Ali Shaheed Muhammad Quotes

Marcos is all the exploited, marginalised, oppressed minorities resisting and saying "Enough!" He is every minority who is now beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. He is every untolerated group searching for a way to speak. Everything that makes power and the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable - this is Marcos.

it is immoral for powerless people to accept this powerlessness. They may not succeed in getting power but they can fight for it, and if enough fight for it, it makes it very difficult for the people with the big sticks.

I seek … the means to fight injustice. To turn fear against those who prey on the fearful.

The only way I can pay back for what fate and society have handed me is to try, in minor totally useless ways, to make an angry sound against injustice.

Power cedes nothing without a demand.

Oppression costs the oppressor too much if the oppressed stand up and protest.

I think history repeats itself. There's a constant conversation between the oppressed and the oppressor. No matter what your field is, whether it's gender equality, the Time's Up movement, or diversity casting, it's always going to be a back-and-forth battle.

It is important to me to keep fighting for the rights of those who cannot.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress....This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Fear is the greatest form of oppression. The best way to rise up in protest is to live your life to its fullest!

Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor.

I'm not going to sit around and be peace and love with somebody's boot on my neck.

No change can come if those who are impacted the most by discrimination are not willing to stand up for themselves.

Facing sexism and racism and classism and transphobia, there are ways to choose to act in those situations, and there shouldn't be a prescriptive list of things that you have to say.

Each one of our ideas should benefit the people with less power than us.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.

I want to be the voice and the vision for the poor and the powerless.

If I were a Negro, I'd be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I'd rather go down with my flag flying. If you're weak or crippled, or you can't speak out or fight back in some way, then people don't hesitate to treat you badly.

We need someone who is going to stand up, speak up, and speak out for the people who need help, for the people who have been discriminated against.

As I grew older and got into the late teens and early 20s, I wanted to be a voice of the people. You know, getting locked up all the time and going through so much oppression and seeing it all around myself, I wanted to be a voice for it.

I know we have to have people of good conscience who stand up against oppression. I know we have to have people who understand that social justice belongs to us all. And that wakes me up every morning, and that makes me fight even harder.

My mother has always rooted for the underdog, so to speak. She has always been in support of uplifting historically marginalized and historically disenfranchised people.

It was simply this: silence is not a neutral position, whatever your intentions. Silence automatically supports the status quo. When you are a presence that lacks a voice, you create an empty space that another voice - a dominating voice that knows no boundaries - is only too happy to fill.

The answer to injustice is not to silence the critic but to end the injustice.

I'm not trying to get power over white. I'm involved in a freedom struggle. Not a power struggle.