Joe Slovo - Matewan 1987 - Vive le Revolution! Joan Bakewell on May 1968 TV - Bobby Seale - Billy Bragg - Aung San Suu Kyi - Dolores 2017 - Abby Martin TV - Chris Hedges - Free the Network 2012 - The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution 2015 - Georgia Pouliquen - Prisoners’ Wives: Visiting Hour TV - The Irishman 2019 - Mrs Thatcher vs The Miners: The Battle for Britain TV - Hemingway TV - Adam Curtis TV - Utah Phillips - Jeremy Corbyn - Play for Today TV - The Wednesday Play TV - Ken Loach: Days of Hope TV - Wapping: The Workers' Story 2024 -
The choice that you face is that you either continue to be able to make a contribution to the struggle or not. Joe Slovo
It were 1920 in the south-west field and things was tough. The miners was trying to bring the union to West Virginia and the coal operators and their gun thugs was set on keeping ’em out. Matewan ***** 1987 starring Chris Cooper & James Earl Jones & Mary McDonnell & Will Oldham & David Strathairn & Ken Jenkins & Gordon Clapp & Bob Gunton & John Mostel & Kevin Tighe & John Sayles et al, director John Sayles
We did it, Mamma. We’re going to have the union. ibid. miner
You don’t want to go there, mister. Ain’t nuttin’ but crazy people. ibid. train guard
These picks and shovels are to be considered a loan from the Stone Mountain Coal Company. Their cost will be deducted from the first month’s pay. ibid. company man
I was with the Wobblies. ibid. Convenor
If you stand alone, you’re just so much shit to those people. ibid.
You work, they don’t: that’s all you got to know about the enemy. ibid.
The union didn’t have too much it could give to the people back then. All we got in common is our misery. ibid. commentary
A new day coming: sometimes I could just about see it. But it were a dangerous living for a union man and you didn’t dare turn your back. It was hard time. It was hungry times too. The union relief was spread thin, and hope of a new day could feed your soul but leave your belly rumbling. ibid.
De Gaulle’s complacency seems hard to believe 50 years on but he wasn’t alone: few imagined how momentous and tumultuous 1968 would turn out to be. So how did it happen within five months of that new year speech France was brought to a standstill and De Gaule’s government almost toppled by the worst rioting seen in Paris since the revolution – the earlier one? Vive le Revolution! Joan Bakewell on May 1968, BBC 2018
As the anti-war protests gathered strength they began to coincide with that other great movement that had been sweeping America since the 1950s – the Civil Rights movement. ibid.
Three months into 1968, on March 17th that year, London’s Grosvenor Square became a battleground. ibid.
Czechoslovakia: But for the time being the dreams were not fulfilled. After three months of dizzy optimism the Russian tanks rolled across to the border to suppress what had been a defiant challenge to the Soviet grip on eastern Europe. ibid.
Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, the great feminist writer, both came out in favour of the students. (Revolution & Protest & Dissent & Solidarity & 1960s) ibid.
On May 13th the trade unions announced a general strike … the workers had their own objectives … By May 22nd that figure had swollen to ten million. ibid.
The Utopian dream of May had not been realised. ibid.
You don’t fight racism with racism, the best way to fight racism is with solidarity. Bobby Seale
In that sense, I became politicized because the people in the coal mining villages who were involved in the struggle knew why they were there. But they couldn’t understand why some pop star from London would want to be there. Billy Bragg
Solidarity is a beautiful word because it means that you reach out to those who are different from you and who have to cope with different circumstances because we recognize that we all share the same human needs and same values. It is the values that count most of all. The value of freedom of thought, the value of democratic practices, the value of respect for your fellow human beings. Aung San Suu Kyi
While Martin Luther King junior was leading the charge in the South, one Californian woman was fighting on the front line for workers’ rights … She might well be the most vocal activist you’ve never heard of. Dolores, news bulletin, 2017
‘But when it came time then to make it a union, the CSO decided not to support us.’ ibid. Dolores
‘The feudal wage slavery of agro-business is just an extension of the attitude that has existed in the country.’ ibid. activist
1962: ‘We had 1,000 members. We had benefits. We had a life insurance plan. We had an office. We started a credit union.’ ibid. Dolores
‘There was so much violence against the Filipinos.’ ibid.
‘Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez felt it was possible to organise farm workers when no-one believed that that was possible.’ ibid. Angela Davis
‘It was total government interference. So this was very clearly not only a battle against the growers, it was a battle against the government and their support of the growers.’ ibid. Angela Davis
The power of the people can be greater than the corporate-ocracy. Abby Martin, Breaking the Set: One Last Time, RT 28th February 2015
27th February, Madrid: Protesters clash with security forces over eviction. ibid.
On the eve of World War I we had very powerful radical movements that were on the cusp of taking power and they were effectively crushed during the War. Chris Hedges, lecture Centre for International Governance Innovation August 2018, ‘The Collapse of the American Empire’
You’ve created fertile ground for the rise of American fascism. And our only response now is sustained mass acts of civil disobedience. Chris Hedges, lecture Seattle University 2018, ‘Corporate Totalitarianism: The End Game’ *****
The state will be vicious … They will throw everything at us … We have no time left just from climate change, we have no time left, and in that sense resistance becomes a moral imperative. We have to stop being constrained by the tyranny of the practical. ibid.
Revolution is what I’m calling for … I’m calling for the overthrow of the corporate state. ibid.
But if we don’t stand up, it can’t be seen and we can’t use the word hope. I don’t know if we will win. I don’t even know if we will survive as a species. But these corporate forces have us by the throat and they have my children by the throat. And in the end, I don’t fight fascists because I will win, I fight fascists because they are fascists. ibid.
Before the tents, the pepper-spraying, the evictions, and all those memes, Occupy Wall Street was a disparate group of activists roaming around north Manhattan. They felt cheated that American politics had become so bloated with corporate money that something had to give. Free the Network, short 30.45, 2012
Vigilante group Anonymous had thrown its weight behind the movement early on. ibid.
Freedom towers: These independent Wi-Fi sources can be seen beaming out free, secure internet. ibid.
‘Fuck this internet. Let’s build our own.’ ibid.
We were making history. And there wasn’t nice and clean. There wasn’t easy. It was complex. The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Erica Huggins, member, Netflix 2015
The police jump on you, beat you up, put the gun at your head, this is what we’re going through on a daily basis. ibid. Warne Pharr
We want freedom, we want decent housing, we want education for our people, we want an immediate end to police brutality … ibid. Black Panthers
The Black Panther Party demands that Huey P Newton be set free. ibid. Eldridge Cleaver