Journalists From The United States

"I get a thrill out of being a professional pariah."

"How, why, did I sit with some of these characters long enough to not only obtain quotes, but glean their reptilian essence? Easy. My mind was on the payoff: thousands of people receiving an antidote to the Hallmark Card reality of America. Consider this book an emetic for the soul."

"I hear that politically correct forces are hounding Irving on all ends of the earth, making it very difficult for him to earn a living. You cannot express revisionist views in public, or else you're made a pariah. You’re going against very powerful interests with big museums, big money, and a very dependent Zionist state."

"I realized that if I went the grant route, my interests would have to coincide with material that was less penetrating of people's emotions. I couldn't have people saying, "Oh, God, what's that horrible thing?" I'd rather have the bottom line question be, "Will enough people buy that book?" rather than, "Will a few people in the ascendancy of academic culture be offended by it?""

"Upsetting people is a beautiful thing, because it gets people to think beyond their last visit to 7-Eleven."

"God help me, I'm a pot-smoking libertarian."

"Yeah, the Jews got pissed at that magazine I sent you. None of them want to see my friend Hitler get his due... [Hitler] lifted the pride of the white people up and tried to get rid of the commies and exile the Jews where they wouldn’t hassle anyone but themselves…But of course "society" is making an “example” of Charles Manson in the same way they made an example of the Germans at Nuremburg."

"I want people to question things—that not everything is in The New York Times, which, as they say, is "All the news that's fit to print." I wanted to include the unfit."

"I do not try and shock people. That's never been my intent, but rather to share aspects of culture that I find interesting."

""Gleichschaltung" is usually translated, somewhat inadequately, as "coordination" or "unification." It is difficult to find a satisfactory English equivalent — possibly because the enforced uniformity which the German term describes does not commend itself to the English-speaking peoples. The French, with their genius for definition, have done better; they have translated the verb form, "gleichschalten," as "mettre au pas" — to bring into step. This phrase suggests an almost mechanical kind of conformity, as under military command; and no other human community so well represents a perfectly unified and coordinated whole — in precisely the sense of this German word — as a well-trained company of soldiers whose every movement is completely synchronized. If, therefore, following the French, one interprets "Gleichschaltung" as the application, mentally and morally as well as physically, of the principle of the goose-step, one gets a fair representation of what the word means to the Germans."

"I shall assume that Eve was merely the domestic servant of Adam — that she rose in the morning, careful not to disturb his slumbers — that she cooked his breakfast, called him affectionately when it was quite ready, waited upon him at table, arranged his shaving implements ready to his hand, saw him properly dressed — after which she washed the dishes, and amused herself darning his torn fig leaves till the time arrived to prepare dinner, and so on till nightfall, after which time she improved her mind, and, before master Cain was born, slept. She did not even keep a kitchen girl; at least I find no record of anything of the kind. Probably at that time the emigration from Ireland was setting in other directions, and help was hard to get. That she was a good wife and a contented one I do not doubt. I find no record in the Scriptures of her throwing tea-pots, or chairs, or brooms, or anything of the sort at Adam’s head, nor is it put down that at any time she intimated a desire for a divorce, which proves conclusively that the Garden of Eden was not located in the State of Indiana."

"I adore woman. I recognize the importance of the sex, and lay at its feet my humble tribute. But for woman, where would we have been? Who in our infancy washed our faces, fed us soothing syrup, and taught us "How doth the little busy bee?" Woman! To whom did we give red apples in our boyhood? for whom did we part our hair behind, and wear No. 7 boots when No. 10’s would have been more comfortable? and did we sit up nights, in the hair-oil period of our existence? And finally, whom did we marry? But for woman what would the novelists have done? What would have become of Sylvanus Cobb, Jr., if he had had no women to make heroines of? And without Sylvanus Cobb, Bonner could not have made the Ledger a success; Everett would be remembered not as the man who wrote for the Ledger, but merely as an orator and statesman; Beecher never would have written Norwood, and Dexter might to-day have been chafing under the collar in a dray! But for woman George Washington would not have been the father of his country, the Sunday school teachers would have been short the affecting story of the little hatchet and the cherry tree, and half the babies in the country would have been named after some one else. Possibly they might have all been Smiths. But for woman Andrew Johnson never would have been, and future generations would have lost the most awful example of depravity the world has ever seen. I adore woman, but I want her to keep her place. I don’t want woman to be the coming man!"

"Emily Dickinson never married and the one love of her life seems to have been exclusively cerebral. Amy Lowell smoked large black cigars. George Sand and George Eliot took masculine pseudonyms. Rosa Bonheur and George Sand liked to wear male attire. Jane Austen remained unmarried, and, of the three Brontë sisters, only Charlotte married, at the age of 38, and died a year later. And Sappho of Lesbos gave her name to female homosexuality. These facts are not cited with the intention of fixing upon these women the stigma, in many cases unjustified, of that complete homosexuality which present-day public opinion regards unfavorably, but simply because they suggest that in those rare individual cases where women approach genius they also approach masculinity."

"Science is our century’s art."

"One chilly morning last week, at a on the edge of , the Roca brothers came in from the cold. They were visiting New York on a twenty-four-hour furlough from , their dining establishment in northeast Spain, which, according to a list issued annually by the ..., is currently the best on the planet. Joan (head chef), Josep (sommelier), and Jordi (desserts) were dressed in dark parkas that did not look quite up to the weather. The plan had been to visit the Greenmarket across the street, but they were hesitating. “It’s cold in Spain this time of year,” Jordi said, nibbling nonjudgmentally on a Pret croissant. “But not like this.”"

"Is there a way to translate the complexity into a narrative that has a kind of hook that will grab people?"

"Jefferson had served as America's minister to France between 1785 and the outbreak of the French Revolution and had developed a fascination with . Upon his return to America, he continued to order large quantities of for himself and for George Washington and stipulated in one 1790 letter that there respective shipments should be marked with their initials. During his firs term as president, Jefferson spent $7,500—roughly $120,000 in today's currency—on wine, and he is generally regarded as America's first great wine connoisseur. (He might also have been America's first great wine bore. "There was, as usual, a dissertation upon wines," John Quincy Adams noted in his diary after dining with Jefferson in 1807. "Not every edifying.")"

"In July, 2008, was stripped of its license. n officials then granted exploration permits for half of the deposit to a much smaller company: is, by some estimates, the richest man in Israel; according to , his personal fortune amounts to some nine billion dollars. Steinmetz, who made his name in the trade, hardly ever speaks to the press, and the corporate structures of his various enterprises are so convoluted that it is difficult to assess the extent of his holdings. The was a surprising addition to Steinmetz’s portfolio, because B.S.G.R. had no experience exporting . A mining executive in Guinea told me, “Diamonds you can carry away from the mine in your pocket. With iron ore, you need infrastructure that can last decades.”"

"Not long after , authorities in released decades-old documents about the death of her brother. The original police reports—several dozen yellowed pages, some covered in handwritten jottings, some of them typed—contain revelations that call into question the 1987 state-police report that declared the killing an accident."

"With rare exceptions, we in the movement have to be understood by anybody who wants to hear. We have to be available, accessible, with words of one syllable that relate to people's real experiences of life and struggle."

"...being fully antiracist is dependent on international connections, on knowing the various ways in which people live and struggle, and incorporating that into what you stand for and what you must be supporting. So then whatever you are doing, you are accountable also to them. There is no other way to be antiracist except what you do takes into account other people's struggles and ensures that you never do anything that undermines other people's struggles. This is not easy but it's absolutely crucial."

"identity politics: I have been exploited and therefore I have a right to exploit her, her, him, and him. That's identity politics. I have ambition and I have a right to fulfill my ambition at her expense, her expense, her expense and her expense, because I have been exploited. And when we finish with Zionism, which indeed we will, then we will also have finished with the most crass form of identity politics, the one which allows those who have suffered - or in this case the descendants of the sufferers to claim the right to exploit, kill and maim without limit"

"Black Lives Matter has meant so much everywhere, including in Haiti and Palestine, and it strengthens other movements for justice against murder by the state—the human rights defenders in Honduras and Thailand who are being assassinated by corporate agents for defending Indigenous and small farmers’ right to land, for example."

"The claim that women are liberated if some women take jobs at the top is a capitalist fantasy. The same is true for people of color, and sexuality, and every sector."

"You have to fight for every right and every access and every penny that is yours by right or that you want to make yours by right. That is true for every sector...Organizing for change in particular sectors on the one hand, and the sectors coming together internationally to change everything on the other, is I think the political question of our time."

"When we say Wages for Housework, we say first of all that the work that women do must be visible and must be acknowledged not merely as work, but as a political fact, as a struggle: that women refuse to do this work. I want to explain that, because a lot of the work that women do is really the maintenance of the human race. And it's clear this work must be done. And not only that it must be done but that it is clearly the most important work in the world. But we can't do it alone, and we don't want men to "help." That's not enough. That's nothing like what is needed...we must reorient society to caring. It's not that women should have help caring; it's that to be civilized is to be concerned about each other, and in a situation where there is not want anywhere in the world, where we all have or can get what we need. Guaranteed income does not address this at all...Wages for Housework is like a searchlight into our real lives and the real relations among us. So whereas we want a guaranteed income, what we want is a change. And the change must come from reorienting the whole society against the divisions among us. But first we must see the divisions, acknowledge them, acknowledge the work, so we can refuse them, and build a movement against them. And that's some of what Wages for Housework is about doing. (from 2009 interview)"

"With the growth of women's power, the history of all kinds of contributions by women, as individuals and as a sex-in literature, language, art, music, politics, religion, agriculture, science, etc.-has at last begun to surface. For the record, women are not the only sufferers at the hands of historians. The Great Man theory of history hides not only Great Women but defines almost everyone out of greatness. Specifically, the invisibility of women's work as organizers-which includes every woman rather than just "Great Women" (writers, scientists, painters, and so on) - itself reflects a class bias, a career bias, in the women's movement, itself perpetuates a historical censorship in another form."

"She is one of the few public intellectuals that engages with issues and people all over the world yet still remains connected to the grassroots. The writings and ideas of Selma James are as relevant now as they have ever been. Her solidarity knows no borders, her compassion excludes no sufferer."

"One of the key political thinkers and activists of our times."

"there was a distinction, a crucial distinction that kids have to make – kids, but teachers should help them – between rising out of poverty and destroying poverty. Do you use education to get out of it, or do you use education for all of us to get out of it?"

"women’s struggles are labor politics, but they’re unwaged labor politics. And they’re not less important or more important but integral to the entire picture. There is waged work in the society, and there is unwaged work in the society, and they’re both absolutely crucial to the accumulation of capital and to its destruction."

"The relationships on which the whole society rests are in wreck condition, are in disastrous condition because women are going out to work. It’s not just a few minutes a day. It’s taking care of the relationships that are the foundation of our lives. That’s what women do. And when we can’t do that, when most of us can’t do that, we are either furious, resentful, or we begin to be uncaring ourselves. And that has happened to some women. It’s happened to all of us to some degree. That we don’t want to know about how the people that we would ordinarily have been taking care of, how they’re suffering. We don’t want to know. We can’t cope with the knowledge of the mess that people we love are in, as a result of the fact that we have no time to take care of them. I think there are really a lot of women in that situation. They call it the Sandwich Generation. They call it whatever they like. Any nice little name they give it, it’s definitely the suffering of the carer as well as those that they care for, obviously, which is why the carer is suffering."

"(AG: ...you said, “I think we have to know that prison is part of society”) SJ: …in order for so many people to be incarcerated, they have to convince the population that this is no part of their life, that prison is outside of their society, that it’s not something they should be concerned about and fighting about and supporting, that it is other than the life we are living. But in fact, in my view, the fact that so many people are in prison in the United States not only shapes the lives of millions—the families, etc.—but it means that the whole society is much more repressive, because the standards of prison are constantly imprisoning the rest of us in crucial respects. But the number, the millions of people, of children who are growing up with a parent inside and who will themselves be part—you know, Mumia’s son is in prison. You know, I mean, the thing is absolutely mind-blowing, the kind of brutality that the prison system has launched in the society, generally. It’s not the only force of repression, but it is one serious source of repression."

"(asked about the main thesis of the 1952 book A Woman’s Place) …It was that women are engaged in the work of making society, of making children - that is an enormous job - and that the separation between women and men is harmful to all of us."

"(AG: you have said you can’t confront the American state spontaneously.) SJ: You always spontaneously react against the American state. You know, it is one of the most brutal ever in history. But on the other hand, you must organize against it. Spontaneity is not enough. Spontaneity is the basis on which you organize. And the question that C. L. R. James posed all those years ago is still our question: how do you organize in a way that does not prevent the spontaneity and the experience and the outpouring of all that you feel and think? You know, organization has tended to be a kind of repression, in spite of the fact that you’re going for liberation. And how do you form an organization that is not a repression, that is a discipline that demands accountability, but does not repress either your experience or your ideas or your spontaneous responses? That’s what we’ve been addressing for 40 years. This month is the 40th anniversary of the Wages for Housework Campaign, so I’ve spent 40 years of my life doing this. I’ve learned an enormous amount from others and with others."

"What keeps me motivated is that I want to enjoy my life, and the closest I can get to full enjoyment is to attack my enemies. And I find that, if I do it honestly and with others in a collective way, I have a good chance to know what’s happening in my own life. So my own life is not mystified, so I don’t believe the lies they tell me about what I think and what I feel or should feel and should think. That I really begin to see other members of the human race in the round rather than with the nonsense that all of us spew out from time to time when we don’t know what better to say. And that’s what really keeps me motivated. I have a very high opinion of my own life, and therefore, I want to use it in a way that is elevating to me but also to all those who are down here with us. I don’t know if I’ve said that very clearly, but you know, it’s something that I want for myself. To be part of this struggle is to be learning, all the time. And that’s more fun than anything I know, I mean, like anything. To learn what’s really going on is such a major thrill that it’s what really keeps me motivated."

"A Care Income would increase the status and the power of carers for people and planet, and for this reason we face opposition from those who want to keep the power in their own hands or in the hands of their masters. With the pandemic and the climate emergency, everybody knows that caring matters. But it’s one thing to win the argument, it’s another to win the struggle. It’s between us and the billionaires."

"It is quite important that we look at our habits and see that they conform to our principles, not the other way around."

"...my intention when I write is to provide organizing tools. Most come directly from lessons we learnt in the course of organizing. I hope they will help others. Also, people are misled by structures and strictures that come from academia or the “vanguard” left—or both. Endless hours are spent discussing “theory” when, ultimately, the real theory is in what you do and how you do it and with whom and against whom."

"...we have a slogan in London: “Mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, fighting for our loved ones’ lives.” And that’s not a Romantic view of women’s work that — women’s justice work. That is the reality. That’s who does it. That’s who’s on the line in front of the prison where men and women are held unjustly. It’s women who are doing this work. And it’s an extension of the caring work that we have always done."

"(about her work with Mariarosa Dalla Costa in 1972) …we were developing a new perspective that was international and far more comprehensive. Up to then, the working class was defined as waged workers at the “point of production”—the only ones who could make fundamental change. We were redefining the working class to include housewives and all the unwaged. It was not only antisexist, it was antiracist and saw the reproduction of labor power, in fact of the whole human race everywhere, as work at the service of capitalist accumulation. We said if you work for capital, waged or unwaged, you are part of the working class, the subversive class."

"I think that that is what the teachers should be saying and doing. They should be spelling it out. They should be telling the parents, “If you want me to teach, fight for my wages, and fight for my time. Fight for the facilities, and fight for the children to have instruments to play in band and things like that, on school time, with school money.” You know, we want to give these children an education that really fits them to have a happy life, not fits them to be a repressed individual at the service of the state…I think that something similar has happened with nurses – and nurses are fighting to take care of patients…They’re not only fighting that they’re overworked and underpaid. They’re fighting so that they can take the proper care of the patients. You know, one of the nurses was complaining to me that his boss on the ward says that, “You spend too much time with the patients. If you have to go bandage a leg, just bandage a leg, but then you sit and talk with them, and that’s no good!” So, I think there’s a real crisis – this is in general – between us carers and those who exploit us. On the one hand, we want to care. But on the other hand, we don’t want that wish to care to be used against us as workers. And we have always to decide, as carers, as teachers, as nurses, as mothers, as neighbors, we have to decide how to defend our caring but not allow ourselves to be exploited because we have this “weakness,” and in fact, this vulnerability is the right word. We have to say, “You have to pay us to do the right thing.” And we don’t take the little bit that [either] we want to do the right thing, or we want to take the money. We want both. That’s really crucial, and it took a lot of years, I think, to be absolutely clear, to be able to say that in that succinct way because it’s very hard to figure out, if you are a carer, if your work is the health and well-being of other people, how to be dedicated to it but not exploited, not allow yourself to be exploited by it."

"It’s time to acknowledge James’s path-breaking analysis: from 1972 she reinterpreted the capitalist economy to show that it rests on the usually invisible unwaged caring work of women."

"...if any sector of women begins to spell out their own situation and how life is for them, others can identify, say, “Yes, that is an element of my life, as well.” That’s been true with lesbian women. It’s been true with single mothers. It’s been true with prostitutes. It’s been true with women with disabilities also. You know, you know the ways in which you are constrained better by hearing the experience of others who are even more constrained than you are. And it’s certainly true with women in prison, as well."

"… a lot of feminism has gone into individual careers and into ambition, and there’s some evidence that the class line between women is much greater now with feminism, because a whole set of women have gone into the part of the elite. They get pay equity. They get a lot of kudos, a lot of—they are very accepted in the society. And the rest of us are getting screwed. I mean, our pay is not going up. The child care doesn’t exist or is very bad. Welfare has been abolished. And we really need to have another reason to be together, which is the real conditions of our lives, rather than an individual ambition. And I felt that the SlutWalk was part of that new movement, which says it’s not ambition we want. We want to have the freedom to live the lives as we like them, and we are together for that. It was very exciting."

"she is—quite simply—not only one of the most outstanding feminist thinkers of her generation but, as well, an insightful and exceedingly intelligent political analyst."

"(asked about the pamphlet she published in 1974 Sex, Race and Class) SJ: The point was that by that time, there were - there was a real problem with how do you balance the movement of black people, the movement of immigrants, the movement of women, the movement of lesbian and gay people. How do they relate to each other? And there was a kind of competition for priorities. And I wrote the pamphlet to say, “Look, we are all in the same struggle, and there is a connection between all of us that we must draw out. But in order for that connection to be made, each sector will make its own autonomous case, and on that basis we can unite.” How exactly? I don’t know, because I wasn’t the left in that way. I didn’t feel I had to have the answers, only the questions. And that’s what “Sex, Race and Class” is about, really."

"I wish I was there last night because I’ve always wanted a severed human head on a spike in my apartment and this was the perfect opportunity to get it."

"Everyone’s acting like it’s their own private chef back there. You’re in a restaurant, we have a set menu, just pick something and shut the fuck up."

"I’d rather light one of my arms on fire than go to something as boring as a puppy shower."