Social Activists

"Got to give it all up, the pain, the hurt, the anger and make room for lovely things to rush in and fill you full."

"I'm attempting to blueprint for myself the merger of these two camps: the political and the spiritual. The possibilities of healing that split are exciting. The implications of actually yoking those energies and of fusing that power quite take my breath away."

"When I look back on the body of book reviews I've produced in the past fifteen years, for all their socioideolitero brilliant somethinorother, the underlying standard always seemed to be-Does this author here genuinely love his/her community?"

"The greatest challenge in writing, then, in the earlier stages was to strike a balance between candor, honesty, integrity, and truth-terms that are fairly synonomous for crossword puzzlers and thesaurus ramblers but hard to equate as living actions."

"Certain kinds of poisons, for example-rage, bitterness, revenge-don't need to be in the atmosphere, not to mention in my mouth."

"I'm interested in usable truths. Which means rising above my training, thinking better than I've been taught, developing a listening habit, making the self available to intelligence, engaging in demystification, and seeking out teachers at every turn. In many respects the writings are notebooks I'm submitting to those teachers for examination."

"Winter 1979. We are now in the fourth year of the last quarter of the twentieth century. And the questions that face the millions of us on the earth are-in whose name will the twenty-first century be claimed? Can the planet be rescued from the psychopaths? Where are the evolved, poised-for-light adepts who will assume the task of administering power in a human interest, of redefining power as being not the privilege or class right to define, deform, and dominate but as the human responsibility to define, transform, and develop?"

"Writing is one of the ways I participate in struggle-one of the ways I help to keep vibrant and resilient that vision that has kept the Family going on. Through writing I attempt to celebrate the tradition of resistance, attempt to tap Black potential, and try to join the chorus of voices that argues that exploitation and misery are neither inevitable nor necessary. Writing is one of the ways I participate in the transformation-one of the ways I practice the commitment to explore bodies of knowledge for the usable wisdoms they yield. In writing, I hope to encourage the fusion of those disciplines whose split (material science versus metaphysics versus aesthetics versus politics versus...) predisposes us to accept fragmented truths and distortions as the whole. Writing is one of the ways I do my work in the world. There are no career labels for that work, no facile terms to describe the tasks of it. Suffice to say that I do not take lightly the fact that I am on the earth at this particular time in human history, and am here as a member of a particular soul group and of a particular sex, having this particular adventure as a Pan-Africanist-socialist-feminist in the United States. I figure all that means something about what I'm here to understand and to do."

"Grandma Dorothy, in an effort to encourage our minds to leap, would tell us, "Of course we know how to walk on the water, of course we know how to fly; fear of sinking, though, sometimes keeps us from the first crucial move, then too, the terrible educations you liable to get is designed to make you destruct the journey entire. So send your minds on home to the motherland and just tell the tale, you little honeys." And my mama-not one to traffic in metaphors usually, being a very scientific woman-would add, "Yeah, speak your speak, 'cause every silence you maintain is liable to become first a lump in your throat, then a lump in your lymphatic system.""

"I don't, for example, conjure up characters for the express purpose of despising them, of breaking their humps in public. I used to be astounded at Henry James et al., so nice nasty about it too, soooo refined. Gothic is of no interest to me. I try not to lend energy to building grotesqueries, depicting morbid relationships, dramatizing perversity."

"If I'm not laughing while I work, I conclude that I am not communicating nourishment, since laughter is the most sure-fire healant I know. I don't know all my readers, but I know well for whom I write. And I want for them no less than I want for myself-wholesomeness. It all sounds so la-di-da and tra-la-la. I can afford to be sunny. I'm but one voice in the chorus. The literature(s) of our time are a collective effort, dependent on so many views, on so many people's productions."

"It was Grandma Dorothy who taught me critical theory, who steeped me in the tradition of Afrocentric aesthetic regulations, who trained me to understand that a story should be informed by the emancipatory impulse that characterizes our storytelling trade in these territories as exemplified by those freedom narratives which we've been trained to call slave narratives for reasons too obscene to mention, as if the "slave" were an identity and not a status interrupted by the very act of fleeing, speaking, writing, and countering the happy-darky propaganda. She taught that a story should contain mimetic devices so that the tale is memorable, shareable, that a story should be grounded in cultural specificity and shaped by the modes of Black art practice-call-and-response but one modality that bespeaks a communal ethos. I would later read Fanon on the subject-"To speak is to assume a culture and to bear responsibility for a civilization." Later still, I read Paolo Freire, speaking on activist pedagogy, engaged cultural work. "The purpose of educational forms is to reflect and encourage the practice of freedom.""

"But in the storytelling arenas, from kitchen tales to outdoor university anecdotes, "women's morality" was much more expansive, interesting, it took on the heroic-Harriet T. and Ida B. and the women who worked with W. E. B. Du Bois, the second wife of Booker T. and the Mother Divine of the Peace and Co-op Movement, and Claudia Jones, organizer from Trinidad who was deported during the Crackdown, when the national line shifted from "blacks as inferior" to "blacks as subversive" and wound up in a stone quarry prison and wrote "In every bit as hard as they hit me." These women were characterized as "morally exemplary," meaning courageous, disciplined, skilled and brilliant, responsive to responsibility for and accountable to the community. The other type of memorable tale bound up in these women heroics was tales of resistance-old and contemporary-insurrections, flight, abolition, warfare in alliance with Seminoles and Narragansetts during the period of European enslavement; the critical roles men and women played in the revolutionary overthrow of slavery; and in the Reconstruction self-help enterprises founded, the self-governing townships founded, the political convention convened and progressive legislation pressed through; and in days since the mobilization, organization, agitation, legislation, economic boycotts, protest demonstrations, rent strikes, parades, consumer-cooperative organizations."

""I’m available to any and every adventure of the human breath.”"

"There aren't even phrases in the languages for half the things happening just on the block where I live, not yet anyhow."

"I read everybody I can get to, and I appreciate the way "American literature" is being redefined now that the Black community is dialoguing without defensive postures, now that the Puerto Rican writers are coming through loud and clear, and the Chicano and Chicana writers, and Native American and Asian-American."

"She would not break her discipline to comfort herself in a shallow way. Would no more break discipline with her Self than she would her covenant with God."

"Information is power. In pyramids, power is concentrated, so also information, which is hidden or kept to be used at the right time, with a view to accumulating and concentrating more power. In networks, power is deconcentrated, and so is information, which is distributed and disseminated so that everyone has access to the power that their possession represents."

"It's very important to work with these women because they have undergone many atrocities during the genocide, and like other women and other humans, they have a right to live."

"I wanted the widows and orphans, as well as other distressed people, to adjust. I wanted them to restart their shattered and broken lives and work toward peace and the development of our country."

"We were proud because we had an impact, not only nationally but on the international scale, as well."

"My work will never be done, Even when I die, there must be others to continue this work."

"The important thing is to make sure the U.N. creates another resolution to support the kids who are born from rape. If they are really working hard to prevent such things happening it has to be there. because it’s still happening in other parts of the world."

"In our view, finding peace within oneself is a precondition for society-wide peace. I’m not saying we do no longer demand justice and want criminals to be prosecuted, but ultimately, we want reconciliation."

"There are consequences of sexual violence in conflicts. The first is HIV and AIDS, [but also] kids who are born from rape, unwanted pregnancies."

"We feel we are the ones who are able to speak out and…to be a voice for them."

"Thanks to the proceedings, many people were able to find the bodies of their dead and bury them."

"We have been demanding a special fund for these children and their mothers, but so far, the government remains stubborn."

"In 1998, women’s rights activists like us managed to make sure that the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda considers rape in war a genocidal crime, so those who planned and perpetrated such violence can be prosecuted."

"Our forums encourage the women to take their fate into their own hands and find inner peace, in spite of the humiliation and violence they have suffered."

"It is not easy to expose oneself to other people’s suffering again and again. One has to learn to draw a line."

"Rwandan women have played a big role to make sure that sexual violence in conflict became known as a crime against humanity, for us to be in the U.N. is a way of recognizing the hard work and what we have done."

"There is role play, which helps to better understand their situation and solve current problems."

"We also want to encourage them to tell their children the truth. Doing so is hard, but it helps the women to really opt for life, including the life of their child."

"Many women do not even know that children have rights. Moreover, there is time for singing, dancing and praying."

"Everyone still lives with the consequences. Some of the perpetrators went to jail, but they come back and live close to the survivors. The genocide is not over; the survivors are still living with those who committed the crimes."

"We must learn how to live positively with the bad and good."

"In general, the women did not speak about rape because of shame as well as fear of becoming marginalized or someone taking revenge."

"The women’s daily life is marked by worries and difficulties, so we need to reduce stress levels. And we teach them a simple and soothing massage method they can always apply themselves."

"It was a tough time, but I still tried to work with them because they also needed to live, and to live in peace."

"The women live scattered all over the country, and many had never left their village before coming to the forum. The group setting helps them to better understand their own situation."

"We need good governance that puts women at the centre of its policies, and is seen to defend and enforce these policies. We need an enabling environment that supports women at home, in the workplace and in public spheres."

"Many times, people will tell you it is impossible, it can’t be done, you are too small or too inconsequential to make change happen. Look them in the face and show them just how to do it."

"No one said it’s going to be easy, the only assurance is that the difficult times won’t last forever. Never give up on your passion, follow your dreams, keep lighting up the world."

"It is so obvious that to treat people equally is the right thing to do."

"I wondered why people made speeches in favor of something so obviously right,...Women breathed the same air, got the same education; it was ridiculous, spending so much energy and elocution on something rightfully theirs."

"Social welfare—that's the chief interest I have ever had. People are wrong in thinking that the best incentive is competition. Competition is good, but only as the instrument for the common good."

"every...act should be an expression of the God, or goodness, in us."

"men should look into their own lives, see their many doings, their sins (if you will), repent of them, [and] lead bettter lives than [in] their past."

"Being finite ourselves, we human beings cannot know God directly, but only through the phenomena, or manifestations of God in our universe. These manifestations range from the distant world of the milky way to the tiniest blade of grass, from the vast oceans to the dew drop, from the grandest mountain to the soft skin of a baby's cheek; they include every act of kindness and generosity and sacrificial devotion of a human being to another human being, the love of a man for his wife, the love of a mother for her child. They include our very search for God—They include all the beauty and the glory and the mystery of the universe around us and within us. The more we grow in wisdom and in the understanding of these things, the more nearly we can approach to a knowledge of God."