Activists From The United States

"Indeed, taxation and other forms of aggression-through-government are so taken for granted in our culture that one of our most popular sayings is that ‘nothing is certain except death and taxes.’ Yet slavery was once as universal. Taxation is thought to be indispensable to civilization today, just as slavery once was. Advocates of taxation claim that since most people pay assigned taxes before the guns show up, they have implicitly agreed to it as the price of living in ‘society.’ Most slaves obeyed their master before he got out the whip, yet we would hardly argue that this constituted agreement to their servitude. Today, we have an enlightened perspective on slavery, just as one day we will have an enlightened perspective on taxes and other forms of aggression we now think of as ‘the only way.’"

"Those too poor to own their own home pay no property taxes, but their rent reflects the taxes that the landlord must pay. The poor pay higher rents to subsidize inefficiency and waste."

"As children relating to others, we learned a great deal about creating peace and prosperity. Most of us can remember Mom or Dad prying us apart from a playmate after we came to blows. ‘Who started it?’ often determined who received the most severe punishment. Even at a tender, we could see that if no one hit first, no fight was possible."

"Bureaucrats have little incentive for efficiency when consumers must pay for the service, whether they use it or not. The proof of this inefficiency is the enormous savings enjoyed when public services are contracted out to private firms instead of being performed by government employees. California cities save between 37% and 96% by contracting out their street cleaning, janitorial services, trash collection, traffic signal repairs, grass cutting, and street maintenance/overlay construction"

"Today, of course, aggression once again keeps the disadvantaged from creating wealth for themselves and their loved ones. Minimum wage laws exclude unskilled workers from the Job market, while increasing the prices they must pay for goods and services. Licensing laws squeeze small companies out of business. Sixty percent of all new Jobs in the United States."

"Many individuals are capable of creating wealth but are excluded from the job market by minimum wage and licensing laws. Much poverty can be alleviated by allowing people to create wealth at whatever level they can and ‘work their way up.’"

"The housing problem that generates homelessness has been linked to the aggression of rent control, zoning restrictions, building codes, and construction moratoriums, all of which limit the availability of inexpensive housing. When construction is limited and landlords can charge only a minimal rent, they naturally rent to only the most affluent ten-ants. rather than the poor who might be late in their payments. Once again, aggression hurts those it is supposed to protect."

"As long as we employ the guns of government to force our neighbors to our will, aggression will be the instrument by which we enslave ourselves. This is as true of global government as it is of our local and national ones."

"as a woman, it's absolutely clear to me that we have the freedom of creating alternate myths, and for Frank Chin, as a male, there is a monolith, one monument of a myth. The other difference-I just discovered this recently and am very surprised at this coincidence-I think he just published his translation of The Art of War [Sun Tzu, ca., 500 B.C., ascribed to Sun Wu], one of the traditional Chinese books of war. He's brought this into the world at the same time that I am writing my book of peace. You can see the fundamental difference in values."

"("San Francisco writer Edward Iwata wrote, "The struggle between Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston is a literary battle for the soul of Asian Americans". How do you respond to this?") A: For a while I just thought, Why doesn't Frank Chin just shut up and go home and write? The only way he's making a literary reputation is to attack me. He doesn't have anything else going for him. That's his career. And by doing that he is destroying himself as a writer because he is just wasting his words. This idea of writing for the soul of Asian America-maybe there is something there. I no longer read Frank Chin, but I hear that the latest works are an attempt to find Chinese American manhood through a violent, warrior mythos, trying to find an identity with killers, with knights from the past who solved things by going to war. He says that our history is one of battle, of blood. I know that he has battle cries and one of his mottoes is, "War." He says it in Chinese. I am going in the completely different direction. I am looking for a language of peace. I am trying to rewrite a book of peace. And so maybe that is fighting for the soul, not just of Chinese American people, but the human soul. I want the human soul to be one where people care for one another and where people cherish and nourish and value one another, and I am trying to think of ways of conflict resolution that have to do with talking or hugging or something, whereas his idea of conflict resolution is to kill each other."

"there are plenty of black men and Asian men who love Alice Walker's work. And they love my work. And there isn't even a battle going on. It's Ishmael Reed all by himself. It's Frank all by himself. But the press plays it up as if it's all these Asian men against me. I think that for a while Frank got so much press because the press didn't know who else to call. So every time a new book comes out, they call Frank and then he speaks as if he's speaking for everyone and says, "Oh, we hate Amy Tan; we hate Maxine." But it's just him; he doesn't speak for anybody."

"What are the real important issues at stake? I have identified two. One of them is the racial and cultural myths. Whom do they belong to? Frank would say they belong to real Chinese such as himself. And they do not belong to, for example, the Caucasians. My feeling is, if somebody goes to a bookstore and buys my book, then they have bought the myths, and they can have the great myths of China by reading them. The only way that myths stay alive is if we pass them on. He has also been saying that there is a true text, including the chant of the Woman Warrior. Now I know that myth is not passed on by text; it's mostly passed on by word of mouth, and every time you tell a story and every time you hear it, it's different. So there isn't one frozen authentic version; there are many, many authentic versions different from person to person."

"My main concern was to write a novel that uses all of this stuff that is accessible, to write a novel that deals with white racism and Chinese American history and the real Chinese fairy tales and the heroic tradition, and to demonstrate that a Chinese American could do all of this without sending whites up the wall or alienating anybody…"

"The first thing that begins to happen when you begin taking yourself seriously as a writer is this imaginary writer’s block that people talk about, but I never really suffered from. But there’s this barrier between the spoken word and the written word, once you set something down in writing it’s supposed to be set in stone or you take on this funny attitude that writing is unnatural…"

"That this play is the first play by an Asian American at our existence, is proof of the great success white racism has had with us. America might love us. But America’s love is not good. It’s racist love. I don’t want it."

"I am out of theatre. I will not work with any theatre, producer, writer, director, or actor who plays and lives the stereotype. So I write fiction, essays, and articles."

"In some respects this was a great loss, because Mrs. Terrell was by all odds the best educated woman among us and had proved herself an able presiding officer and parliamentarian. She had in the beginning the undivided affection of all the women who formed that organization, and it seemed such a pity that selfish ambition should destroy her opportunity to have led the organization to even greater heights."

"I have no creative use for guilt, yours or my own. Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices, out of the approaching storm that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees. If I speak to you in anger, at least I have spoken to you: I have not put a gun to your head and shot you down in the street; I have not looked at your bleeding sister’s body and asked, “What did she do to deserve it?” This was the reaction of two white women to Mary Church Terrell’s telling of the lynching of a pregnant Black woman whose baby was then torn from her body. That was in 1921, and Alice Paul had just refused to publicly endorse the enforcement of the Nineteenth Amendment for all women — by refusing to endorse the inclusion of women of Color, although we had worked to help bring about that amendment."

"We all felt very proud of ourselves, walking along in our caps and gowns. One of the largest and loveliest sections was made up of uniformed nurses. It was very impressive. Then we had a foreign section, and a men’s section, and a Negro women’s section from the National Association of Colored Women, led by Mary Church Terrell. She was the first colored woman to graduate from Oberlin, and her husband was a judge in Washington. Well, Mrs. Terrell got together a wonderful group to march, and then, suddenly, our members from the South said they wouldn’t march. Oh, the newspapers just thought this was a wonderful story and developed it to the utmost. I remember that that was when the men’s section came to the rescue. The leader, a Quaker I knew, suggested that the men march between the southern delegations and the colored women’s section, and that finally satisfied the southern women. That was the greatest hurdle we had"

"What a fine thing it would be if the North were as loyal to what it claims to be its principles as the South to its views? p. 290"

"By a miracle the 19th amendment has been ratified, we women now have a weapon of defense ... it will be a shame to us if we do not use it … we shall give our enemies a stick with which to break our head, Hold meetings, every time you meet a woman talk to her about going to the polls and vote! p.310"

"Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell, two women who helped shape the main contours of the civil-rights movement in the United States in the twentieth century."

"Colored people so seldom tell certain truths about conditions which confront their race that when they do, even white people who are interested in them feel that they must be “bitter”. p.175"

"I arose and said, As a colored woman, I hope this association will include in the resolution the injustices of various kinds of which colored people are the victims." p. 143"

"In the early 1890’s it required a great deal of courage for a woman to publicly to acknowledge before an audience that she believed in suffrage for her sex when she knew a majority did not. p.144"

"Mary Church Terrell, a life-long member of NAWSA and the first Black woman to serve on a board of education anywhere in the United States (she was appointed to the Washington, D.C., Board of Education in 1894), was a frequent speaker at suffrage conventions. Her first such appearance was on February 18, 1898, at the Columbia Theater in Washington, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Seneca Falls, New York, woman's rights convention. Her speech was titled, "The Progress of Colored Women." She began this way: "Fifty years ago a meeting such as this, planned, conducted and addressed by women would have been an impossibility. Less than forty years ago, few sane men would have predicted that either a slave or one of his descendants would in this century at least address such an audience in the nation's capital at the invitation of women representing the highest, broadest, best type of womanhood, that can be found anywhere in the world. Thus to me this semi-centennial of the National American Woman Suffrage Association is a double jubilee, rejoicing as I do, not only in the prospective enfranchisement of my sex but in the emancipation of my race.”"

"When Elizabeth Cady Stanton presented a resolution demanding equal political rights for Women in Seneca falls in 1848, the only person there willing to second it was Fredrick Douglas, … and it was his masterful arguments and matchless eloquence that the resolution passed despite powerful opposition. Therefore, whenever the women of this country pause long enough to think about the hard fight which had to be waged so as to enable them to enjoy their rights as citizens …they should remember the great debt of gratitude they owe to a colored man at a crucial occasion point when no other man was willing to come to their aid. pp. 169-170"

"I could wish no better, brighter future for the boys and the girls who are so fortunate as to attend this beautiful, well-appointed Mott school than that they emulate the courage, the unselfishness, and the zeal in all good work which were such conspicuous and beautiful traits in the character of that saintly woman, for whom this building which we dedicate to day is named."

"Has the Negro girl proved herself worthy of the intellectual advantages which have been given her? What is your answer when I tell you that Negro women stand at the helm of outstanding enterprises; such are: Nannie Borroughs — Charlotte Hawkins Brown; they are proprietors of business — we recall Madam Walker and Annie Malone; they are doing excellent work in the field of Medicine, Literary Art, Painting and Music. Of that large group let us mention Mary Church Terrell and Jessie Fauset; Hazel Harrison, Caterina Jarbors and Marian Anderson as beacon lights. One very outstanding woman is a banner. Others are leaders in Politics."

"She used her brain and systematized her work, so that she might find time to do good in the world. The time many wives and mother of her day frittered away in gayety and embroidery she spent in reading and committing to memory choice thoughts in poetry and prose."

"Lucretia Mott traveled thousands of miles, when travelling was much more difficult and far less pleasant than it is to day, holding meetings all through New England and even venturing in some of the slave States to arouse the conscience and touch the hearts of the people concerning the woes and wrongs heaped upon 4,000,000 slaves. She was often debarred from the use of public halls and suffered persecution of every conceivable nature even at the hands of those who called themselves Christians — yes even from her own religious sect, the Quakers, because of her activity in behalf of the slave. Once but wonder at the cool, calm courage of the small, fragile, gentle Lucretia Mott who never at any time of her life weighed more than 90 pounds, and much of the time did not weigh even that, as she faced the violence of hostile mobs. More than once her long, gray Quaker cloak was singed with vitriol thrown at her through windows by howling, hooting mobs during the meetings which she addressed. Nothing illustrates the courage and the tact [of] the little woman more than an experience she had, when she, the other speakers and the audience were driven from an abolition meeting in Philadelphia by an angry mob. She placed a friend who was with her under the care of a gentleman. “But what will you do”, inquired the lady. “This man”, replied Mrs. Mott touching the arm of a man among the hooting ruffians who had broken up the meeting, “will see me through safely, I think.” The man was so impressed with the sweetness of her manner and the angelic expression of her countenance that he instantly responded to her appeal [and] protected her from further insult as they passed through the hostile crowd."

"Tho thorny the path and rough the road, forward she pressed to do the work for the persecuted and afflicted which she felt called to perform."

"How long the emancipation of the slave might have been delayed, had it not been for those Female Anti-Slavery Societies established largely through the efforts of Lucretia Mott, and other noble women like her, no human being can tell...Many a poor trembling slave was lifted from bondage into freedom by means of the underground railroad which ran through the home of James and Lucretia Mott. She helped and befriended free colored people and protested in season and out against the cruel exhibition of prejudice against them from which they suffered in the North."

"I can not believe that the great mass of Americans, who fought for freedom and who love justice, are awake to the shocking and systematic subversion of all law and order in the South. To ignorance and not to connivance must we charge the wicked apathy of some of the best citizens of the country. Open their eyes to the magnitude and hideousness of the evil flourishing in the South, blighting the lives and wrecking the happiness of men whose labor has enriched and whose blood has been shed for this country and I can not believe that by their silence and indifference they will continue to be accomplices in crime. Let us impress upon men and women whose hearts are not dead to law and love that there are citizens in the South who are deprived of all the rights of citizenship, denied even the right to life, who are hunted down and butchered like wild animals, and I am persuaded that the inquisition will be throttled to death."

"In Mr. T. Thomas Fortune of the New York Age we possess a journalist who has always felt this responsibility, who has always been a power for good, a journalist whose opinions have been an education and whose sentiments an inspiration to all earnest souls."

"When Miss Wells, a journalist of the South, exiled for daring to use the prerogative of free speech in defence of her own race, fled to the South, it was Mr. Fortune who espoused her cause, and made it possible for her to continue the good work so nobly begun. We admire Miss Wells for her undaunted courage, we laud her zeal in so worthy a cause, we ecourage her ambition to enlighten the mind and touch the heart by a thrilling and earnest recital of the wrongs heaped upon her oppressed people in the South."

"Mr. Chauncy M. Depew in his oration delivered at the dedicatory exercises of the World’s Fair a few days ago said, “The United States is a christian country and a living and practical christianity is characteristic of its people.” In his conviction that this is a christian country, that a living and practical christianity is characteristic of its people we naturally conclude that Mr. Depew along with other truthful, law-abiding citizens of this great commonwealth is ignorant of the many barbarities, and the fiendish atrocities visited by the Southern Whites upon the defenceless and persecuted Blacks. We must conclude that Mr. Depew is not aware of the knavish methods employed to disfranchise the Negro or of the scandalous compliances resorted to which transform the courts from seats of justice into veritable haunts of inquisition and corruption wherever the Afro-American is concerned."

"We extend to her a cordial welcome, we offer her our hearty support. In suppressing Miss Wells paper, the Free Speech, tyranny has wrought a good work of which it little dreamed. The fetters placed upon truth in the South are here transformed into weapons against itself."

"Look back over the history of the ages, and whence has come the inspiration of those who have lifted themselves from the level of the brute to the dignity of manhood? Has it not come from the oppressor’s chains? Tyranny’s mission is to teach. It has Proclaimed in clarion tones, which have echoed and re-echoed through all the battles, “Man must be free.”"

"We colored women own [sic] her a two-fold debt of gratitude. Her persecutions were greater than those of Garrison or Phillips. She was never a coward, not even among pistols. She contributed her work, but while I would not attempt to try to underage her work, there is almost as much work to-day as there was fifty or sixty years ago. In many States colored men are deprived of their right to vote and are held as slaves in peonage."

"We congratulate ourselves upon having two such efficient and zealous workers as Miss Wells and Mr. Fortune to address us tonight. The harvest truly is great but the labourers are few."

"The name of Lucretia Mott has been written in the history of this country which records the deeds of those who have spent their lives trying to lift their fellow men to a higher plane and relieve the suffering of the world in letters which can never fade."

"Lucretia Mott shines more brilliantly in the galaxy of the good and great because of her work as an abolitionist and her efforts to improve the condition of woman"

"Superman has got nothing on me because my kids gave me that perspective...They don’t know what they did for me. Maybe they’ll find out now and will read about it when they are big. They’ll understand what they did for me. If they gave up their piggy bank, then I have to give mine."

"Being Ricky Martin back then and what I was feeling were not compatible...I was the sex symbol and I needed to dance and I needed to make girls crazy and I couldn't say that I was gay. It was a struggle."

"I won’t stop singing in Spanish...It’s my mother tongue. [It’s] important to let people know more about Latin culture and exchange a little bit — it’s what I’ve been doing for seven years, since I released my first solo album."

"...the most uncomfortable and saddest times of my life. I thought my emotions were evil because that’s what they told me. You’re not supposed to feel like this."

"The whole concept of authority has to be redefined. People have to understand that individuals, not positions, merit respect. Negro america and white america assume that positions mandate respect. When this respect for position does not materialize, they begin to utilize force. This is why the Black world has rejected both negro america and white america and their ideas of authority."

"In negro america, anything the teacher or the preacher or the doctor says is law. Not because it's right, but because of who said it. In white america, if the President or Senator Dipshit says it, no one challenges it. It can be wrong as hell, but everybody applauds anyway. I don't give a shit who says what. If the muthafucka is wrong, he's wrong."

"In this country, authority is a cover for wrong. I don't respect wrong and I don't respect authority that represents wrong."