Michelle Alexander Quotes

Each of us should choose which course of action we must take; education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes, but let it not be said that we did nothing.

I started doing organizing work as a teenager. I was part of an organization called the 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement at 14.

We're seeing young people find their own voices and find their activism.

I don't know why there's not more activism today. I do think that your generation is twenty times smarter than our generation ever was, but the problem with being smart like you guys is that it can lead you really easily to being cynical, and cynicism is actually a pacifying attitude.

We live in the age of communication. Write letters to the editor. Speak to your congressman, to your senator. If you are young, especially young people are taken by this human rights activities. They should organize the universities.

It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is nor an answer Neither is resignation Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment.

Where's the activism? Nobody knows. And anyone who thinks they know, like Todd Gitlin, has their head up their ass. Nobody knows. The day before every revolution that's ever happened, that revolution was impossible. The day before Rosa Parks, that was impossible. The day after, it was inevitable.

Invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school.

This is what people do in America. They get out. They demonstrate. They let their voices with heard.

I want to make activism a bigger part of my life, while hopefully maintaining the opportunity to help out causes that I really care about. And being an actor allows me to do that. Shooting a Cisco commercial allows me to do that. I mean, doing all these things allows me to talk about these issues. But don't think there aren't those moments where I'm like, "What am I doing? I have to quit my job and chain myself to a tree." Believe me, I have those moments.

You'd have to give people free rein to attack the local councils or to destroy the school authorities, like the students who break up the repression in the universities. It's already happening, though people have got to get together more.

I love seeing young people take a stance and not be afraid to say how they feel, and protest when they feel things are wrong or unjust.

Art and activism seem to go together naturally, the idea being that if you're an entertainer, you can have a voice, and if you have a voice, you can make a difference. But if I were not an actress, I would still try to extend myself beyond my little micro-universe of my job, family and personal joy.

If you look not just at the Arab Spring, but at what I call the 'Youth Spring' that has started in Europe, young people are starting to find a voice, and they are not looking to the traditional media to reflect that.

If you have an opportunity to use your voice you should use it.

I want our millennials and our young people to do what they started out doing with meet-ups, to talk about what is going on, and spread the education.

I think my mom exposed me to the concept of using your voice for anything you care about.

At university, my generation were ready to fight, but we didn't really have anything to fight for.

When I went to school, it was radical just to be involved in anything.

Personally, I am uneasy about the notion of "a politically engaged university," for reasons I wrote about over 30 years ago, at the height of protest and resistance (reprinted in For Reasons of State).

What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but "who is sitting in" - and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change.

I have great respect for people who are in the front lines and the trenches of trying to enact social change. I am far lazier than that.

Democracy depends on people speaking out, and in times of great crisis, on people creating a commotion.

In this country, the only way a minority can get anything done is to make a little noise.

Change from below, the formulation of demands from the populace to end unacceptable injustice, supported by direct action, has played a far larger part in shaping British democracy than most constitutional lawyers, political commentators, historians or statesmen have ever cared to admit. Direct action in a democratic society is fundamentally an educational exercise.