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Whether you win or lose a battle in the long run doesn’t matter: the question is did you fight it hard. Tony Benn, Last Will & Testament ***** Youtube 1.31.36
Change from below, the formulation of demands from the populace to end unacceptable injustice, supported by direct action, has played a far larger part in shaping British democracy than most constitutional lawyers, political commentators, historians or statesmen have ever cared to admit. Direct action in a democratic society is fundamentally an educational exercise. Tony Benn, New Politics, 1970
[The first principle of British democracy is] our prime duty to each other and to what our conscience tells us to be right. If this leads individuals into conflict with the law, those individuals must be ready to take the consequences non-violently. In our democracy no man should tell another man to break the law, nor should any man break the law to by-pass Parliament. But a person who is punished for breaking an unjust law may if he is sincere and his cause wins public sympathy, create a public demand to have that unjust law changed through Parliament. This is the first and most fundamental principle of British democracy. It has a deep moral significance. Our religious and political liberties rest upon it. Tony Benn, speech Bristol, cited The Times 5 August 1972
There is no final victory as there is no final defeat. There is just the same battle. To be fought over and over again. So toughen up. Bloody toughen up. Tony Benn
The struggle for freedom and independence never is completely over. Professor Noam Chomsky
Killing is just superficial; it’s just the icing on the cake. I mean there’s plenty of repression short of killing. And it’s tough. People lose their jobs, they get blacklisted … There’s all kinds of ways of getting rid of people who are troublemakers from kindergarten up. And organising succeeds when people are willing to face those pressures and overcome them. And it’s hard to know what the secret is; sometimes people do it … For us it’s a picnic; what we call repression, in most of the world would be called a gift. I mean, go to a place like El Salvador and try to organise there; there it’s not a matter of they don’t like you, you end up in a ditch cut to pieces after torture – that’s what it means to organise there: they still do it, they keep coming back. Noam Chomsky, lecture 1992, ‘Deterring Democracy’
There’s an enormous number of people who are involved in an informal disorganised activist dissident culture and they tend to make their own connections. Noam Chomsky, Conversation with Charlie Rose 2003, Youtube 54.54
Activism doesn’t give up. Activism doesn’t fall silent. Activism doesn’t rely on the opiate of hope. Woody Allen once said, ‘I felt a lot better when I gave up hope’. Real activism has little time for identity politics, which like exceptionalism can be fake. These are distractions that confuse and sucker good people. John Pilger, Socialism Chicago 2009, ‘Power Illusion and America’s Last Taboo’; viz also website
Yes, a lot of good people mobilised for Obama. But what did they demand of him? Working to elect a Democratic presidential candidate may seem like activism but it isn’t. Activism doesn’t give up. Activism doesn’t fall silent. Activism doesn’t rely on the opiate of hope. John Pilger, Obama and Empire
Gay people: we will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets; we are coming out. Harvey Milk, murdered San Francisco
Burst down those closet doors once and for all, and stand up and start to fight. Harvey Milk
It’s not my victory, it's yours and yours and yours. If a gay can win, it means there is hope that the system can work for all minorities if we fight. We’ve given them hope. Harvey Milk
It is human agitation, with all the vulgarity of needs small and great, with its flagrant disgust for the police who repress it, it is the agitation of all men ... that alone determines revolutionary mental forms, in opposition to bourgeois mental forms. Georges Bataille
I’ve always had the impression that real militants are like cleaning women, doing a thankless, daily but necessary job. Francois Truffaut
Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilisation. Oscar Wilde
If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake. Mahatma Gandhi
Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. Howard Thurman
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead, attributed, cited Donald Keys
If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. E B White
You do it for yourself. You don’t expect to change the world. You don’t even expect to influence your family or your friends. You do it because you can’t not do it and be who you are. Or who you’re meant to be. Martin Sheen
Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number;
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you;
Ye are many – They are few. Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Mask of Anarchy
Stop the SPP Rally Toronto, Canada 16th February 2008. PSTV.tv – The Nation’s Deathbed
Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and MeetUp have become a central tool for activists. ibid.
This first line of riot cops they didn’t have any gas masks ... most of them had a white patch on their shoulder ... stood there I would say for about an hour and a half to two hours ... A shift change ... These guys had a red patch on the shoulder ... The third shift change of riot police ... The intimidate factor has been stepped up by police. ibid.
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. Abraham Lincoln
The way to change it was the exact opposite of waiting to see if a scientific experiment would work out. It was for human beings to involve themselves in the struggle on the side of the oppressed. Marx’s life was a model of that involvement. In his youth, in quick succession, he was thrown out of Germany, Belgium and France, because he threw himself into the struggles of workers in all three countries. In France he associated closely with the fighting elements in the working class, and never forgot his admiration for them. Finally in 1849, aged 31, he came to England (where there was no immigration control) and settled here for the rest of his life. Paul Foot, Karl Marx: The Best Hated Man
Only through the conscious action of the working masses in city and country can it be brought to life, only through the people’s highest intellectual maturity and inexhaustible idealism can it be brought safely through all storms and find its way to port. Rosa Luxemburg
In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime. Desmond Tutu
Blair and New Labour thrive on pessimism … The antidote to pessimism is the understanding that we do make a difference. Blair didn’t scrap the Poll Tax – we did. New Labour didn’t end apartheid – we did. What keeps campaigners going is not a naïve faith that one sugary day we can make the world a better place, but the knowledge that defying authority already makes the world a better place. Mark Steel, Reasons to be Cheerful
In Montebello back in 2007 there was three police officers who were dressed as aggressive protesters with rocks in their hands wearing masks in an attempt to incite violence … Into the Fire, Press for Truth 2011
Toronto G20 summit: ‘this is a completely unprecedented level of police’ … ibid.
‘Why would certain rights be suspended just because the G20 is coming to town?’ ibid. to rozzers