Activists From The United States

"Two Sundays ago, as snow softly fell, I spent 12 hours at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, listening to New Yorkers from every borough as they told me about the city that is theirs. We discussed construction hours on the Van Wyck Expressway and E.B.T. eligibility, affordable housing for artists and ICE raids. I spoke to a man named TJ who said that one day a few years ago, his heart broke as he realized he would never get ahead here, no matter how hard he worked. I spoke to a Pakistani Auntie named Samina, who told me that this movement had fostered something too rare: softness in people's hearts. As she said in Urdu: logon ke dil badalgyehe. [people's hearts have changed] 142 New Yorkers out of eight and a half million. And yet, if anything united each person sitting across from me, it was the shared recognition that this moment demands a new politics, and a new approach to power. We will deliver nothing less as we work each day to make this city belong to more of its people than it did the day before."

"New York state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, speaking with ABC News the day after achieving an upset in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, said that he believes his strategy that focused on affordability and economics could be a blueprint for Democrats across the country. "I think there's a question of how we return back to what made so many of us proud to be Democrats," Mamdani told ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott in an interview on Wednesday."

"We are special as DSA electeds not because of ourselves, we are special because of our organization."

"This campaign is for every person who believes in the dignity of their neighbors and that the government's job is to actually make our lives better."

"You know, this is not the first time that President Trump is going to comment on myself, and I encourage him -- just like I encourage every New Yorker -- to learn about my actual policies to make the city affordable But if he continues to focus on persecuting political enemies and on trying to detain and disappear New Yorkers, be it on the basis of their documentation or their sexual orientation or their politics, that is someone that I will fight time and again."

"We don't need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD."

"Every day in Gaza has become a place where grief, itself, has run out of language, I mourn these lives and pray for the families that have been shattered. Our government has been complicit through it all. This must end. The occupation and apartheid must end."

"For too long in our city, freedom has belonged only to those who can afford to buy it. Our City Hall will change that. These promises carried our movement to City Hall, and they will carry us from the rallying cries of a campaign to the realities of a new era in politics."

"If our campaign demonstrated that the people of New York yearn for solidarity, then let this government foster it. Because no matter what you eat, what language you speak, how you pray, or where you come from, the words that most define us are the two we all share: New Yorkers. And it will be New Yorkers who reform a long-broken property tax system. New Yorkers who will create a new Department of Community Safety that will tackle the mental health crisis and let the police focus on the job they signed up to do. New Yorkers who will take on the bad landlords who mistreat their tenants and free small business owners from the shackles of bloated bureaucracy. And I am proud to be one of those New Yorkers. When we won the primary last June, there were many who said that these aspirations and those who held them had come out of nowhere. Yet one man's nowhere is another man's somewhere. This movement came out of eight and a half million somewheres — taxi cab depots and Amazon warehouses, D.S.A. meetings and curbside domino games. The powers that be had looked away from these places for quite some time — if they'd known about them at all — so they dismissed them as nowhere. But in our city, where every corner of these five boroughs holds power, there is no nowhere and there is no no one. There is only New York, and there are only New Yorkers."

"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF."

"This will not be a tale of one city, governed only by the one percent. Nor will it be a tale of two cities, the rich versus the poor. It will be a tale of eight and a half million cities, each of them a New Yorker with hopes and fears, each a universe, each of them woven together. The authors of this story will speak Pashto and Mandarin, Yiddish and Creole. They will pray in mosques, at shul, at church, at Gurdwaras and Mandirs and temples. And many will not pray at all. They will be Russian Jewish immigrants in Brighton Beach, Italians in Rossville, and Irish families in Woodhaven — many of whom came here with nothing but a dream of a better life, a dream which has withered away. They will be young people in cramped Marble Hill apartments where the walls shake when the subway passes. They will be Black homeowners in St. Albans whose homes represent a physical testament to triumph over decades of lesser-paid labor and redlining. They will be Palestinian New Yorkers in Bay Ridge, who will no longer have to contend with a politics that speaks of universalism and then makes them the exception."

"Eight and a half million New Yorkers will speak this new era into existence. It will be loud. It will be different. It will feel like the New York we love. No matter how long you have called this city home, that love has shaped your life. I know that it has shaped mine."

"To live in New York, to love New York, is to know that we are the stewards of something without equal in our world. … Where else could a Muslim kid like me grow up eating bagels and lox every Sunday? That love will be our guide as we pursue our agenda. Here, where the language of the New Deal was born, we will return the vast resources of this city to the workers who call it home. Not only will we make it possible for every New Yorker to afford a life they love once again — we will overcome the isolation that too many feel, and connect the people of this city to one another."

"All dominating elites and rulers depend for their sources of power upon the cooperation of the population and of the institutions of the society they would rule."

"The most important single quality of any government, without which it would not exist, must be the obedience and submission of its subjects. Obedience is at the heart of political power."

"It's difficult to be an iconoclast. It's much easier to go along. Men like Liteky are people who should force us to pause and think. They should not be ostracized and criticized. They are entitled to their views, and perhaps if we listened, we'd be better off."

"Chaplain Liteky distinguished himself by exceptional heroism while serving with Company A, 4th Battalion, 12th Infantry, 199th Light Infantry Brigade. He was participating in a search-and-destroy operation when Company A came under intense fire from a battalion-size enemy force. Momentarily stunned from the immediate encounter that ensued, the men hugged the ground for cover. Observing two wounded men, Chaplain Liteky moved to within 15 meters of an enemy machine-gun position to reach them, placing himself between the enemy and the wounded men. When there was a brief respite in the fighting, he managed to drag them to the relative safety of the landing zone. Inspired by his courageous actions, the company rallied and began placing a heavy volume of fire upon the enemy positions. In a magnificent display of courage and leadership, Chaplain Liteky began moving upright through the enemy fire, administering last rites to the dying and evacuating the wounded. Noticing another trapped and seriously wounded man, Chaplain Liteky crawled to his aid. Realizing that the wounded man was too heavy to carry, he rolled on his back, placed the man on his chest and through sheer determination and fortitude crawled back to the landing zone using his elbows and heels to push himself along. Pausing for breath momentarily, he returned to the action and came upon a man entangled in the dense, thorny underbrush. Once more intense enemy fire was directed at him, but Chaplain Liteky stood his ground and calmly broke the vines and carried the man to the landing zone for evacuation. On several occasions when the landing zone was under small-arms and rocket fire, Chaplain Liteky stood up in the face of hostile fire and personally directed the medivac helicopters into and out of the area. With the wounded safely evacuated, Chaplain Liteky returned to the perimeter, constantly encouraging and inspiring the men. Upon the unit's relief on the morning of 7 December 1967, it was discovered that despite painful wounds in the neck and foot, Chaplain Liteky had personally carried over 20 men to the landing zone for evacuation during the savage fighting. Through his indomitable inspiration and heroic actions, Chaplain Liteky saved the lives of a number of his comrades and enabled the company to repulse the enemy. Chaplain Liteky's actions reflect great credit upon himself and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Army."

"I consider it an honor to be going to prison as a result of an act of conscience in response to a moral imperative that impelled and obligated me to speak for the voices silenced by graduates of the School of the Americas... We're doing acts of civil disobedience in the tradition of our democracy."

"If there is an enemy here, it's violence. We need to protest and boycott violence because we eat, drink and sleep it in our country; we are entertained by it. If we don't stop, we're just going to join in an unending cycle of violence, like an escalator that keeps going up and up and up."

"Doug has done more for Indian relations in North Dakota than any governor in my lifetime, for sure, and maybe ever."

"The stigmatization extended far beyond the illness itself, Cliff explains. “It was as if the door to darkness had been opened and all the taboos were out there—sex, death, homosexuality, drug use ... Things that people had never heard discussed openly before.”"

"I would go in patients' rooms and you could tell that they hadn't had a bath. They weren't being taken care of."

"Harris not charismatic"

"Religious freedom in this country now means Muslims are free to do as they please and anyone who says anything about it is a bigot"

"Until they let us build churches in Saudi Arabia, we shouldn’t let them build mosque in America."

"["Robinson suggested the Holocaust was a hoax"] This foolishness about Hitler disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash."

"We now find ourselves struggling with people who have evil intent. You know, there's a time when we used to meet evil on the battlefield, and guess what we did to it? We killed it! ... When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, what did we do? We flew to Japan! And we killed the Japanese Army and Navy! ... We didn't argue and capitulate and talk about, well, maybe we shouldn't fight the Nazis that hard. No, they're bad. Kill them. Some liberal somewhere is going to say that sounds awful. Too bad. Get mad at me if you want to. Some folks need killing! It's time for somebody to say it. It's not a matter of vengeance. It's not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It's a matter of necessity! When you have wicked people doing wicked things, torturing and murdering and raping. It's time to call out, uh, those guys in green and go have them handled. Or those boys in blue and have them go handle it. ..."

"Half of black Democrats don't realize they are slaves and don't know who their masters are. The other half don't care."

"Mein Kampf is a good read. [...] It's very informative and not at all what I thought it would be. It’s a real eye opener."

"I like watching tranny on girl porn! That’s f*cking hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in! And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!"

"I am a black NAZI!"

"I'm not in the KKK. They don’t let blacks join."

"If the allegations put forth by KFile and CNN are false, get a really good attorney, come up with a modicum of evidence that disproves some of it, sue them and settle in court. If you’re not able to do that within a reasonable period of time, then it puts weight to the likely reality that some, maybe not all, but some of these allegations are true, and if they are, they’re devastating and disqualifying."

"I won’t be campaigning for Robinson."

"It shouldn’t be that difficult to disprove the basis for some of these reports, if they’re untrue."

"[About then-President Barack Obama:] Get that f*cking commie bastard off the National Mall!"

"We have to cherish Mark ... he's like a fine wine. He's an outstanding person."

"Some folks need killing! It's time for somebody to say it. ... It’s not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It’s a matter of necessity!"

"This is Martin Luther King on steroids. I told that to Mark. I said, ‘I think you’re better than Martin Luther King. I think you are Martin Luther King times two.’"

"I don't care how much you cut yourself up, drug yourself up and dress yourself up, you still either one of two things — you either a man or a woman."

"There's no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth."

"Homosexuality is STILL an abominable sin and I WILL NOT join in 'celebrating gay pride' nor will I fly their sacrilegious flag on my page."

"I am not surprised by Mark Robinson’s alleged inflammatory and offensive comments about my father. His praise for slavery, disparaging rhetoric, and grotesque characterization of my dad and his legacy are deeply worrisome for North Carolinians and all Americans who oppose racism and bigotry. We must work to ensure Mark Robinson gets nowhere near the governor’s office."

"Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slavery) back. I would certainly buy a few."

"We have pushed homosexuality over the top. Mark my words PEDOPHILLA (sic) is next, which will be closely followed by the END of civilization as we know it."

"When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language."

"One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter."

"If you live in an oppressive society, you've got to be resilient. You can't let each little thing crush you. You have take every encounter and make yourself larger, rather than allow yourself to be diminished by it."

"I have never traveled to anyone else's drumbeat. Some people have called me a rebel. I qualify as one. A lot of it is inadvertent, unintentional, not a gesture at all, just me, just the nature of myself, finding my own drumbeat."

"Anarchism, if it means anything, means being open to whatever it takes in thinking, living, and in our relationships—to live fully and win. In some ways, I think they are both the same: living to the fullest is to win. Of course we will and must clash with our oppressors and we need to find good ways of doing it. Remember those on the bottom who are most impacted by this. They might have different perspectives on how this fight is supposed to go. If we can’t find ways for meeting face-to-face to work that stuff out, old ghosts will re-appear and we will be back in the same old situation that we have been in before. You all can do this. You have the vision. You have the creativity. Do not allow anyone to lock that down."