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Activism Quotes

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Activism Quotes

“The first right of any person in any society must be the right to communicate. Without communication there is no way to safeguard our other rights or for us to participate fully in a society. When your right to communicate is interrupted by those who would be your voice, your face or your representative, you are being subjected to the governance of another.”

“The future of journalism is in a stigmergic mesh network of amplifiers, investigators and activists who can filter and fact check news in real time, combine it with investigative global knowledge resources and create appropriate local and / or global action. The future is in collaborative investigators sharing knowledge to map everything we need to know to govern ourselves. The future is in activism and aid requested directly by the people who require it and responded to directly by the people who can provide it. The future is in the right and ability of every single person to broadcast their own voice and call for amplification when needed. The future of journalism is in all of us.”

“Barriers remain in place, disabling us, and denying our full participation in the everyday. The current government wallows in an ideology that crushes us with cuts to social care, to services – and to disabled arts organisations. Immediately after Silent Witness, Ellen Clifford, of Disabled People Against Cuts, was on Newsnight, pointing out that “the United Nations made a finding of grave and systemic violations towards disabled people”. Who cares? Who’s listening? Unexpectedly Silent Witness seemed to be this week. And with viewing figures averaging 6 million, let’s hope it marks a watershed moment in our understanding and acceptance of disabled people.”

“One problem for the student of color is the feeling that if she is silent about a piece of writing that is racially problematic or insensitive or simply racist , she will be condoning such writing. Moreover, the student may believe that to be silent is to be a coward. At the same time, if the student of color persists in her critiques she will be increasingly attacked and begin to feel isolated and powerless. The student may feel then that to persist with her critiques is an attempt to maintain or regain power. But Sun Tzu teaches that to retreat or lay low in times when one does not have power or sufficient number is not weakness; it is wisdom. Sun Tzu teaches that taking time to build allies and gather forces is not weakness, but wisdom. ... Or as I wrote to one such student, being an activist artist is not a sprint. It is a marathon. Artists need to plan and strategize and build their forces for the larger battles to come, to fight from strength not weakness.”

“He got up, came back, and unlocked the door to my cell, then led me back to his desk and indicated the bench along the wall. I sat down, and he pushed a bundle of letters over to me. I was reading one of the letters—it was from a young girl who said she loved Flipper and wanted to know if there was anything she could do to help either Charlie Brown or me—when suddenly Sgt. Pepper grabbed my hair and banged my head twice—Bang! Bang!—against the wall. Through clenched teeth he growled, “You come here to steal dee fish! You bess tell me de trut, man. You come to steal dee fish!” “Dolphins are not fish!” I yelled back at him.”

“The ideological man is thus both absolutely suspicious and absolutely enthusiastic. There seems to be no idea under the sun that he would not put into question and make an object of derision, skepticism, or contempt, no idea that he would not reduce to an offshoot of hidden instincts, mundane interests, biological drives, and psychological complexes. Hence he is likely to despise reason as an autonomous faculty, to downgrade lofty ideals, and to debunk the past, seeing everywhere the same ideological mystification. But at the same time, he lives in a constant state of mobilization for a better world. His mouth is full of noble slogans about brotherhood, freedom, and justice, and with every word he makes it clear that he knows which side is right and that he is ready to sacrifice his entire existence for the sake of its victory. The peculiar combination of both attitudes--merciless distrust and unwavering affirmation--gives him an incomparable sense of moral self-confidence and intellectual self-righteousness.”

“It was not the blatant evil that broke the soul. No, in the face of utter darkness, the human spirit often rose to soaring heights. It was the shades of gray, the nuances and subtleties that wore people down. It was dealing with sellouts and side deals, small injustices and petty grievances that turned heroes into stoop-shouldered, weary old men. That was how they crumbled, idealists like this young man. They tripped on the garbage heap of miserly greed and fearful half-measures.”

“Democracy wasn't a set of dry documents nicely laid out on office stationary - it brimmed in the lips of thousands of souls and debated in dozens of accents as it crossed the street from one neighborhood to the next. It was the smell of stale coffee and bodies packed into an old community center. It was the typos in the fliers. It was exasperation, realization, illumination - a knockdown, drag out, sweaty, tearful, impassioned process of people making decisions together.”

“The day Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced that he was going to do everything he could to repeal the Affordable Care Act and defund Planned Parenthood, [...] we saw a 900% increase in requests for appointments to get IUDs, a form of birth control that lasts for several years. Women wanted to make sure their birth control would outlast the [new] Administration.”

“Without Love, humanity dies of thirst, grasps at riches, destroys the earth through insatiable greed. Without Love, we are walking dust, dead matter stumbling from the dawn of birth to the dusk of death. Without Love, our Earth is stripped of beingness, left barren and lifeless, a pile of rocks and resources, objects to possess and control. Without Love, humanity sleepwalks as automatons, controlled, manipulated, and shoved through a nightmarish existence.”

“This world does not grow from violent roots. It flowers from the seeds of love and respect planted in our hearts. It arises in people who hold the dignity of others in equal measure to their determination for justice. It emerges in the hearts of those who remember that the greatest courage is to move from love instead of hate.”