I have referred to myself as an accidental activist on more than one occasion.
There's a great book by my friend Nate Garvis called Naked Civics that was very important in my development as someone with a social conscious and that has become, I guess, something of an activist.
I feel like most people know that I'm a vegan, and I'm a pretty vocal animal activist. Everything and anything I do, I just kind of use it as a vehicle to be able to send out the message.
After all, there were thousands of so-called campus radicals, most of them white and tenured and happily tolerated. No, it remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.
But as for activism, my parents did what they could, given the constraints, but were never involved in the causes I think of when I think of activists.
I've called myself an accidental activist because I came to it not on purpose.
I hadn't planned on being an activist.
I never really saw myself as an activist but at some point the activist is the only moral position to take.
I always have been an activist for things that were just authentically a part of my life, that I felt connected to.
Sometimes it feels as if I major in activism and minor in university.
I just get involved in things when people come to me: I'm not a musician-slash-activist, that's not the word.
My love is political. My body is political. I talk even when I don't speak.
Actually, I never really look at myself as a real radical activist; I am more the conservative. I mean, the conservatives are trying to conserve; the radicals are destroying the planet.
You just have to find your activism, and don't let anyone tell you what that should look like. If you're doing the work, and you're getting someone to think, you're on the right path.
I had formed a black movement, so I would speak for the Trotskyist movement and then walk about a hundred yards to where the black movement was speaking.
I think being an activist and an artist is an interesting contradiction, because so often they are at odds with one another. When you write as an artist you have to clean the palate of your own politics in creating characters and activism is kind of the exact opposite.
I don't necessarily see myself as an activist, running down the street and knocking at every door.
I don't think I'm a gay activist. I used to be.
You can't win for losing. Either you fulfill their stereotype of being a radical 60's person or you've sold out. In fact, of course, millions of people who were active in the 60's are doing work on issues that try to reflect their values.
I don't have any children, so I've decided to claim all the future freedom-fighters and hell-raisers as my kin.
I'm an activist. I'm a proud activist. So I want to be someone who is pro-black and pro-Africa and still be somebody that has positive influence.
It was wrongly assumed that I wished to become some sort of leader among gay activists, whereas in reality I was happier to be a foot soldier.
