Tony Conrad Quotes

When you show up at a rally supporting a bill, you are supporting the bill.

The Bill was talked out! Peaceful methods had failed…. As the year 1905 went on, the Liberal leaders counted upon early political office. Manchester – the Free Trade Hall – was again to be the scene of a rally at which the Liberal Party would utter their war cry for the General Election. Here was my chance! Now there should be an act the effect of which would remain, a protest not of word but of deed. Prison this time! Prison would mean a fact that could not fade from the record.

We are on the threshold of a significant breakthrough, and the greatest weapon is the mass demonstration.

It seems the only way to gain attention today is to organize a march and protest something.

Any time someone carries a picket sign in front of the White House, that is the First Amendment in action.

Airbnb is a much more effective protest than shutting down the Brooklyn Bridge.

I didn't do the marching down the streets, jumping in front of the lines and holding hands... that wasn't me.

It's no fun to protest on an empty stomach.

I mean it's easier to be in a demonstration if it's a trip that's one of the reasons why the whole thing fell apart in 1971, because it wasn't a trip any longer.

You name the demonstration; I was at it.

I can call a march, and thousands come out, and I happen to have access to the White House at the same time.

In the late afternoons and early evenings, the crowd is easily over 1 million. That many people simply can't fit in Independence Square. The demonstration spills in to the streets for several blocks.

Violent resistance and nonviolent resistance share one very important thing in common: They are both a form of theater seeking an audience to their cause.

Peaceful, lawful protest - if it is effective - is innately disruptive of 'business as usual.' That is why it is effective.

I don't even really see sit-ins and marches as passive. I see them as quite assertive. I see those as emotionally aggressive tactics. I see people putting their lives on the line and being bold and brave.

A protest is supposed to be public. How can you do it if you don't do it in front of an audience?

Some of us have been thinking and talking too long without doing anything. Poems are perfect; picketing, sometimes, is better.

Different people were complaining, and I remember saying, 'Why don't we just demonstrate?' The Whitney was the first.

It is important to show up. Showing up at marches and rallies and town halls and protests.

I don't think there's any perfect way to protest.

Every successful social movement in this country's history has used disruption as a strategy to fight for social change. Whether it was the Boston Tea Party to the sit-ins at lunch counters throughout the South, no change has been won without disruptive action.

A wonderful innovation of the Occupy Wall Street movement was the use of the human microphone - the name given to the body of the audience repeating, amplifying, each statement made by the speaker.

Nonviolent, visual protests have a long history of forming images that can quickly go viral and set a powerful tone for a moment.

When I think about protest, I worry so much that people think about it only as standing in the streets. And I say that as someone who has been standing in the streets of cities across the country - but at the root of it is this idea of telling the truth in public.

I accept that as an elected politician I have a number of other tools that I can use to bring about change but I would also say that the Green party remains committed to appropriate non-violent direct action and I think it is a tool in some cases that is legitimate.