#activism

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

I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they'll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action. ↗

— Malcolm X

#activism

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

— Aristotle

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

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

Our Parliamentary system has simply failed to meet the challenge of judicial activism. ↗

— Stockwell Day

#challenge #failed #judicial #judicial activism #meet

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

The little boats cannot make much difference to the welfare of Gaza either way, since the materials being shipped are in such negligible quantity. The chief significance of the enterprise is therefore symbolic. And the symbolism, when examined even cursorily, doesn't seem too adorable. The intended beneficiary of the stunt is a ruling group with close ties to two of the most retrograde dictatorships in the Middle East, each of which has recently been up to its elbows in the blood of its own civilians. The same group also manages to maintain warm relations with, or at the very least to make cordial remarks about, both Hezbollah and al-Qaida. Meanwhile, a document that was once accurately described as a 'warrant for genocide' forms part of the declared political platform of the aforesaid group. There is something about this that fails to pass a smell test. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#al-qaeda #antisemitism #dictatorship #freedom-flotilla-ii #gaza

As you know, when Star Trek was canceled after the second season, it was the activism of the fans that revived it for a third season. ↗

— George Takei

#after #canceled #fans #know #revived

The Body Shop Foundation is run by our staff and supports social activism and environmental activism. We don't tend to support big agencies. ↗

— Anita Roddick

#agencies #big #body #body shop #environmental

In the past, when gays were very flamboyant as drag queens or as leather queens or whatever, that just amused people. And most of the people that come and watch the gay Halloween parade, where all those excesses are on display, those are straight families, and they think it's funny. But what people don't think is so funny is when two middle-aged lawyers who are married to each other move in next door to you and your wife and they have adopted a Korean girl and they want to send her to school with your children and they want to socialize with you and share a drink over the backyard fence. That creeps people out, especially Christians. So, I don't think gay marriage is a conservative issue. I think it's a radical issue. ↗

— Edmund White

#gay #glbt #hate #love #marriage