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Quote by Steven Magee

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Steven Magee

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“Life," said Emerson, "consists in what a man is thinking all day." If that be so, then my life is nothing but a big intestine. I not only think about food all day, but I dream about it at night. But I don’t ask to go back to America, to be put in a double harness again, to work the treadmill. No, I prefer to be a poor man of Europe. God knows, I am poor enough; it only remains to be a man.”

ThinkingLifeAmericaPovertyFoodPoor ManEmersonHenry MillerRalph Waldo Emerson
Author:Henry Miller
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“The McCone Report goes on to mention two other "aggravating events in the twelve months prior to the riot." One was the failure of the poverty program to "live up to [its] press notices," combined with reports of "controversy and bickering" in Los Angeles over administering the program. The second "aggravating event" is summed up by the report in these words: Throughout the nation unpunished violence and disobedience to the law were widely reported, and almost daily there were exhortations, here and elsewhere, to take the most extreme and illegal remedies to right a wide variety of wrongs, real and supposed. It would be hard to frame a more insidiously equivocal statement of the Negro grievance concerning law enforcement during a period that included the release of the suspects in the murder of the three civil rights workers in Mississippi, the failure to obtain convictions against the suspected murderers of Medgar Evers and Mrs. Violet Liuzzo, the Gilligan incident in New York, the murder of Reverend James Reeb, and the police violence in Selma, Alabama—to mention only a few of the more notorious cases. And surely it would have been more to the point to mention that throughout the nation Negro demonstrations have almost invariably been nonviolent, and that the major influence of the civil rights movement on the Negro community has been the strategy of discipline and dignity. Obsessed by the few prophets of violent resistance, the McCone Commission ignores the fact that never before has an American group sent so many people to jail or been so severely punished for trying to uphold the law of the land.”

JusticePovertyInjusticeCivil RightsAfrican AmericansProtestsPolice MisconductWatts RebellionWatts Riots
Book:Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
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“I broke one terrible night when Rufo, Ramon's younger brother, arrived at the house begging me to bring medicine for Ramon and Ester, who were suddenly burning up with fever. Carrying aspirin and a thermometer, I walked up the beach through the waves at high tide, under a billion blazing southern stars, the most furiously beautiful night of my life. But the contrast of that night with the utter squalor of Ramon's house, the sweating bodies, the delirium, their childlike faith that now that I had come everything would be all right, the pathetic collection of objects they had piled in bed around them - a plaster of Paris dog with half the paint peeled off, a rusty flit gun, a jar of watermelon seed, a pail of ground corn for the chickens, a pair of worn-out gringo shoes, all their treasures - so knocked me out that walking back along the beach I began to cry as I hadn't cried since I was six years old. What finally made it funny was that I couldn't stop and h ad to stay on the beach for almost an hour, embarrassed to go wailing through the sleeping streets of Rio Verde, announcing that I was cracking up.”

PovertyTravelPeace Corps Story
Book:Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle
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