the Cross According to Scripture
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“Ethnicity and tribe began, by definition, where sovereignty and taxes ended. The ethnic zone was feared and stigmatized by state rhetoric precisely because it was beyond its grasp and therefore an example of defiance and an ever-present temptation to those who might wish to evade the state.”

TaxesCivil DisobedienceEthnicityStatismTribalismShatter Belt
Book:The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia
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“So how do the people resist unjust authority, which, we all agree, they must and should do and have done in the past? The best solution anyone has come up with is to say that violent revolutions can be avoided (and therefore, violent mobs legitimately suppressed) if 'the people' are understood to have the right to challenge the laws through nonviolent civil disobedience.”

PoliticsDemocracySocietyRevolutionCivil DisobedienceProtests
Book:The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement
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