Women Activists

"My lesson to all is that no matter what horrible circumstance we may face in our lives, we must never lose hope, for losing hope is the beginning of our own self defeat."

"I survived for a reason."

"There’s a mantra that I live with. No matter what horrible circumstances you may face in your life, never lose hope."

"Losing hope is the beginning of your own self-defeat."

"It is my duty to tell what happened so the world will not forget. . . That’s my way of making sure that the history is not forgotten."

"Genocide doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a process. There are so many stages."

"Rape is a weapon of the genocide."

"For me, to share is so I encourage my fellow survivors to share their story. I want to be a part of helping - making sure the history of my family is told."

"I want to make sure that the world knows what we’ve been through, the suffering we’ve been through, and how we overcame."

"I want to make sure that those that are no longer here - their voices, their lives, their names . . . are alive. They were alive. They existed. . . My duty is to make sure that what happened is heard."

"It was important for me to never give up on life. There is a reason why I am alive. I have a purpose. That is why I am here talking to you ."

"Therefore, Rwanda used the gacaca system, “a traditional justice system that was used before to reconcile families. People come together in the community to reconcile."

"The international community was watching what was happening but they were not intervening which was very sad for me to see."

"The genocide in Rwanda was preventable if the international community had intervened."

"Words matter. Words have power. We saw in Rwanda, it [the genocide] started from words."

"Whenever you see injustice happening, you must speak out."

"Do something. . . Be aware. . . Learn from history. It can happen anywhere."

"In our culture, we don’t talk a lot about experiences."

"I have some days where I just sit down and cry. It’s not like everything is perfect all the time."

"I especially want to promote ICT among girls and women because many think that it is a man’s world—and it still is. But if you look at the history of computing you will find that women played an integral role as well."

"it is sad to see opposition to homosexuality continuing despite the headlines carrying the rheorical question, “who am I to judge?”"

"It still officially describes both gay people and homosexual acts as “intrinsically disordered”."

"I told myself to be true to me, even if I have just one day left to live. Life is so precious to live in deceit. Coming out was a way to exonerate myself and be and live free."

"I belief, we as Africans, can begin to live change once we have access to information that is vital for our well being."

"I come from a country where we are so limited simply by the things we don’t know. And there is so much out there that we are not aware off and which exist for free."

"I am not too surprised about myself – some will say I have an audacity of courage."

"I believe I was born this way. If there could be any influence from the environment or society, they it will do well to surpress me instead."

"I have the freedom to express my sexuality without fear of arrest or vigilante execution. I am indeed privileged…"

"Well yes. I am Sapiosexual. I have a thing for intelligent and physically/mentally strong women."

"Today, I have earned the respect of many and have been very conspicous in the general public for the various things I do represent."

"It started as a passion for knowledge and then of becoming an information dessiminator."

"Today, I have become the go to person for very sensitive information. I have become a conveyor of information from those who many not want to be seen or heard sharing any form of sensitive information."

"As an African woman, who grew up in Africa, the stereotype defines me as someone who should be submissive and usually introversive in most cases."

"no one can legally arrest a homosexual because there are laws in place to defend the human rights of a homosexual, those laws are freedom and equality of treatment for all human beings."

"I totally ignored the hate tirades and focused more on the LGBTQ community in Africa which reached out to me massively. Surprisingly, I also had hundreds of support messages from people my age and my parents’ age. This response has been emotional as well as humbling."

"Homophobia is like a binding glue when it comes to Cameroonians. When it comes to hating LGBTQ people, they all come together."

"I meet so many people who read twitter every day, but almost never tweet. If I may beg your indulgence, please add your voice to the public dialogue!"

"La mujer," one of the articles that Luisa Capetillo published in 1912 in Cultura obrera, was later included in the anthology, Voces de liberación (Voices of Liberation), published in 1921 by Lux Editorial from Argentina. Printed for the purpose of gathering the libertarian voices of the most progressive women in the world, the book contains short essays by Rosa Luxembourg, Clara Zetkin, Emma Goldman, Louise Michel, and various Latin American women including Margarita Ortega, a Mexican revolutionary, María López from Buenos Aires, and Rosalina Gutiérrez from Montevideo. The editorial note introducing the authors states, "These voices of liberation are a call to women by their own compañeras to think more and act together with men in the struggle for human emancipation."

"How many are there of the countless millions who have entered this life, passed through its changing scenes and at last have laid down to rest, of whom it can be truly said, “Here rest they who have labored for the uplifting of the oppressed, who have devoted their energies unstintingly in the interest of the ‘common people?’” We fear there are few indeed. A life devoted to the interest of the working class; a life of self-abnegation, a life full of love, kindness, gentleness, tragedy, activity, sadness and kind-ness, are some of the characteristics which went to make up the varied life of our comrade, Louise Michel. In the elderly woman, clad in simple black garments, with gray hair curling upon rounded shoulders and kindest of blue eyes glancing from the strongly marked face, none but those who knew her personally would in the last few years have recognized Louise Michel…So it is in the baffling ocean of humanity. A strong character like Louise Michel looms up like a pillar of light or a star of hope, and the weary reformer sees it and takes fresh courage to struggle on in the surging ocean of humanity, and endeavors to calm its troubled waves and point the way to the harbor of plenty."

"For the anarchists in the United States Voltairine de Cleyre became the American version of Louise Michel, the French anarchist teacher who had engaged in terrorist activity during the Paris Commune, had endured several prison sentences, and was the recognized saint of international anarchism. Louise Michel had lived in deep privation, gave all her possessions to fellow revolutionaries, and spent a life of devoted self-sacrifice in the cause of anarchism. Her one self-indulgence was a passionate devotion to her mother. Anarchists emphasized the similarities between Michel and de Cleyre. Both were teachers; both nearly had been assassinated by former followers and had refused to prosecute their attackers; both tended toward extreme generosity toward the movement"

"The world carnage put an end to the golden era when a Bakunin and a Herzen, a Marx and a Kropotkin, a Malatesta and a Lenin, Vera Sazulich, Louise Michel, and all the others could come and go without hindrance. In those days who cared about passports or visas? Who worried about one particular spot on earth? The whole world was one's country."

"The most interesting women in modern European history appear in the ranks of radical political movements. It is difficult to find conservative or traditional counterparts equal to Louise Michel, Emma Goldman, and Rosa Luxemburg. Even Isadora Duncan, creator of modern dance, flirted with communism. More thoughtful and articulate and certainly as politically active as any of these women is the lesser known Spanish anarchist, Federica Montseny. On asking what attracted these women to radical politics, one discovers in each a commitment to feminism. No person, not even Emma Goldman, explored this necessary relationship between feminist and socialist principles more provocatively than did Federica Montseny."

"Along with her more famous sisters, the radical women born in the decade of the Paris Commune, Madeleine Pelletier belonged to the first generation of women for whom higher education was available and participation in mass political parties open. They shared not only the heritage of the Russian nihilists-Chernyshevsky's fictional Vera, Breshkovskaia, Perovskaia-they also grew up with stories of the Paris Commune and Louise Michel, whose funeral Pelletier and Alexandra Kollontai attended."

"is it not time that our limited tongues should fall into the ocean of speech and of human thought? What will be the language of mankind delivered to the new Aurora — Anarchy!"

"That is what we want to destroy — this annihilation — this eating of man by an other man."

"The ideal alone is the truth — it is the measure of our horizon. Time was when the ideal was to live without eating an other up. Is it not so still under another form which exists in the so-called civilized countries where the exploiter eats up the exploited? Do not the people in nocks fertilize the soil by their sweat and blood?"

"The land which belongs to all can no more be divided than the light which also belongs to all."

"In what would you that we should help those who govern—their work being only exploitation and wholesale murder—it has never been otherwise: the reason for the existence of a state is nothing but the accomplishment of some crime or other in order to assure the domination of a privileged class."

"We are Anarchists because it is absolutely impossible to obtain justice for all in any other way than by destroying institutions founded on force and privilege. We cannot believe that improvement is possible, if we still keep up the same institutions, now more rotten than in the past, or if we merely replace those whose iniquities are known by new men."

"One of the future revenges for the murder of Paris will be that of revealing the customary infamous betrayals of military reaction."