Activists From The United States

"I watched my life fade-away in a flash A quarter of a century dash through closets full of candles with never a room For rapture through a kingdom had been captured. And so I turn away from my drizzling furniture and pass old ladies Sniffling by movie stars' tombs, yes I must be home again soon. To face the unspoken unguarded thoughts of habitual hearts A vanguard of electricians a village full of tarts Who say you must protest you must protest It is your diamond duty… Ah but in such an ugly time the true protest is beauty And the bleeding seer crawled from the ruins of the empire And stood bleeding, bleeding on the border He said, passion has led to chaos and now chaos will lead to order. Oh I have been away for a while and I hope to be back again soon."

"In the courtroom, watch the balance of the scales If the price is right, there's time for more appeals The strings are pulled, the switch is stayed The finest lawyers fees are paid And a rich man never died upon the chair"

"Oh you tell me that there's danger to the land you call your own And you watch them build the war machine right beside your home And you tell me that you're ready to go marchin' to the war I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?"

"So do your duty, boys, and join with pride Serve your country in her suicide Find the flags so you can wave goodbye But just before the end even treason might be worth a try This country is too young to die I declare the war is over It's over, it's over."

"And I won't be laughing at the lies when I'm gone And I can't question how or when or why when I'm gone Can't live proud enough to die when I'm gone So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here."

"Dump the reds in a pile, boys Dump the reds in a pile You'd better wipe off that smile, boys Better wipe off that smile We'll spit through the streets of the cities we wreck We'll find you a leader that you can't elect Those treaties we signed were a pain in the neck 'Cause we're the cops of the world, boys We're the cops of the world."

"And the evil is done in hopes that evil surrenders but the deeds of the devil are burned too deep in the embers and a world of hunger in vengeance will always remember So please be reassured, we seek no wider war, we seek no wider war."

"Well I've seen travel in many ways I've traveled in cars and old subways But in Birmingham some people chose To fly down the street from a fire hose. Doin' some hard travelin'...from hydrants of plenty."

"Call it peace or call it treason, Call it love or call it reason, But I ain't marching anymore!"

"It's always the old to lead us to the war It's always the young to fall Now look at all we've won with the sabre and the gun Tell me is it worth it all."

"Here is a land full of power and glory Beauty that words cannot recall Oh her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom Her glory shall rest on us all."

"Yet she's only as rich as the poorest of the poor Only as free as a padlocked prison door Only as strong as our love for this land Only as tall as we stand!"

"Now they sing out his praises on every distant shore But so few remember what he was fightin' for Oh why sing the songs and forget about the aim? He wrote them for a reason, why not sing them for the same?"

"Show me a country where the bombs had to fall Show me the ruins of buildings so tall And I'll show you a young land With many reasons why There but for fortune, go you or I You or I."

"Show me an alley, show me a train Show me a hobo who sleeps out in the rain And I'll show you a young man With many reasons why There but for fortune, go you or I"

"Show me a prison, show me a jail Show me a pris'ner whose face has grown pale And I'll show you a young man With many reasons why There but for fortune, go you or I."

"The American Politician has developed into the gutless master of procrastination with a maximum of non-committal statement and the barest minimum of action. This moral vacuum is exceeded only by the apathetic public who allows him to stay in power."

"[The Yippie demonstrations] were merely an attack of mental disobedience on an obediently insane society ... and if you feel you have been living in an unreal world for the last couple of years, it is particularly because this power structure has refused to listen to reason ... Step outside the guidelines of the official umpires and make your own rules and your own reality."

"It is wrong to expect a reward for your struggles. The reward is the act of struggle itself, not what you win. Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt. That's morality, that's religion. That's art. That's life."

"I can spare a dime, brother, but in these morally inflationary times, a dime goes a lot farther if it's demanding work rather than adding to the indignity of relief."

"MR. KUNSTLER: Now, Mr. Ochs, have you ever been associated with what is called the Youth International Party, or, as we will say, the Yippies? THE WITNESS: Yes. I helped design the party, formulate the idea of what Yippie was going to be, in the early part of 1968. MR. KUNSTLER: Can you indicate to the Court and jury what Yippie was going to be, what its purpose was for its formation? THE WITNESS: The idea of Yippie was to be a form of theater politics, theatrically dealing with what seemed to be an increasingly absurd world and trying to deal with it in other than just on a straight moral level. They wanted to be able to act out fantasies in the street to communicate their feelings to the public."

"I write all my own songs and they are just simple melodies with a lot of lyrics. They usually have to do with current events and what is going on in the news. You can call them topical songs, songs about the news, and then developing into more philosophical songs later."

"I for one don't even believe that he's president. In order to have a president you need to have an election, in order to have an election you have to have a choice, and if you remember back to the primaries there were people running against the war, Kennedy and McCarthy. They often got 85 to 90% of the votes, but when it came time for the parties, that was totally ignored, so in point of fact, there really was no election. For a man who's always wanted to be president, and now that he's president, he's not even president."

"Leave the old and dying America and use your creative energies to help form a new America, which would be de-militarized, more humanistic, where the police are less hostile and closer to the community, where the wealthy are not given unleashed power for the exploitation of the people. And, mostly because it's now a matter of life and death, reassert an ecological balance with the environment, which means the people in the oil companies and the car companies and the space industry and all the other industries will have to be brought into account, so that there will be a new definition of government which has to be closer to the people and less close to special interests which are far more harmful than any revolutionaries."

"I was over there, entertaining the troops. I won't say which troops."

"Does defending liberalism leave you friendless and perhaps wondering about your breath?"

"In every American community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times. Ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally. Here, then, is a lesson in safe logic."

"Before the days of television and mass media, the folksinger was often a traveling newspaper spreading tales through music.... There is an urgent need for Americans to look deeply into themselves and their actions, and musical poetry is perhaps the most effective mirror available. Every newspaper headline is a potential song."

"I'm voting for Ralph Nader -- even though I think he's an asshole on abortion and issues of sexual politics generally -- in the hope that the Green Party will get 5 percent of the vote...We have to break through the current end-of-history, "no real change can ever happen" mentality on every front, and the best way to do that on Tuesday is to vote for Ralph Nader."

"There was a third-party candidate, Ralph Nader, whose national reputation came from decades of persistent criticism of corporate control of the economy. His program was sharply different from the two major candidates, emphasizing health care, education, and the environment. But he was shut out of the nationally televised debates during the campaign, and, without the support of big business, he had to raise money from the small contributions of people who believed in his program."

"Imagine how the last presidential campaign would have turned out if instead of the marketing circus that we were treated to, we were just given a weekly round table discussion between Bush, Gore, and Nader for a couple months running up to the election. No staged rallies, no TV images with flags flowing in the sunset, no pollsters. No marketing. Bush would have been luck to get two percent."

"I've always been with the one who rebels against false values. My heroes now are Ralph Nader and Daniel Ellsberg."

"I agree with Ralph Nader that we need to repeal NAFTA and all of those so-called free trade agreements, but they are — they don’t constitute fair trade. And with respect to Colombia, I can say that not only have I been to Colombia, I have seen the devastation of the militarization of our policy, particularly with Colombia, and the displacement particularly of the Afro-Colombian communities across that country."

"Ralph Nader's Breaking Through Power is a brilliant analysis of corporate power and the popular mechanisms that can be used to wrest back our democracy"

"the legendary consumer advocate"

"[E]stablish a public national complaint-handling system using the Internet to help consumers, taxpayers, and workers... It will also be a good way for policy makers to detect patterns. Patterns lead to deterrence..."

"People are being pushed around, disrespected, defrauded, injured, and given the runaround by arrogant corporate bureaucrats using nameless, robotic, and tyrannical "fine print" contract barricades."

"If the minimum wage of fifty years ago—$1.60 per hour—were adjusted for inflation, today it would amount to about $11 per hour. A long-overdue minimum wage hike would... end a decades-long windfall for employers... while [they were also] receiving many tax breaks and subsidies."

"My hope is that... I will open Democrats' and other progressives' eyes to the many values shared by the Left and Right... like the desire to end corporate welfare and convert to a renewable energy (solar) economy. ...the way to defeat Trump... is to embrace (not marginalize) issues such as raising the minimum wage. ...It is a question of do or just further fade away."

"Congress... has become a secret tyrannical bastion of Wall Street, and that outrages people..."

"To show you how much of a straight-arm the majorities in Congress are giving the people back home. They had a tax bill... for the rich, and the powerful, and the corporate, increasing the deficit, starving the public works investment and all the rest, and they didn't even have public hearings in the committee level, that's unheard of. Then they had five bills to destroy people's rights to have their day in court, if they're wrongfully injured. They got it through the House of Representatives, blocked in the Senate by the Democrats. They didn't even have public hearings in the House Judiciary. Then they tried to get rid of Obamacare, and they lost by one or two votes in the Senate, and they didn't even have public hearings."

"On the back of the book, I have the indictment of Congress. People... have no idea the damage... that Congress has inflicted. Its abandonment of its Constitutional powers as the most powerful branch of government. Its selling of elections for money and campaigns. Its closing out, even the people... I've seen Congress degrade to levels I've never believed possible. It's impossible to get through to some members'... offices even now, unless you're a campaign contributor. You might get the switchboard, if it isn't on voice-mail. Can you imagine..?"

"Democracy requires work. ...The more they feel they've got the members Congress on the run, the more energized they become."

"[I]n this book... the rallies... are different... they build from day to day... and... it's led by people who are full-time... and they open offices in Washington. ...Three enlightened billionaires come to town and they say... "Hey, let's fund this"... and a brain trust."

"I've been part of these mass protests... almost invariably on a Saturday, when the members of Congress are gone. ...The [organizers] ...are so exhausted that they don't... have the energy left to pass the funding buckets around... where they could raise hundreds of thousands of dollars and on Monday morning open an office with full-time lobbyists... Members of Congress have very good antennae... [they can sense that] there's no stamina... not a lot of follow-through."

"American politicians over the past 25 years have learned to quietly dismiss big rallies, demonstrations, and even temporary occupations, because they have gone nowhere."

"In the book, the appeal is to their fear glands... the fear of not getting re-elected. The fear of being challenged in a primary inside their own party... The greed glands were approached by the lobbyists, who tried to turn this mass movement of the people of our country to take control of Congress... They poured campaign money into their stalwarts..."

"When Reginald Blamer, in the book, went on "Meet the Press" and was questioned by Woodcock Toad, known as "Woody..." [Blamer] revealed his better self. He basically became a more humane person from this jolting experience, and he feared that the majority of Republicans were going to vote him out... some have a soft core... and their better angels [are] revealed under different kinds of stress and pressure."

"In the early 60s I wanted to get auto safety bills through the Congress, so I had to go to... ... [people said he was] totally in the pocket of the business lobbyists... Because of the rumble from the people... out of Seattle and other parts of the country, Warren Magnuson put his finger to the wind. ...He became the greatest champion of consumer legislation in the Congress in American history."

"In some... legislator's minds... like Mick Mulvaney... he really is mean, and he has no qualms of conscience. But I have met members of Congress... conservative Republicans, who do have qualms... John Boehner... the fictional character is Reginald Blamer, he came from a poor family of 11 children... so I have seen... people who have a public personae of ferocious oligarchy and plutocracy, but deep inside they know they're harming innocent people."