“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of [brotherhood].” - Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have A Dream” (speech)
“Well, ratification would be a system in which there are two positions presented to me - the voter. I get into the polling booth, and I push one or the other depending on which of those positions I want. That’s a very limited form of democracy. A real, really meaningful democracy would mean that I play a role in forming those decisions - in creating those decisions, that those positions reflect my active, creative participation. Not just me, but everyone (would); that’s real democracy. We’re very far from that.” - Noam Chomsky, excerpt from “Noam Chomsky on Democracy” [0:28] (video)
“THE LEADERLESS REVOLUTION is not about demanding the violent overthrow of government, or anything else. Everything worth changing can be changed without resorting to violence; this should be a gentle revolution, using force more lasting and convincing than any violence - our own actions and convictions. The most extreme cases of savage repression [may] justify violence, and then only rarely, and only after all nonlethal alternatives including isolation, boycott and sabotage have been exhausted.” - Carne Ross, “The Leaderless Revolution” [page xxiv] (book)
“We must for the emancipation from oppression, not* on behalf of the oppressed, but* BY the oppressed, and apply this concept throughout every aspect of life. We must replace the politics of monologue with the politics of dialogue. We must create a generalized anti-authoritarian culture of resistance, transform the way we conceive of ourselves, and build a mass popular understanding, experience, and support of a new way of life to such an extent that it culminates in a social revolution. That is how we arrive at a free society.” - host of Libertarian Socialist Rants, excerpt from “Achieving An Anarchist Society” [18:48] (video)
* I’d prefer a “not only... but also” usage here.
“We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to establish democracy.” - Frederick Engels and Karl Marx, “The Communist Manifesto, Authorized English Translation” [page 30] (book) - “Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.” [same page]
As soon-to-be-President Trump said, I wanna be associated with interesting quotes. The difference being that I don’t want to a “lion” nor a “sheep”. I want to be a human - or if you want an analogue, a plant that maintains the quality of the soil of nearby plants while fulfilling its own needs.
In case you were wondering, this title is a reference to the “some pig” message from Charlotte’s Web.
Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Happy 2017.
