Political Activists

"Que sea nuestra vida presente de todo./Que busque futuro tan sólo en el alma./Que ensaye verdades. Que sienta en idea./Que siempre se extienda cortando distancias"

"The answer to hate words is not speech codes but strong protest and educational efforts when we hear them. Don't ban bigoted language, but let those who use it know what to expect-severe public criticism, spontaneous demonstrations and why. This may be the liberal American Civil Liberties Union position; so be it, for history shows that limits on one person's freedom of speech make it a non-freedom for others. In failing to take this stand, progressives and leftists also aid the PC-baiters by giving them the moral high ground of being "anti-censorship.""

"we wander through the streets of our memory/looking for julia de burgos/in the concrete of our tongue"

"We do not want a few Chicanas to get better jobs, higher salaries, while everyone else continues to be exploited."

"revolution means turning things upside down and taking another look at what is taken for granted. So revolution means new ideas about relations between men and women, too."

"The history and problems of La Chicana are similar to those of Latin-American women. Although the native Indian women of the Americas was, before the Spanish conquest, far from being completely free, she often participated more fully in the life of the society than did her sister under Spanish rule. The coming of the European, with his Catholic Church and feudal social system, was a turning point. Our roots lie in the act of rape: the rape of women, the rape of an entire continent and its people."

"Los Hitler, los Mussolini.../¡Balas! ¡Balas! ¡Balas! ¡Balas!/Las dos víboras de Europa/que con la muerte se pactan."

"en la noche callada dejé perder un verso."

"…All of my poems, to me, have always had an intonation to them, and I think that’s really part and parcel to the nature of writing poetry anyway. My poetry is different from the typical iambic pentameter. It’s not linear because it cascades and goes down the page like an escalator."

"All my pieces are about resilience in the face of adversity"

"…There is no such a thing as an old poet. People are younger and older, chronologically, because of math of calendars, but spirits are young and old simultaneously. Poetry as a professional, life-long pursuit is one that offers wisdom with age, and that’s to be respected…"

"Murals are not easel paintings,” Baca said. “They’re not individual works created for simple self-expression of your opinion in a public space. To do public works means that you’re making something. A real mural is connected to the architecture in which it’s placed, connected to the people for whom it’s painted and connected to who you paint with. And when it is incredibly well done, it’s like a choreographed dance."

"You are my first love.” And then, “You will be my only love."

"Poetry belongs everywhere, of course — but especially in the classroom…"

"They very often would let me paint, you know, instead of doing some of the other lessons, because I didn't speak English well enough. So I had a lot of painting. And I brought the paintings home with great pride, and my mother kept them for years, so I do know that I sort of…That was a place that I actually remember the smell of those materials and the texture of the surfaces and just, you know, kind of having this real visceral love of moving that color around -- which is, I think, you know, I still have that…"

"…Poetry is not a stepping-stone to fortune and fame, or Hollywood for that matter — where, if the poet where [sic] to seek that, he or she would trade their voice for that of Hollywood, or fortune and fame, and lose their use of poetry. Poetry does not compromise itself for such mundane material."

"She once told me that because I am lighter-skinned than her I would be treated better, and then the divorce from my father, I think she felt betrayed by whiteness in a certain kind of way, and I represent that whiteness."

"And then she said and I have Rebecca, you know? Sort of the idea is I was delightful, and she said I was delightful, but in the context you could see I was a calamity nonetheless. I mean I think there was a real ambivalence about the role of children in lives of independent, thinking women. And what was transmitted to me was not that being a mom was the worst possible choice, but that it could definitely be a serious hindrance. And that there were other things worth pursuing more."

"I had too much power, I thought. I might consume him out of my own curiosity simply because I could. I could stay or go. He could not. He had too much power, I thought. He could reject me. He could break me in two."

"Their take on me was, 'Look, you're not afraid you will be gassed, you're not drinking out of the coloured water fountain; you've got it really good,' so they didn't really understand that being biracial and the child of divorce would affect me in the way it did."

"That musical time is a way of like creating a rhythm within the piece. And it was an amazing experience for me to see how when lines, directional lines, went through forms -- how forms, if moved to fit within the ratio, to hit the points. Like in other words, if an arm flies out, it goes to the point. Suddenly there's this like visual kind of connection between the forms, and it fits like, clicks like pieces of a puzzle, right into place…"

"What the heart desires is medicine to itself."

"Part of what I wanted to do with Baby Love was to suggest that not only are you giving birth to a baby, but also you can use the experience to give birth to a new sense of yourself."

"Not to belong anywhere, to be displaced, is not a bad thing for a writer…If you can deal with it. If it doesn’t destroy you."

"More than a traveler, I’m a displacer. In other words, I’m a person who is constantly meditating on what it means not to arrive at a place, but to be on my way somewhere else."

"I think the genre decides for me—which sounds like a way of avoiding the question unless I explain first that this chameleon-like border crossing, this shifting of genre identities is, I realize, parallel to, or anticipates, or recollects my own life. I’m probably fluctuating across genres perhaps because my identity itself is always in flux…"

"The past is really unknowable, but it’s got to be knowable enough so that we can seek forgiveness for our crimes…"

"“I said, ‘This going to perhaps sound cheesy, but two of the things I love the most are making people laugh and America,’…I like patriotism. There is an underlying theme of patriotism in all of the Harold and Kumar movies for example. I love that feeling because it’s very much my sense of humor, which is sort of aspirational as opposed to cynical."

"I mean no disrespect to any of our current climate at all, but I have been an actor for almost two decades now, and this is a dream come true to be able to create a network comedy that just makes people laugh…What I love about comedy is that, like music, sports and food, it brings us all together."

"(Why do so many South American Jews write about oppression?) People like Timerman and Dorfman were part of generations that suffered terribly because of dictatorships. So they write about what happened to them and their countries, and have the courageous belief that an author should write about things as a witness."

"Through that process, I was just working on the outreach team, but because of that I was meeting people who were undocumented, people whose families were impacted by it, and obviously huge advocacy organizations. That stuff stays with you. It was, of course, the basis for some of the characters and some of their stories and the lives that they live…"

"I have a greater appreciation for how change actually happens. If something could change with the flip of a switch, it would have been done before. By the same token, there's always going to be a bit of a disconnect. Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, if you're under 35, you're for marriage equality, you want to raise the debt ceiling, and you want better access to health care and entrepreneurship. But the average age in the senate is 62 or 63. Like most people who turn on the news, I think, OK, the members of congress are out of touch."

"when 9/11 was taking place in the U.S., few journalists, except people like Ariel Dorfman, few of them mentioned that there was another 9/11 that took place in Chile created by the terrorism that the United States government, in a way, was supporting through the CIA...Dorfman wrote a wonderful editorial in The New York Times, an op/ed about two or three days ago, and he said that Pinochet's dirty dealings with his money were found because through the Patriot Act they discovered that he had money in the Riggs Bank, and he became like a terrorist that stole $8 million, but he also says that it was the same secrecy that Pinochet governed that allowed him to steal the money. So secrecy is dangerous no matter how you look at it, and he was talking the secrecy of the Patriot Act."

"My favorite definition of magic realism is by Ariel Dorfman, who said in an NPR interview about his play, Widows, "When people who have nothing demand everything, that’s real magic.""

"…I can’t afford the luxury of despair or pessimism. We still have to hope. We’re a timeless people, we’ve lived in a timeless land. We have suffered the invasion of two hundred years, and we’ll go on suffering. But we are going to survive…"

"…In the Aboriginal world we give way to all emotions. In the ‘British’, the present white generation of Australian people have been told that to cry is weakness, and if a ten year old boy gets up and cries they say, My goodness! But in the Aboriginal world, to cry is a beautiful thing. To us it’s compassion…"

"…in the early stages, the whites were kept very effectively away from the Aborigines. And whites will tell you quite blankly, I’ve never met an Aborigine in my life, so how could they know about us, how could they feel for us? It was done deliberately. They didn’t want friends of the Aborigines coming out and upsetting the jolly old white Australian apple cart you know, rocking the boat."

"…I’m very rich because I’m loved by all my people, it’s a very beautiful thing. No money could surpass that. The love that my people feel for me is just so tremendous. It’s a lovely feeling."

"She took the stage at Battery Park on Friday before a crowd of two hundred and fifty thousand climate strikers. “Hi, everyone!” she hollered, a huge smile on her face. She told the story of how she started striking, then introduced Thunberg. “She is an icon of our time, and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize,” Villaseñor said. “And now she’s here with us today. What I want to tell you about Greta Thunberg, though, is that she is the nicest, kindest, most humble person I ever met.” As Thunberg walked onstage, she gave Villaseñor a big hug."

"Many people in the US aren't aware of the youth climate movement that was started by 16-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg in August 2018 and has inspired students in countries all across the world to come together to protest for climate action weekly. But the fact that Fridays for Future (FFF) is less well known stateside doesn't mean that young activists in the US are less passionate... A couple of hours north of the Capitol, Alexandria Villasenor was striking in New York City. The 14-year-old moved to the big apple from Davis, California, last August. In November 2018 she was back in California for a visit and experienced the raging Paradise wildfire first hand. "The smoke was so bad I had to go back to New York early," the middle schooler, who suffers from asthma, said. "Then I learned about the connection between the wildfires and the climate crisis. It made me angry." She also runs her own organization, Earth Uprising. How does she balance all of that with her school work and regular student life? "I can do pretty much anything when I get enough food and five hours of sleep," Villasenor said with a laugh."

"We’re here as citizens of the planet, as victims of the pollution that’s been carelessly dumped into our land, air and sea for generations, and as children whose rights are being violated. Today we are fighting back. 30 years ago the world made a promise to us. Virtually every country in the world agreed that children have rights that must be protected. And those countries that signed the 3rd Optional Protocol on Communication have committed to allowing us to appeal to the United Nations when those rights are being violated. So that’s exactly what we’re doing here today. Each one of use had our rights violated and denied. Our futures are being destroyed."

"I see more of the structures that society has put in place. And that’s why my generation has been so impactful with the climate movement. We’re organizing outside of the structures that adults work in. Since getting involved, I just see how the system is broken, and it’s one of the things that needs to change."

"My name is Alexandria Villaseñor. I’m 14 years old. I’m from New York. And I am here because 30 years ago the world signed a contract between generations that the present world would leave a world worth inheriting to the future. And today I want to tell the world, you are defaulting on that contract, and we’re here to collect."

"Eighty years from now, our grandchildren can yell, 'Hey Zoomers.""

"Alexandria Villasenor is a powerhouse in the climate change world — and she’s not even old enough to vote.... when she learned that rising temperatures caused by climate change are making wildfires more commonplace and destructive than ever — and that the world must cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 to avoid disastrous, irreversible consequences of an overheated planet — Villasenor knew she had to act fast."

"I come to very sad conclusion: Donald Trump is totally mad. It is the shame. We loved him,"

"We want patriotic radio, TV, patriotic experts, patriotic clubs. We want the media that expresses national interests."

"Never before has individualism been glorified so much, yet at the same time, never before have people all over the world been so similar to each other in their behavior, habits, appearances, techniques, and tastes. In the pursuit of individualistic ’human rights’ humanity has lost itself. Soon man will be replaced by the post-human: a mutant, cloned android."

"Whoever controls the Snake Island, controls the course of world history."

"At the basis of the geopolitical construction of this [Eurasian] Empire, there must be placed one fundamental principle--the principle of 'a common enemy.' A negation of Atlanticism, a repudiation of the strategic control of the United States, and the rejection of the supremacy of economic, liberal market values--this represents the common civilizational basis, the common impulse which will prepare the way for a strong political and strategic union. (216). The anti-Americanism of the Japanese, "who remember well the nuclear genocide and the disgrace of political occupation," must be unleashed, as well as the fervent anti-Americanism of fundamentalist Muslim Iranians."