#activism

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: if you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse. ↗

— Martin Keogh

#environment #global-warming #hope #nature #optimism

London is one of the world's centres of Arab journalism and political activism. The failure of left and right, the establishment and its opposition, to mount principled arguments against clerical reaction has had global ramifications. Ideas minted in Britain – the notion that it is bigoted to oppose bigotry; 'Islamophobic' to oppose clerics whose first desire is to oppress Muslims – swirl out through the press and the net to lands where they can do real harm. ↗

— Nick Cohen

#arabs #bigotry #britain #islam #islamism

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law ↗

— Martin Luther King Jr.

#civil-disobedience #dissent #protest #respect

We declare our right on this earth...to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary. ↗

— Malcolm X

#respect

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour. ↗

— Frederick Douglass

#activism #agitation #dissent #human-rights #liberties

It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen. ↗

— Aristotle

#civil-disobedience #good #patriotism #value #virtue

You know, there's a lot of activism that doesn't deal with empowerment, and you have to empower yourself in order to be relevant to any type of struggle. ↗

— Talib Kweli

#any #deal #empower #empowerment #know

But as for activism, my parents did what they could, given the constraints, but were never involved in the causes I think of when I think of activists. ↗

— Paul Farmer

#activists #causes #constraints #could #did

Maybe subconsciously I've kept activism separate from acting because it's important to me in a more profound way. ↗

— Blythe Danner

#activism #because #i #important #kept

Understand: the task of an activist is not to negotiate systems of power with as much personal integrity as possible--it's to dismantle those systems. ↗

— Lierre Keith

#environment #environmentalism #radicalism #vegetarianism #food