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Social Movements Quotes

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Social Movements Quotes

“In any social revolution there are times when the tail winds of triumph and fulfillment favor us, and other times when strong head winds of disappointment and setbacks beat against us relentlessly. We must not permit adverse winds to overwhelm us as we journey across life’s mighty Atlantic; we must be sustained by our engines of courage in spite of the winds. This refusal to be stopped, this “courage to be,” this determination to go on “in spite of” is the hallmark of any great movement.”

ChangeCourageRevolutionPerseveranceSocial ChangeSocial MovementsSetbacksTriumphs
Book:Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
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“History is a sad testament to the limitations of external change, or changing things from the outside. A dime a dozen and almost invariably overrated in hindsight, countless revolutions, insurgencies, wars, conflicts, struggles and social movements have stubbornly—and blindly—sought to create a better world. Yet true, lasting transformation remains elusive at the groupthink level. We grapple with the same issues, generation after generation, in this hamster wheel called ‘reality.’ Why is external change so damn challenging? Because, I contend, to echo Henry David Thoreau’s celebrated quote about the branches and roots of evil, pursuing external change only addresses symptoms, not the deeper cause.”

EvilChangeHistoryTransformationSocial ChangeSave The WorldSocial MovementsGroupthinkTransmutationThoreau
Book:Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality
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“It is a beautiful thing to be on fire for justice… there is no greater joy than inspiring and empowering others––especially the least of these, the precious and priceless wretched of the earth!”

InspirationJoyHumanityDemocracyEmpowermentSocial JusticeAfrican AmericansPoor PeopleSocial MovementsServant LeadershipEconomic DisparityPolitical MovementsSocial InjusticeAntiracismImpoverishmentBlack Prophetic FirePolitical Motivation
Book:Black Prophetic Fire
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“The civil rights movement is evolving from a protest movement into a full-fledged social movement--an evolution calling its very name into question. It is now concerned not merely with removing the barriers to full opportunity but with achieving the fact of equality. From sit-ins and Freedom Rides we have gone into rent strikes, boycotts, community organization, and political action. As a consequence of this natural evolution, the Negro today finds himself stymied by obstacles of far greater magnitude than the legal barriers he was attacking before: automation, urban decay, de facto school segregation. These are problems which, while conditioned by Jim Crow, do not vanish upon its demise. They are more deeply rooted in our socioeconomic order; they are the result of the total society's failure to meet not only the Negro's needs but human needs generally.”

ChangeSocietyEqualityCivil RightsAfrican AmericansBlacksSocial MovementsRacial Equality
Book:Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
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“We no longer live in a mass-media world with a few centralized choke points with just a few editors in charge, operated by commercial entities and governments. There is a new, radically different mode of information and attention flow: the chaotic world of the digitally networked public sphere (or spheres) where ordinary citizens or activists can generate ideas, document and spread news of events, and respond to mass media. This new sphere, too, has choke points and centralization, but different ones than the past. The networked public sphere has emerged so forcefully and so rapidly that it is easy to forget how new it is. Facebook was started in 2004 and Twitter in 2006. The first iPhone, ushering in the era of the smart, networked phone, was introduced in 2007. The wide extent of digital connectivity might blind us to the power of this transformation. It should not. These dynamics are significant social mechanisms, especially for social movements, since they change the operation of a key resource: attention… Attention is oxygen for movements. Without it, they cannot catch fire.”

MediaSocial MediaSocial MovementsProtest MovementsCitizen JournalismCitizen Media
Book:Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest
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“Lynum had plenty of information to share. The FBI's files on Mario Savio, the brilliant philosophy student who was the spokesman for the Free Speech Movement, were especially detailed. Savio had a debilitating stutter when speaking to people in small groups, but when standing before a crowd and condemning his administration's latest injustice he spoke with divine fire. His words had inspired students to stage what was the largest campus protest in American history. Newspapers and magazines depicted him as the archetypal "angry young man," and it was true that he embodied a student movement fueled by anger at injustice, impatience for change, and a burning desire for personal freedom. Hoover ordered his agents to gather intelligence they could use to ruin his reputation or otherwise "neutralize" him, impatiently ordering them to expedite their efforts. Hoover's agents had also compiled a bulging dossier on the man Savio saw as his enemy: Clark Kerr. As campus dissent mounted, Hoover came to blame the university president more than anyone else for not putting an end to it. Kerr had led UC to new academic heights, and he had played a key role in establishing the system that guaranteed all Californians access to higher education, a model adopted nationally and internationally. But in Hoover's eyes, Kerr confused academic freedom with academic license, coddled Communist faculty members, and failed to crack down on "young punks" like Savio. Hoover directed his agents to undermine the esteemed educator in myriad ways. He wanted Kerr removed from his post as university president. As he bluntly put it in a memo to his top aides, Kerr was "no good." Reagan listened intently to Lynum's presentation, but he wanted more--much more. He asked for additional information on Kerr, for reports on liberal members of the Board of Regents who might oppose his policies, and for intelligence reports about any upcoming student protests. Just the week before, he had proposed charging tuition for the first time in the university's history, setting off a new wave of protests up and down the state. He told Lynum he feared subversives and liberals would attempt to misrepresent his efforts to establish fiscal responsibility, and that he hoped the FBI would share information about any upcoming demonstrations against him, whether on campus or at his press conferences. It was Reagan's fear, according to Lynum's subsequent report, "that some of his press conferences could be stacked with 'left wingers' who might make an attempt to embarrass him and the state government." Lynum said he understood his concerns, but following Hoover's instructions he made no promises. Then he and Harter wished the ailing governor a speedy recovery, departed the mansion, slipped into their dark four-door Ford, and drove back to the San Francisco field office, where Lynum sent an urgent report to the director. The bedside meeting was extraordinary, but so was the relationship between Reagan and Hoover. It had begun decades earlier, when the actor became an informer in the FBI's investigation of Hollywood Communists. When Reagan was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild, he secretly continued to help the FBI purge fellow actors from the union's rolls. Reagan's informing proved helpful to the House Un-American Activities Committee as well, since the bureau covertly passed along information that could help HUAC hold the hearings that wracked Hollywood and led to the blacklisting and ruin of many people in the film industry. Reagan took great satisfaction from his work with the FBI, which gave him a sense of security and mission during a period when his marriage to Jane Wyman was failing, his acting career faltering, and his faith in the Democratic Party of his father crumbling. In the following years, Reagan and FBI officials courted each other through a series of confidential contacts. (7-8)”

PoliticsHistoryStudentsFbiSocial Movements
Book:Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power
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“Buku ini mengungkapkan fakta-fakta yang sering dilupakan itu, kisah-kisah perlawanan yang dilakukan oleh rakyat awam, yang sering disepelekan sebagai ‘bukan siapa-siapa’ dan, karena itu, sering pula diabaikan dalam penulisan sejarah resmi atau dalam pemberitaan media arus utama. Pengabaian peran kaum jelata dalam penentuan arah sejarah inilah yang sering membuat kita keliru atau luput memahami fa’al (anatomi) yang sesungguhnya dari suatu proses perubahan.”

Social MovementsSocial Transformation
Book:Tindakan-tindakan Kecil Perlawanan: Bagaimana Keberanian, Ketegaran dan Kecerdikan Dapat Mengubah Dunia
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“Ini bukan sekadar kumpulan cerita. Ini sejarah, penggalan sejarah dari negara-bangsa yang__setelah hampir satu abad__ belum saja selesai dengan diri mereka sendiri. Apapun yang dikatakan oleh pejabat resmi pemerintah, kalangan cendekiawan dan kaum terpelajar, juga para politisi dan aktivis sosial, semuanya terlalu sering berbeda dengan apa sebenarnya yang dialami nyata dan dirasakan oleh jelata awam, warga terbanyak di negeri ini. Mereka punya nalar dan pandangan hidup sendiri terhadap setiap kejadian, termasuk yang menjadi bagian langsung maupu tak langsung dari peristiwa-peristiwa besar nasional atau bahkan global. Seperti kumpulan cerpen ini, karya-karya sastra-lah yang terbukti selama ini paling mampu mengungkapkan kembali ‘sejarah orang kebanyakan’ itu dengan penuh nuansa dan kedalaman yang sulit ditemukan dalam karya-kaya ‘ilmiah akademis”

Social Movements
Book:Seekor Bebek yang Mati di Pinggir Kali: kumpulan cerpen
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“Toplumsal grupların devasa miktarlarda enerji açığa çıkardığı, yoğun bir yaratıcı dışavurumun yaşandığı bu anlarda toplumlar, tahakküm ve itaat yoluyla zamana ve mekana dayatılan gündelik uyuşukluk peçesi, altında gizlenmiş yeraltı moleküler işbirliğini aydınlatma becerisine sahip bir yıldırım gibi davranırlar.”

HistoryPowerOrganizationLiberationSocial Movements
Book:İktidarı Dağıtmak: Devlet Karşıtı Kuvvetler Olarak Toplumsal Hareketler
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“Yerel konseyler zaman zaman toplantı çağrıları yapmış olsalar da, pek çok durumda bu toplantılar mahalle sakinleri için sembolik olmuştur ve aslında, kurum olarak bu mahalle konseyleri o mahallenin eylemleri üzerinde büyük bir etkide bulunmamıştır.”

HistoryPowerOrganizationLiberationSocial Movements
Book:İktidarı Dağıtmak: Devlet Karşıtı Kuvvetler Olarak Toplumsal Hareketler
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“Ayrıca, kırda ve kentte yaşayan Aymara toplulukları radyo istasyonlarını ele geçirdiler ve kendi mesajlarını ilettiler, ama her şeyden önemlisi iletişim kurdular, burada iletişimi daha derinlikli bir anlamda kullanıyorum, ruh hallerini, deneyimlerini ve duygularını radyoyu dinleyenlerle paylaştılar. Bu, canlı yayın yapanlara oldukça benzer bir şekilde, oldukça duygusal bir etki yarattı. Böylece, vericiler ve alıcılar arasındaki ayrımı muğlaklaştıran bir bağ oluşturuldu.”

HistoryPowerOrganizationLiberationSocial Movements
Book:İktidarı Dağıtmak: Devlet Karşıtı Kuvvetler Olarak Toplumsal Hareketler
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“In order to have a happy ending, in order to be triumphant, in order to be heroic, you have to tell your own story. The women's movement knows that; black people know that; brown people know that; yellow people know that. You have to be able to tell your own story in order to show that you are worthy--that you belong.”

WritingEqualityStorytellingSocial MovementsMovements
Book:Shimmy Shimmy Shimmy Like My Sister Kate: Looking At The Harlem Renaissance Through Poems
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“We cannot fully create effective movements for social change if individuals struggling for that change are not also self-actualized or working towards that end. When wounded individuals come together in groups to make change our collective struggle it is often undermined by all that has not been dealt with emotionally.”

Social ChangeSocial Movements
Book:Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery
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“The story of white power as a social movement exposes something broader about the enduring impact of state violence in America. It reveals one catastrophic ricochet of the Vietnam War, in the form of its paramilitary aftermath. It also reveals something important about war itself. War is not neatly contained in the space and time legitimated by the state. It reverberates in other terrains and lasts long past armistice. It comes home in ways bloody and unexpected.”

ExtremismSocial Movements
Book:Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America
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“There is a abundant evidence that all social movements are to be explained by a variety of circumstances and that the ideological sources to which they appeal, and to which they seek to remain faithful, are only one of the factors determining the form they assume and their patterns of thought and action.”

Social Movements
Book:Main Currents Of Marxism: The Founders, The Golden Age, The Breakdown
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“Digging in the dirt and shoveling manure in the corral is not going to strip off the layers of armor the first day or the second day or even the twelfth. But over time, they're part of something that they start from scratch and see through to the end. How often have they had the chance to do that? To feel like they created something? Especially something that could help keep another human being alive?”

Working TogetherRehabilitationPermacultureSocial MovementsWork EthicsCommunity OutreachGardening Wisdom
Book:Grace from the Garden: Changing the World One Garden at a Time
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“Phillip. the Dream Defenders founder, had a similar insight. For him, the experience of the Blackout had been a lesson in the varieties of power. Borrowing a concept from Joseph Nye, the political scientist, he now came to understand social media as a form of 'soft power,' a force that shapes culture through argument and story. But there was also 'hard power,' which Nye, in assessing the capacity of different nation-states, characterized as military and economic might. For movements, hard power was the ability to lobby for legislation, elect sympathetic political leaders, get resources allocated toward your cause. Social media, Phillip now saw more clearly, was good at building soft power. But when it came to hard power, it could do very little. And if for Nye every successful state needed a mix of the two, this was doubly true of social movements, which didn't stare with a store of either. The only way to built hard power was on the ground. As Rachel put it, 'You just can't shortcut organizing.' It made them want to stop the performance, the race for followers, even the reflex to always make their actions public-they would think carefully about if and when to use tactics like occupations and sit-ins.”

Social JusticeSocial MediaSocial MovementsPolitical ActivismCommunity Organizing
Book:The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas
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“The seven core members also became more involved in local Minneapolis politics. Drawing attention at a national level had been the driving impetus of the earlier Black Lives Matter protests, which had relied on getting that hashtag to spike. Now it was clear that if their focal point was police funding, it would need to be a local effort, dependent on a partnership with the city council and the mayor's office, where these budgetary decisions were made. They would need to learn the mechanics and make some allies. This was organizing as it had long been done, and they got good at it. It was also, in a way, what separated Minneapolis from Cairo. Whereas the Middle East lacked a democratic or grassroots political tradition-and had no way to even imagining how to create one-this wasn't the case in America....But there was a long history of African American organizing that predated Silicon Galley. Miski and their friends got to know city council members and their aides, inundated them with research material, visited their offices, and maybe most important, brought people out to hearings when the budget was being discussed, arguing in forum after forum against the belief that all the police needed were a few more bodycams. All this happened without much fanfare and largely off-line.”

Black Lives MatterAdvocacySocial MovementsPolitical ActivismCommunity Organizing
Book:The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas
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“... gambaran [masyarakat pengetahuan sebagai] masyarakat yang serba komputer itu bagiku menjadi sangat tidak akurat dan menyesatkan, karena beranggapan bahwa masyarakat yang tidak terjamah industri dan tidak berkomputer itu tidak berpengetahuan. Dalam hal keanekaragaman hayati, dalam hal spesies hutan dan tanaman, anggapan itu sangat tidak benar; masyarakat adat dan para perempuan, yang berada di luar dunia industri, adalah para pemelihara pengetahuan yang terkait dengan keanekaragaman hayati.” (p. 10)”

Social MovementsMemoarEnvirontmentalism
Book:Terra Viva : My Life in a Biodiversity of Movements
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“The 1970s-80s social movement called U.S. third world feminism functioned as a central locus of possibility, an insurgent social movement that shattered the construction of any one ideology as the single most correct site where truth can be represented. Indeed, without making this kind of metamove, any 'liberation' or social movement eventually becomes destined to repeat the oppressive authoritarianism from which it is attempting to free itself, and become trapped inside a drive for truth that ends only in producing its own brand of dominations. What U.S. third world feminism thus demanded was a new subjectivity, a political revision that denied any one ideology as the final answer, while instead positing a tactical subjectivity with the capactiy to de- and recenter, given the forms of power to be moved. These dynamics are what were required in the shift from enacting a hegemonic oppositional theory and practice to engaging in the differential form of social movement, as performed by U.S. feminists of color during the post-World War II period of great social transformation. p. 58-59.”

FeminismActivismActivistSocial Movements
Book:Methodology of the Oppressed
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“This method of nonviolence will not work miracles overnight. Men are not easily moved from their mental ruts, their prejudiced and irrational feelings. When the underprivileged demand freedom, the privileged first react with bitterness and resistance. Even when the demands are couched in nonviolent terms, the initial response is the same.”

FeelingsChangeFreedomPrejudiceSocial JusticeActivismResistanceNonviolenceSocial MovementsNonviolent Resistance
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“A critical element in nearly all effective social movements is leadership. For it is through smart, persistent, and authoritative leaders that a movement generates the appropriate concepts and language that captures the frustration, anger, or fear of the group's members and places responsibility where it is warranted.”

LeadershipActivismSocial MovementsHank Adams
Book:The Hank Adams Reader: An Exemplary Native Activist and the Unleashing of Indigenous Sovereignty
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“This mutual aid work we're doing here--that's the mycelium, the roots of the fungus that spread underground, forming a network through the forest that can spread for miles, unseen, strengthening and feeding the whole organism. Then when conditions are right--the right amount of rain, sun, press exposure, public outrage, whatever--" Shayna made an exploding gesture with her hand. "All of a sudden, little mushrooms pop up all over the forest. All of a sudden, you've got mass protests springing up across the country. And... the thing about mushrooms is, they shoot out spores. Millions of 'em, spreading their fungal secrets everywhere the wind blows. And just like that, each time we have a protest, we're sending out millions of spores that take root in people's minds." "Now, once a spore lands in fertile soil, it takes a while to start growing. It's got to build up its own network of mycelium." "So protest movements always spread the spores for the next protest movement. Like mushrooms, they're only meant to last a short while. Hell, the Free People's Village was a sturdy little mushroom--we were out there for months! And since then, all the zillions of spores we sent into the world? They've been growing. Trust. Now we just got to wait for the next time the conditions are right--and be ready. In the meantime, we grow our network--we spread our mycelium, we strengthen our community.”

ActivismProtestSocial Movements
Book:The Free People's Village
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“Without or­ganization, ideas, after some initial momentum, start losing their effect. They become routine, degenerate into conformity, and end up simply a memory. I raise this warning because too often, in this short but rich period of our revolution, many great initiatives have failed. They have been forgotten because of the lack of an organiza­tional apparatus needed to keep them going and bring them to frui­tion.”

PoliticsActivismSocialismCommunismSocial Movements
Author:Che Guevara
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“In the South, we knew our adversary would stop at nothing to silence our activism. We knew we could never match his readiness to annihilate our resistance. So we ceded him that ground and challenged him instead to defend himself against the work of loving peace.”

LovePeaceViolenceSouthActivismCivil RightsRace RelationsCivil Rights MovementSocial MovementsSouthern United States
Book:Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America
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“In the case of Tunisia, it was indeed this single act that sparked what had been long-standing active protest movements and moved them forward. But that's not so unusual. Let's look at our own history. Take the civil rights movement. There had been plenty of concern and activism about violent repression of blacks in the South, and it took a couple of students sitting in at a lunch counter to really set it off. Small acts can make a big difference when there is a background of concern, understanding, and preliminary activism.”

ChangeActivismSocial Movements
Book:Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire
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“It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, "Wait on time.”

ChangeSilenceViolenceGenerationsSocial JusticeIndifferenceRepentanceGood PeopleBad PeopleSocial MovementsVitriol
Book:A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
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“When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not fall in meekly behind them. We who protest...are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress.”

FeelsFirstsMayFallSpeakForceSocialChallengesBehindsRolesMovementCitizensPoliticianForgottenCongressCompromiseProtestLegislatorsSocial Movements
Author:Howard Zinn
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