Al Sharpton Quotes

Let's make a statement to the airlines just to get their attention. We'll pick a week next year and we'll all agree not to go anywhere for seven days.

A boycott is, inherently, a blunt instrument. It is an imperfect weapon, a carpet bomb, when all involved would prefer a surgical strike.

If you athletes boycott the Olympics, it will be like a rock dropping in the water. The ripples and waves will be felt all over. You can be that rock. No one will die and that is the way to fight.

I believe in a nonviolent movement of boycott, divestment, sanctions.

Don't underestimate the power of the vigilante consumer.

I do not think that there is any doubt about where I stand in respect to boycotts. If there is, I will just state what I think about them. They are illegal and ought to be suppressed. I would never countenance that which recognizes their legality.

Have you ever taken a serious political stand on anything? Yeah. Sure. For twenty-four hours once I refused to eat grapes.

The main problem is that for a boycott to be effective, you must first persuade thousands - maybe even millions of others - to go along, which is a lot of work and usually not successful.

I can say unequivocally that the boycott does not work. It's never complete enough to have impact unless it's backed by force, and I don't think anybody in America seriously proposes that.

More than ever before, consumers have the ability to unify their voices and coalesce their buying power to influence corporate behaviors.

Yet what you need is not marches, demonstrations, rallies or wide associations, all of them are important. What you need is direct action. The sooner people understand that, the sooner we'll begin to change things.

Money has power. And so withholding money has power too, especially when a bunch of people do it together.

The hospital strikers have demonstrated that you don't get a job done unless you show the Man you're not afraid...If you're not willing to pay that price, then you don't deserve the rewards or benefits that go along with it.

The oppressed will make surer and faster progress if they eschew violence and depend, as they do mainly depend in their organizing and strike activities, on their solidarity, courage, capacity for suffering and sacrifice, and on non-cooperation where injustice becomes extreme

Boycotts are as American as apple pie.

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

The consumer boycott is the only open door in the dark corridor of nothingness down which farm workers have had to walk for many years. It is a gate of hope through which they expect to find the sunlight of a better life for themselves and their families.

A boycott is the most peaceful and passive kind of protest there is and can be. We do not say we hate you or even say that you are wrong. We just say that we don’t want to ride your bus.

As consumers, we are making choices, and we allow things to exist, and we celebrate the existence of things. And we can also boycott those things we don't want to be part of.

Boycotts are not something to be taken lightly.

When my people are dying, that's when you gonna catch me protesting. I'm not gonna protest because somebody got offered not the amount of money they wanted to get offered. If you don't like what they're offering you, just no longer do business with them.

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.

One of the beautiful things about a movement is that there are many strategies and many tactics contained within it. Not every participant in a movement is required to do exactly the same things.

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 don't boycott any station.