Activist Culture Quotes

No one is born gay. The idea is ridiculous, but it is symptomatic of our overpoliticized climate that such assertions are given instant credence by gay activists and their media partisans. I think what gay men are remembering is that they were born different.

People are not afraid to be activists, to be vocal. And I think back to my years in college, and that wasn't the case.

I'm always the one with the activist friends. I've been an activist very little.

I was pulled out of school for every moratorium day and every rally for a left-wing candidate... from Ed Koch in his heyday to Eugene McCarthy. That's the culture that I came from.

I got out of that immediately was that now, all of a sudden, rock music had become a spectator sport, that corporate labels and their bands were the new establishment, and punk was there to fight them the way the activist hippies must have fought what the establishment must have been ten years before. And it was interesting to see the reactions in different parts of the country.

People may be prepared to buy services from Apple and Amazon if they feel these companies do a good job, but we need to ensure that we can speak up when our content is used by other people for their profit. An activist amateur culture will constantly challenge and say, 'This is mine, you're not doing that with it.'

I think we have responsibilities to be active in the things we believe in, regardless of what our job is. At least in my lifetime, there has been a tremendous combining of activism and music, that came up in the era of Pete Seeger and the Weavers and Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and Peter Paul & Mary.

The right don't have time off to go join protest marches as a career. The left has turned that into a bought-and-paid-for, rent-a-mob type activity.

A lot of organizers tell me that while they are making signs or doing whatever they do, they are listening to the Coup.

The fact is, funnily enough, that the people who seem to be most committed to causes also seem to be least invested in anyone actually talking to each other.