Occupy was not a movement, it was a tactic. You can't sit forever in a park near Wall Street. You can't do it for more than a few months. It was a tactic I had not predicted. If people asked me, I would have said "don't do it." But it was a great success, an enormous success, with a big impact on people's thinking, on people's actions.
I think the Civil Rights Movement changed that trajectory for me. The first thing I did was leave school. I was suspended for my participation in Movement demonstrations in my hometown, December, 1961.
When you say 'no' and you get on the streets and you do an act of civil disobedience, it changes your psychology.
The campaign against the death penalty has been - while a powerful campaign, its participants have been those who attend all of the vigils, a relatively small number of people.
I'm not sure if my involvement in causes, benefits, marches, and demonstrations has made a huge difference, but I know one thing: that involvement has connected me with the good people: people with the live hearts, the live eyes, the live heads.
I believe strongly that Occupy Wall Street had such limits because the local authorities were able to enforce, basically in our imaginations, an image of what proper civil disobedience is - one that is simply ineffective.
I feel a desperation to make people see what we are doing to the environment, what a mess we are making of our world. At this point, the more people I reach, the more I accomplish. ... I miss Gombe and my wonderful years in the forest But if I were to go back to that, I wouldn't feel I was doing what I should be doing.
Somebody once told me that if you laugh at a George Bush joke, or you send an email cartoon to your friends that makes Bush look like a fool, you feel like you've done something significant. But really, what have you actually done? Just expressing contempt for your leaders doesn't really accomplish anything.
I went to jail 44 times. I've been beaten and left for dead on the side of the road fighting for freedom... Yet Rosa Parks is better known in history than Ralph David Abernathy. Why is that?
As a Welsh speaker, I'm very conscious of how activism can effect real change.
All I can think is that the owners of Chick-Fil-A have decided they have had enough, that they're just going to focus on selling chicken sandwiches to as many people as they can, and they figure that keeping their views about marriage to themselves is better than having a bunch of angry activists on your doorstep.
Writers who are activists are very rarely taken seriously as artists.
Putting Zodiacs in front of whaling vessels doesn't do it anymore. Done that, been there, seen that.
If there are activists in Cosas and they do poorly academically, then they would be cited as examples as to why others should not be in Cosas.
