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Democracy Quotes

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Democracy Quotes

“In the South, prior to the Civil Rights movement and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, democracy was the rule. The majority of people were white, and the white majority had little or no respect for any rights which the black minority had relative to property, or even to their own lives. The majority - the mob and occasionally the lynch mob - ruled.”

“The reality is that the founding fathers were land speculators. The fact was that you couldn't vote in this country if you did not own land, and that was basically you had to be a white man who owned land. Now how did they get that land? They basically had to steal it from someone, and that would be probably the Indians. And so most of the initial founding fathers were, while they may have had some really nice ideas about democracy, they had a lot of issues with people of color. They had a lot of issues with people who held things that they coveted.”

“Martin Luther King Jr's agenda was not to help Negroes overcome American apartheid in the south. It was to make America democracy a better place, where everyday people, from poor people who were white and red and yellow and black and brown, would be able to live lives in decency and dignity.”

“All talks about legacies of white supremacy must be tied to empowering the lives of poor and working people as a whole. The black agenda - from Frederick Douglas to A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr, Fannie Lou Hammer to Ella Baker - has always been tied to race talk inseparable from expanding possibilities of democracy, expanding empowerment of everyday people.”

“Democracy is the eagle on the back of a dollar bill, with 13 arrows in one claw, 13 leaves on a branch, 13 tail feathers, and 13 stars over its head - this signifies that when the white man came to this country, it was bad luck for the Indians, bad luck for the trees, bad luck for the wildlife, and lights out for the American eagle.”

“The majority of South Africans, black and white, recognize that apartheid has no future. It has to be ended by our own decisive mass action in order to build peace and security. The mass campaign of defiance and other actions of our organization and people can only culminate in the establishment of democracy.”

“New Rule: The rest of the world can go back to being completely jealous of America. Our majority white country just freely elected a black president, something no other democracy has ever done. Take that Canada! Where's your nubian warrior president? Your head of state is a boring white dude named Steven Harper, and mine is a kick-ass black ninja named Barack Hussein Obama!”