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Oppression Quotes

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Oppression Quotes

“In the Christian tradition, the function of the “prophetic” (far from being about soothsaying the future) is about speaking truth to power in the face of injustice. The prophets in the Biblical tradition were disruptive voices in the face of systemic failures to protect the most vulnerable. In our context, the prophetic is a disruption of power and privilege in much the same way as a stick in the spokes- an attempt to immediately stop the forward momentum of harmful and oppressive dynamics. The disruption becomes necessary- even critical- when our mutual and social commitments (including grassroots realities, governmental systems, religious communities, etc.) fail to protect the marginalized- or worse, contribute to their oppression.”

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Author:Jamie Arpin-Ricci
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“Oppressions are linked. We cannot free human beings without freeing cows, sows, and hens along with women and men who are systematically oppressed by those in power. Rather than seek to fight our way up the patriarchal ladder, those working for social justice need to dismantle hierarchies, and cease to exploit all those who are less powerful—even if we must give up a few culinary favorites in the process . . . . Each of us decides, over the course of our daily lives, whether we will ignore the suffering of nonhuman animals . . . . We choose where our money goes, and in the process, we choose whether to boycott cruelty and support change, or melt ambiguously back into the masses.”

PowerSocial JusticeActivismOppressionVeganismAnimal LiberationIntersectionalityBoycottActivistsFarmed Animals
Book:Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
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“Authors in this anthology who are working on behalf of social justice immerse themselves in the horrors of oppression—they know what is going on, help those who are suffering, and inform the larger community. For the women whose essays are included in this anthology, immersion in the ugliness of injustice, in the hope of change, seems preferable to turning away. . . . there is a reward for courage and determination in the face of helplessness and suffering: Walking into pain in the hope of bringing change moves a person from helplessness and despair to empowered activism.”

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Book:Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice
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“We cannot end just one form of oppression, so we need to be on board with other activists. If we are not, we doom social justice activists to perpetually pulling up the innumerable shoots that spring from the very deep roots of oppression. Furthermore, inability to see one’s own privilege and ignorance of the struggles that others face (in a homophobic, racist, ageist, ableist, sexist society) are major impediments to social justice activism. Those who are privileged must give way so that others can take the lead, bringing new social justice concerns and methods to the activist’s table.”

RacismSocial JusticePrivilegeActivismOppressionSexismHomophobiaIntersectionalityAgeismAbleism
Book:Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice
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“Many social justice activists--many feminists--continue to work against one form of oppression while feeding the flames of another, without noticing that the blow torch behind the flames must be tuned off before we can have any hope of putting out the resultant fires.”

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Book:Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice
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“Because the oppression of nonhuman individuals is normative, it is largely invisible, and most of us are complicit in one way or another. While social justice activists now widely recognize that the poor, elderly, and non-white racialized minorities are harmed by patriarchy, few are willing to similarly recognize the harm of patriarchal dualisms and hierarchy on nonhuman animals – even ecofeminist theorists. Very few social justice activists have even a rudimentary understanding of speciesism, or of the harmful exploitation that stems from such marginalization and cruel domination of nonhuman animals.”

Social JusticeActivismOppressionAnimal RightsPatriarchyDominationAnimal LiberationIntersectionalitySpeciesismMarginalization
Book:Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice
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“It is increasingly difficult for social justice activists to advocate – with a clear conscience – for women, the poor, or immigrants while eating other animals or consuming the nursing milk of cattle. Animal activists are exposing the links that connect the oppression of nonhuman animals with human oppression.”

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Book:Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice
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“But activists must not work against one another in their single-minded dedication to one specific cause. Those fighting to protect horses must not eat cattle. We do well to specialize, we do not do so well if we specialize without knowledge of interlocking oppressions—or without the application of that knowledge.”

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Book:Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice
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“Those who seek greater justice in our world need to work toward a deeper understanding of oppressions. Activists need to develop the kind of understanding that will lead to a lifestyle—a way of being—that works against all oppressions. . . . This requires us to be open to change as a response to what other social justice activists say—especially those advocating against parallel interlocking oppressions. We cannot end just one form of oppression, so we need to be on board with other activists. If we are not, we doom social justice activists to perpetually pulling up the innumerable shoots that spring from the very deep roots of oppression. Furthermore, inability to see one’s own privilege and ignorance of the struggles that others face (in a homophobic, racist, ageist, ableist, sexist society) are major impediments to social justice activism. Those who are privileged must get out of the way so that others can take the lead, bringing new social justice concerns and methods to the activist’s table.”

EducationSocial JusticePrivilegeActivismOppressionIntersectionalityLifestyle Change
Book:Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice
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“There is an ugly, unmentioned truth behind a feminist’s tendency to associate women with men, rather than with similarly exploited pigs or cattle: Those who purposefully distance women from other female animals hope to liberate female humans while leaving nonhuman animals in the category of exploitable “other." But it is reprehensible for individuals who are seeking release from oppression to purposefully leave others in the dungeons of exploitation—even to condemn others to such exploitation—in the process of working to extricate themselves. In any event, this selfish approach has not worked, and the reason for this seems somewhat obvious: As long as we foster power-over—whether over pigs or turkeys or women—most human females will remain under the control of men, along with pigs and cows and chickens (who will generally remain yet lower on the rungs of power). In seeking to stand above nonhuman females, women help to maintain a hierarchy through which they are held below men. As long as we support a hierarchy, as long as we support a system which grants some individuals power over other individuals, men will dominate over women. Hierarchies entail power-over, and the power of one individual over another inevitably supports oppression.”

PowerFeministActivismOppressionExploitationPatriarchyHierarchyAnimal LiberationOtherSpeciesism
Book:Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
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“Activists must not work against one another in their single-minded dedication to one specific cause. Those fighting to protect horses must not eat cattle. We do well to specialize, but we do not do well if we specialize without knowledge of interlocking oppressions—or without the application of that knowledge.”

Social JusticeActivismOppressionVeganismSpeciesismActivistsInterconnectionsSocial Justice CausesInterlocking
Book:Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice
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“Those who seek greater justice in our world need to work toward a deeper understanding of oppressions. Activists need to develop the kind of understanding that will lead to a lifestyle—a way of being—that works against all oppressions.”

UnderstandingJusticeSocial JusticeActivismLifestyleOppressionAnimalsVeganismAnimal LiberationIntersectionality
Book:Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice
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“By dismantling the narrow politics of racial identity and selective self-interest, by going beyond 'black' and 'white,' we may construct new values, new institutions and new visions of an America beyond traditional racial categories and racial oppression.”

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Book:Beyond Black and White: Transforming African-American Politics
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“The nobility of our calling will always be rooted in two commitments difficult to observe: refusal to lie about what we know, and resistance to oppression.”

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Book:Speech of Acceptance Upon the Award of the Nobel Prize for Literature: Delivered in Stockholm on the Tenth of December, Nineteen Hundred and Fifty-seven. [Translated by Justin O'Brien
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“If white American feminist theory need not deal with the differences between us, and the resulting difference in our oppressions, then how do you deal with the fact that the women who clean your houses and tend your children while you attend conferences on feminist theory are, for the most part, poor women and women of Color? What is the theory behind racist feminism?”

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Book:Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
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“Our economic order is tightly woven around the exploitation of animals, and while it may seem easy to dismiss concern about animals as the soft-headed mental masturbation of people who really don't understand oppression and the depths of actual human misery, I hope to get you to think differently about suffering and pain, to convince you that animals matter, and to argue that anyone serious about ending domination and hierarchy needs to think critically about bringing animals into consideration.”

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Author:Bob Torres
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“To fight tyranny and oppression by using tyrannical and oppressive means, to combat a single-minded and ruthless fanaticism by becoming equally fanatical and ruthless, will not further the cause of justice or bring about a meaningful democracy. It can only prolong the cycle of violence.”

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Book:The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity
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“Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “disposable” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.”

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Author:Pope Francis
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“Everywhere you go on the continent of Europe at this hour you see the conflict between militarism and industrialism. You see the expansion of industrial power pushed forward by the energy, hope, and thrift of men, and you see the development arrested, diverted, crippled, and defeated by measures which are dictated by military considerations.”

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Book:War and Other Essays
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“During the last dozen years the tales of suppression of free assemblage, free press, and free speech, by local authorities or the State operating under martial law have been so numerous as to have become an old story. They are attacked at the instigation of an economically and socially powerful class, itself enjoying to the full the advantages of free communications, but bent on denying them to the class it holds within its power.”

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Author:Edward Alsworth Ross
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