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Quote by Martin Luther King Jr.

“You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.”

Quote by Martin Luther King Jr.

Book:Why We Can't Wait
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Why We Can't Wait

Written by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., this influential book serves as a passionate plea for the urgent need to address racial injustice and promote equality. It outlines the historical context of segregation and the necessity for immediate change, emphasizing the moral imperative for racial justice. more

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Martin Luther King Jr.

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“Through education we seek to change attitudes; through legislation and court orders we seek to regulate behavior. Through education we seek to change internal feelings (prejudice, hate, etc.); through legislation and court orders we seek to control the external effects of those feelings. Through education we seek to break down the spiritual barriers to integration; through legislation and court orders we seek to break down the physical barriers to integration. One method is not a substitute for the other, but a meaningful and necessary supplement.”

FeelingsChangeRaceEducationBehaviorRacismActivismLegislationSocial ChangeCourt Orders
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“In order to be whole, we must recognise the despair oppression plants within each of us — that thin persistent voice that says our efforts are useless, it will never change, so why bother, accept it. And we must fight that inserted piece of self-destruction that lives and flourishes like a poison inside of us, unexamined until it makes us turn upon ourselves in each other.”

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Book:Your Silence Will Not Protect You: Essays and Poems
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“Forget rage, we don’t even have to ‘fight back’ against the machine. But we do have to perform one, all-important mind maneuver: We must reclaim our attention and consciously choose a new way to focus it that is both self-directed and empowering.”

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Book:Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality
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“One particularly successful method of capturing public attention was the renting of vacant shops in town centres for weeks at a time. A short-term lease would be agreed and then the shop would be stocked with leaflets and publications, with posters displayed in the windows to attract passers-by. The shops were staffed by a supporter who was on hand to answer questions. [...] Reports of one of the earliest shops in Wrexham described how anti-vivisection literature was handed out and how, day after day, a constant stream of visitors, both friends and foes, passed in and out of the shop asking questions, offering suggestions, raising objections or entering into debate.”

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Book:Campaigning Against Cruelty: The Hundred Year History of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection
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“There is another side to the picture: it is the white community of Montgomery, long led or intimidated by a few extremists, that finally turned in disgust on the perpetrators of crime in the name of segregation. The change should not be exaggerated. The White Citizens Council is still active. Confessed bombers still win their freedom in the courts. And opposition to integration is still the rule. Yet by the end of the bus struggle it was clear that the vast majority of Montgomery's whites preferred peace and law to the excesses performed in the name of segregation. And even though the many saw segregation as right because it was the tradition, there were always the courageous few who saw the injustice in segregation and fought against it side by side with the Negroes.”

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Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“The Lacandones have a prophecy that the world will be destroyed when the last mahogany tree is gone. The mahogany is the 'indicator species' for the rain forest; its health or death is indicative of the health or death of the entire ecosystem. The smoke from the burning of tropical rain forests can already be seen from satellites miles above Earth. The indigenous people of the true, original First World are preparing themselves for the final struggle. Many have nothing left to lose, only the remaining trees and land, and their children, to fight for. As the Zapatistas declared: 'We are the dead, rising to die again so our people can live once more.”

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Book:Green Psychology: Transforming our Relationship to the Earth
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