Women Activists From The United States

"We never thought we'd get this far, but we're here."

"We went through a hard time, and we had to turn to music as a means to putting food on the table. And we've been doing it ever since. No regrets either."

"Anybody can be a role model, anybody can."

"Music is not a very stable business. You know it comes and it goes, and so does money. But your education stays with you for the rest of your life and when you have that education and you have nothing fall back on you can go and get a job anywhere."

"Yo soy muy natural, muy sencilla muy honesta y pues siempre voy a ser. (Spanish for, I'm very real, very sincere, and honest, and that's how I'll always be.)"

"You have to take what you could get when you're getting started."

"As, not only as an entertainer but as a person who who cared a lot and I gave the best that I could and I tried to be the best role model that I possibly could and the best person I could I tried to help."

"The reason I'm really appreciative of everything that's going on around me is because of the fact that I never expected it, and I want to keep that attitude."

"If you think research is expensive, try disease."

"President Obama says that conservatives hate women, that there’s a war on women, and that the only thing that women care about is birth control. Oh, Mr. President bless your heart. Which man in your administration came up with that one? Women aren’t a cheap date. Women want a little more out of life than contraceptives. Just the other day I got a call from a friend back home. She’s 64-years-old. She told me her insurance company contacted her to say that under Obamacare they would pay for contraceptives but not for her blood pressure medication. She told them to put it in writing so she could share it with her congressman.What women want is not free contraceptives. We want opportunity. We want all the potential of the American economy unlocked for us. We want the government to stay out of our way … stay out of our wallets... and stay out of our emails. We want to have choice. Not the type of choice that men in the Democratic Party talk about, but real choice."

"We’re at a moment of historic opportunity, especially when it comes to taking down America’s largest abortion provider. For a century, Planned Parenthood has relentlessly marched forward with its message of eugenics and abortion, taking the lives of millions of unborn children and denying women the truth. They have intimidated political leaders and destroyed the careers of good men and women in office. Now, for the first time since our tax dollars were turned over to them a half century ago, we have the chance to convert federal funding to alternatives that honor community values and respect human life. We must seize this opportunity."

"If a President can enforce a part of a law and delay a part of a law, then does he have a power to not enforce any law he so chooses? If he can allow illegal aliens to freely run across our border, can he force legal citizens out of the country? Where would be the end of his power? We are a nation of laws with respect and recognition of the rule of law. We are not an imperialist government with a monarch abiding by the rule of one man."

"We’re at an historic, but fragile, moment. The pro-life voters who were critical to Trump’s victory cannot now sit back. Now is the time to get more engaged than ever before. The abortion lobby is already bouncing back from their electoral defeat and preparing to fight because this is a do-or-die moment for them. Are we treating it the same way? We will need pro-life Americans to stand up and speak out louder than they ever have, call their members of Congress, pray, donate and demand that the pro-life agenda is carried out."

"If I had done a Disney movie nobody would care. They would not care. You may say oh, I grew up and I loved that movie, that was really super, but you wouldn’t care. People really will stop and talk to me about deeper issues, which I am excited to participate in."

"I don't think there are very many people that will have the experience of sitting in this room, doing a job, and the next thing you know you've been on every television camera around the world, and people are' they're frightened of you. They don't know what to make of you. I think people seemed to believe when they saw me that they might be becoming possessed. That is the look in their eyes. They were frightened of me. And no matter what I said or did, it didn't change. And the fact that it was a job in film, it just never came across. And I really' I wish that things had been different back then, but people couldn't see that it was entertainment."

"Every time I watch it, I still see something new, and I’ve seen it a lot as you can imagine. When fans only talk about the scares, they’re not really learning anything, which is a shame because Billy really put a lot of thematic elements in this movie that are supposed to make you think. It wasn’t just about scaring people; it was a family drama that had horrific elements."

"The carnistic schema, which twists information so that nonsense seems to make perfect sense, also explains why we fail to see the absurdities of the system. Consider, for instance, advertising campaigns in which a pig dances joyfully over the fire pit where he or she is to be barbecued, or chickens wear aprons while beseeching the viewer to eat them. And consider the Veterinarian's Oath of the American Veterinary Medical Association, “I solemnly swear to use my … skills for the … relief of animal suffering,” in light of the fact that the vast majority of veterinarians eat animals simply because they like the way meat tastes. Or think about how people won't replace their hamburgers with veggie burgers, even if the flavor is identical, because they claim that, if they try hard enough, they can detect a subtle difference in texture. Only when we deconstruct the carnistic schema can we see the absurdity of placing our preference for a flawless re-creation of a textural norm over the lives and deaths of billions of others."

"Think about it: virtually every atrocity in the history of humankind was enabled by a populace that turned away from a reality that seemed too painful to face, while virtually every revolution for peace and justice has been made possible by a group of people who chose to bear witness and demanded that others bear witness as well."

"Becoming aware of the intense suffering of billions of animals, and of our own participation in that suffering, can bring up painful emotions: sorrow and grief for the animals; anger at the injustice and deception of the system; despair at the enormity of the problem; fear that trusted authorities and institutions are, in fact, untrustworthy; and guilt for having contributed to the problem. Bearing witness means choosing to suffer. Indeed, empathy is literally “feeling with.” Choosing to suffer is particularly difficult in a culture that is addicted to comfort—a culture that teaches that pain should be avoided whenever possible and that ignorance is bliss. We can reduce our resistance to witnessing by valuing authenticity over personal pleasure, and integration over ignorance."

"But why must the system go to such lengths to block our empathy? Why all the psychological acrobatics? The answer is simple: because we care about animals, and we don't want them to suffer. And because we eat them. Our values and behaviors are incongruent, and this incongruence causes us a certain degree of moral discomfort. In order to alleviate this discomfort, we have three choices: we can change our values to match our behaviors, we can change our behaviors to match our values, or we can change our perception of our behaviors so that they appear to match our values. It is around this third option that our schema of meat is shaped. As long as we neither value unnecessary animal suffering nor stop eating animals, our schema will distort our perceptions of animals and the meat we eat, so that we can feel comfortable enough to consume them."

"We send one species to the butcher and give our love and kindness to another apparently for no reason other than because it's the way things are. When our attitudes and behaviors toward animals are so inconsistent, and this inconsistency is so unexamined, we can safely say we have been fed absurdities. It is absurd that we eat pigs and love dogs and don't even know why. Many of us spend long minutes in the aisle of the drugstore mulling over what toothpaste to buy. Yet most of us don't spend any time at all thinking about what species of animal we eat and why. Our choices as consumers drive an industry that kills ten billion animals per year in the United States alone. If we choose to support this industry and the best reason we can come up with is because it's the way things are, clearly something is amiss. What could cause an entire society of people to check their thinking caps at the door—and to not even realize they're doing so? Though this question is quite complex, the answer is quite simple: ."

"We love dogs and eat cows not because dogs and cows are fundamentally different—cows, like dogs, have feelings, preferences, and consciousness—but because our perception of them is different."

"Carnism is the belief system in which eating certain animals is considered ethical and appropriate. Carnists—people who eat meat—are not the same as carnivores. Carnivores are animals that are dependent on meat to survive. … Carnists eat meat not because they need to, but because they choose to, and choices always stem from beliefs. Carnism's invisibility accounts for why choices appear not to be choices at all."

"What I've found is that, because most people are deeply disturbed by and feel guilty about eating meat, and yet at the same time fear not eating it, they defend themselves from having to acknowledge such conflicting feelings. These psychological defenses include denial (“Animals don't really suffer when they're raised and killed for meat.”); justification (“Animals are meant to be eaten by humans.”); dichotomization (“I'd never eat a dog, but I love bacon.”); avoidance (“Don't tell me that; you'll ruin my meal.”); and, most importantly, dissociation (“If I think about the animal when I'm eating meat I feel disgusted.”). … When people break through their dissociation, the feelings that typically emerge are empathy—and therefore disgust. That's why people tend to be disgusted by the idea of eating “unusual” animals, such as dogs and gorillas; they haven't learned to dissociate from these kinds of meat. It's also why vegetarians usually find all meats disgusting."

"The most effective way to distort reality is to deny it; if we tell ourselves there isn't a problem, then we never have to worry about what to do about it. And the most effective way to deny a reality is to make it invisible. … As with any violent ideology, the populace must be shielded from direct exposure to the victims of the system, lest they begin questioning the system or their participation in it. This truth speaks for itself: why else would the meat industry go to such lengths to keep its practices invisible?"

"Often, vegan advocates assume that a person's defensiveness is the result of selfishness or apathy, when in fact it is much more likely the result of systematic and intensive social conditioning."

"Yet on some level we do know the truth. We know that meat production is a messy business, but we choose not to know just how messy it is. We know that meat comes from an animal, but we choose not to connect the dots. And often, we eat animals and choose not to know we're even making a choice. Violent ideologies are structured so that it is not only possible, but inevitable, that we are aware of an unpleasant truth on one level while being oblivious to it on another. Common to all violent ideologies is this phenomenon of knowing without knowing. And it is the essence of carnism."

"There is a vast mythology surrounding meat, but all the myths are in one way or another related to what I refer to as the Three Ns of Justification: eating meat is normal, natural, and necessary. The Three Ns have been invoked to justify all exploitative systems … When an ideology is in its prime, these myths rarely come under scrutiny. However, when the system finally collapses, the Three Ns are recognized as ludicrous."

"The path of the norm is the path of least resistance; it is the route we take when we're on autopilot and don't even realize we're following a course of action that we haven't consciously chosen. Most people who eat meat have no idea that they're behaving in accordance with the tenets of a system that has defined many of their values, preferences, and behaviors. What they call “free choice” is, in fact, the result of a narrowly constructed set of options that have been chosen for them. They don't realize, for instance, that they have been taught to value human life so far above certain forms of nonhuman life that it seems appropriate for their taste preferences to supersede other species' preference for survival."

"It is impossible to exercise free will as long as we are operating from within the system. Free will requires consciousness, and our pervasive and deep-seated patterns of thought are unconscious; they are outside of our awareness and therefore outside of our control. While we remain in the system, we see the world through the eyes of carnism. And as long as we look through eyes other than our own, we will be living in accordance with a truth that is not of our own choosing. We must step outside the system to find our lost empathy and make choices that reflect what we truly feel and believe, rather than what we've been taught to feel and believe."

"We must come to terms with the fact that the foods we've grown accustomed to—that have even helped to create the concept of our ethnic identity—may actually be feeding the machine of neocolonialism; that we remain enslaved to a system that thrives on our addictions and mental, physical, and emotional illnesses."

"We toured in a Lear jet and that's the only way to fly, baby! Success is a bubble, though, and we knew the wonderful time we were having couldn't possibly last."

"People assume that there must have been tension between us, but the truth is I wanted to be just like Cass. Cass liberated me; she stopped John [Phillips] trying to have too much control over me. She taught me a lot about feminism, and she always encouraged me, although I was obviously inferior to her as a singer."

"I've always had a reputation as the pretty girl. Pretty girls rarely get the good parts. We all have to do a film like The Burning Bed where we can really be degraded so that people think we can act."

"I was so lucky to have been surrounded by really great actors. Everybody in that movie was a real actor: Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Richard Dreyfuss, Harry Dean Stanton. It was just a wonderful, wonderful experience for me and I had so much support and so much help and so much encouragement."

"Cass gained a lot of strength from her public. Once she was a star, she wasn't afraid of anybody, and certainly not me."

"I would not let her work until she was eighteen, and believe me, since the time she was being strolled down the street in her stroller, people were saying, “Can I use her in my commercial? Can I put her in my movie?” “No!” But I did let her take any class that she wanted to take. Singing, acting, dancing..."

"I was raised to be very independent. I was raised to believe I could do anything I wanted with my life. My father said I was lucky to be born a woman because "women can do anything they want" with their lives. Of course, I didn't realize until later that my father was giving me a slightly unrealistic view, but I think that [it] gave me a lot of confidence."

"I didn’t feel comfortable with American children. I certainly knew more about sex and drugs by the time I was eleven than they would ever know. My father used to ask me when I was thirteen if I needed a diaphragm. I said, ‘No, Dad, really, I’m still a virgin.’ He said, ‘you let me know when you’re not.'"

"I like what’s happening to me now in every way. When you’re twenty, you handle it a lot differently than when you’re thirty—and I’m thirty-three. I was naïve enough to think it would be easy to get here. It wasn’t."

"I don't consider psychedelics hard drugs, [but] I also don't recommend that people take [them]. I think it's something that you either did in the sixties, or you just forget about it."

"I’m born into a family of preachers, so I want Mr. Trump to remember that many people who voted for him took a long time praying for him. And if he can take some of that divine guidance, that’s going to help him out. We do need unity, and from my perspective as a minister myself, God has not forgotten America. So if Mr. Trump can remember that, I believe that he can take some positive steps towards unity."

"I pray that all polar opposites learn to Agape Love, live and work together as brothers and sisters — or perish as fools. While I voted for Mr. Trump, my confidence remains in God, for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Prayers for President-elect Trump, Congressman Lewis, and everyone including leaders."

"My dad A.D. King, Uncle MLK, and Granddaddy King passed on to me their beliefs on biblical marriage. Life is a human and civil right, so is procreative marriage... We must now go back to the beginning, starting with Genesis, and teach about God’s plan for marriage... It's time to start from scratch and lay the foundation all over again."

"Today, there is no greater injustice than that suffered by the 4,000 babies, 1,400 of them black, who die on any given day at the hands of abortionists. Friday, we will stand witness in front of the White House and testify to President Obama and that while he is living his dreams, those babies will be dying horrible deaths because of the policies he supports. I see the pride on African American faces everywhere, pride in the tremendous breakthrough President Obama represents," added Dr. King. "But I also can close my eyes and see the millions upon millions of young black, white, red, and yellow faces who never had the chance to live, overcome, or witness history."

"We went into at least ten supermarkets. The shelves were fully stocked with every goddamn Nestle brand, every paper product—except toilet paper...And this is where you get into some weird territory, where there are some huge shortages of particular goods used and hoarded for propaganda purposes, to create this kind of international humiliation campaign."

"For doing my job –– for interviewing government officials, protesters at los guarimbas, average Venezuelans and peaceful marchers –– I am called a spy who should be killed by the same people called ‘peaceful freedom fighters’ by Western press...These unsuccessful attempts to intimidate us reveals how much they really fear accurate reporting that might undermine their narrative... The show [The Empire Files] is totally independent of TeleSUR...We merely sell them the content; they have zero control over anything we do."

"Many US journalists and politicians acknowledge that climate change is the largest threat facing humanity, but few point to the fact that the US military is the largest institutional polluter, and emitter of carbon emissions, and every single climate treaty excludes their responsibility."

"The need for critical media literacy and mass organizing has never been more urgent. If you want to go down the rabbit hole with me to learn more about the true nature of the US government and how we can unite to demilitarize our communities, check out The Empire Files."

"This is why during the COVID pandemic, the oligarchs siphoned two trillion dollars from the working class, while one third of small businesses shut down and the poor suffered through mass evictions and joblessness. Due to the neoliberal indoctrination of public education and mass conditioning of American Exceptionalism, most Americans haven’t given a second thought to what the US does in our names around the world."