Nipsey Russell Quotes

Even though I believe in mass social movements, I'm uncomfortable in crowds.

Political activists in Hong Kong and Taiwan use Facebook as their primary tool to mobilize support for their causes and activities.

I grew up with protests, marches, demonstrations, struggle. But I come from a clan of community workers.

I do try to separate my personal activism - showing up at a demonstration or something - from what I write.

It came home to me indelibly that I was never going to change anything in America by walking around carrying a sign. It was a great revelation. It saved me a lot of anxiety and a lot of wasted energy.

Unrest has its reasons.

Popular movements respond to the ups and downs of the headlines, to some extent

People have to carry on with their lives, so only so much direct action can take place. Anti-nuclear activism may look dormant from appearances, but it’s there, like magma. It’s still brewing, and the next trigger might be another big protest or political change,

Millennials don't go to rallies.

In the late 1960s, the masses were supposed to be passive, not entering into the public arena and having their voices heard.

Activism is wasteful.

I'd come from a background in New York of picketing and protesting.

The absolute key issue is: how do you create enough political pressure? It's up to us to create that political will and there are tried and tested techniques for doing that. So we're talking about the need for civil disobedience that escalates into a rebellion and uprising.

Everything I do is political.

Some people see protesting as a bit of a dirty thing, and certainly the idea of getting arrested was not on people's radar.

The really critical thing isn't who's sitting in he White House, but who is sitting in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the halls of government, in the factories. Who is protesting, who is occupying offices and demonstrating ? - those are the things that determine what happens.

Though I do believe that when you live in political times it is inevitable that your art be political, I also think we need to start making activists celebrities rather than trying to make celebrities to be activists.

The rise of civic society is not a negation of politics, but marks an opportunity for the involvement of the people.

When I was 19 or 20, the way I was an activist was by regularly meeting with groups, going to protests, and being there on the ground.

I was 14 when the Democratic convention in my hometown of Chicago erupted into violence. It was a tough year.

All good art should be political, I think, and inevitably it all becomes political really, in one way or another.

Politics has always been personal for me. You know, growing up, I was in a very politically conscious household. We engaged with intellectuals and artists and academics from around the world who were thinking critically about politics and the intersection of politics and public life.

There's social media where people's politics are out there, they're forwarding articles and seem engaged, but it's only online. We tweet and pat ourselves on the back, thinking we have done something, said we're interested, but it needs more work.

People are not going to change because an activist goes around shouting.

When governments fail us, what else can people do except take to direct action? When corporate power can so dominate government policy-making that whole communities are placed at risk, where else can people turn?