Chico Hamilton Quotes

Western society has many flaws, and it is good for an educated person to have thought some of these through, even at the expense of losing a lecture or two to tear gas.

I'm like a one-woman protest machine.

Social paralysis is strong and stands firmly in the way of change on the ground level. As allies, we have to prepare ourselves to step into the fire when necessary, even - and especially - when said fire is merely a still-lit cigarette tossed carelessly onto the street.

I think the Occupy movement is absolutely fantastic; in my opinion, it's probably one of the most important people's movements of the 21st century and the 20th century. The trouble is that nobody really wants to support what they represent. They are too 'grassroots' for their own good.

Rich people march on Washington every day.

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

If you don't like what's going on, you have to get involved.

The signs and banners of protesters are the zoom lenses by which we can focus on the difficult issues of a society.

It takes a lot of punishment to be able to do anything to change the social order.

I'm not quite sure precisely when social and political activism became a visible brand of my DNA, but it seems to me that I was born into it. It is hard to be born into the experience in the world of poverty and not develop some instinct for survival and resistance to those things that oppress you.

Protesting is a fundamental aspect of our democracy, and I will always encourage this course of action, but it can be intimidating.

Boycotts have been a critical part of social justice in American history, particularly for African-Americans.

Players who take a knee during the national anthem do so to protest injustice across the country - fulfilling a patriotic duty to never accept injustice, but to call it out when we see it.

Calling representatives every single day, arranging local community meetings, and marching in the streets every Sunday. It's not the path to glory, but it's absolutely essential to maintaining a democracy under threat.

You know in democracy you can protest peacefully and I'm sure you know it will have at least some kind of impact. You need to raise your voice. If you can't do much, you know, but at least raise you voice. Raising your voice is something you need to do.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, in general, by putting this idea out there that the one percent is leeching off the 99 percent, is making a new discussion, making people figure out how to withhold their labor and come and put their issues on the table with the ruling class all over the country and all over the world.

Being an activist is not easy.

I will never forget the first time I was teargassed or the night I hid under my steering wheel as the SWAT vehicle drove down a residential street. I will never forget that it was illegal - in St Louis, in the fall of 2014 - to stand still.

I've never seen somebody get more flak than Colin Kaepernick for silently and nonviolently protesting and standing up for something he believes, and something that obviously is an actual problem.

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.

There's a lot of injustice in the world and it's what I sing about in my music and what I try to confront in my life as an activist.

To protest against injustice is the foundation of all our American democracy.

In America, the poor have been invisibilised, because obviously this model of success that has been held out to the world must not show the poor, it must not show the condition of black people. It can only the successful ones, basketball players, musicians, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell. But I think the time will come when the Occupy movement will have to somehow formulate something more than just anger.

I talked to Shailene Woodley the next day [after arrest]. She was fine, and she was very happy. She knew that it brought attention to a cause that she cared very much about. She was in high spirits and knew that was a possibility when she was protesting. The people who arrested her, if they were trying to prove a point of not to protest, they only helped the cause.

I'm always happy when I'm protesting.