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Urban Politics Quotes

Browse 21 quotes about Urban Politics.

Urban Politics Quotes

“Necessity and valor formed the Vanguard. It was born from the courage of all who took up arms against tyranny and all those who decided to stand by our standard. When things began to fall apart, I just used the tools my Creator gave me to improve the lives of my family and the people that choose to follow me. Why allow people to live in fear, poverty, and bondage when I had the tools will and desire to change it? I didn’t want to be that servant who buried his talents. My goal is to build a nation that is free, and just, with prosperous and happy people.”

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Book:The Road of Resistance
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“Privacy, self-reliance, choice -- all these can and must remina core American values. Yet so too must we remember that other core American value, the value of community. And we must redefine community more broadly to include not just our street or our tract, but our town, our metropolis, our region.”

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Book:The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles
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“Too few of us from the Black Power generation and the movements to take power in cities through the election of black elected officials have told our story. Hence there is very little understanding of the agenda for change we outlined for black people and America in the 1960s and early 1970s. We wanted self-determination, and end to racism, and economic security. It is an agenda that was never fulfilled, and hence the title of my book, Unfinished Agenda.”

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Book:Unfinished Agenda: Urban Politics in the Era of Black Power
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“But despite the scarcity of confrontation with whites in our neighborhood, race and racism permeated every aspect of our lives. Our parents taught us that in order to succeed, we 'had to be twice as good as white folks.' We were constantly being prepared to enter a world dominated by whites.”

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Book:Unfinished Agenda: Urban Politics in the Era of Black Power
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“The SNCC base of operation, at the corner of Jackson and High Streets, was in the heart of the black community in Montgomery. I don't remember too much else about the city, but I'll always remember that corner. There were hundreds of young people behind police barricades of some sort. Lots of college students, some white, from up North, and some local black folks and college students. The whole Selma-to-Montgomery push, and this ancillary thrust by SNCC in Montgomery, was because on the other side of that barricade there were white folks who had shown they would stop at nothing, including violence, to protect white supremacy.”

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Book:Unfinished Agenda: Urban Politics in the Era of Black Power
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“I remembered how tough it was getting black people in large tenements to come together to build a playground. The enemy was not the Klan by the inside-outside lock that racism and classism had on the minds of the people: It operated from the inside through self-hate and self-doubt, and from the outside through the police, carnivorous landlords, and the welfare system.”

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Book:Unfinished Agenda: Urban Politics in the Era of Black Power
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“We were still confined to that corner. More and more people joined us, some black and some white. On the second day, we awoke to learn that somebody must have told Martin Luther King that things were getting out of hand in Montgomery, because rumor had it that he left the line of march from Selma to join us in the hood. Despite myself, I was thrilled at the prospect of marching with King. I knew this was SNCC turf, and I was now with SNCC, but how can you not be thrilled with the prospect of being so close to the big man himself?”

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Book:Unfinished Agenda: Urban Politics in the Era of Black Power
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“Organizing a working majority proved harder than we thought because we couldn't get a quorum. But one day in December, twelve people showed up, eight from our coalition. So we changed the quorum to eight. You gotta do what you gotta do--this was war, one faction against many others who wanted control of the land.”

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Book:Unfinished Agenda: Urban Politics in the Era of Black Power
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