Collected from the BGAN Updates
November 2001 – June 2002
At the WTO protests in Seattle, we had a collective vision. We saw beyond the borders that divide us. We saw people come together across every kind of political and cultural difference and stand up in a way that we have not seen in this country for decades. We saw peaceful protests shut down one of the most powerful institutions in the world and we saw a system dazed and frightened by the sound of our voices.
-- This is What Democracy Looks Like,
Independent Media Center Film Production
For struggling for a better world all of us are fenced in, threatened with death. The fence is reproduced globally. But fences are broken. The rebels search each other out. They walk toward one another. They find each other and together break other fences. In the countrysides and cities, in the states, in the nations, on the continents, the rebels begin to recognize each other, to know themselves as equals and different. They continue on their fatiguing walk, walking as it is now necessary to walk, that is to say, struggling...
-- Subcommandante Marcos
at the First International Encuentro
for Humanity and against Neoliberalism, August, 1996.
We are beginning a mythic period of existence, rather like the age portrayed in the Bhagavad Gita, in The Lord of the Rings, and in other tales of darkness and light. We live in a time in which every living system is in decline, and the rate of decline is accelerating as our economy grows. Given current corporate practices, not one wildlife reserve, wilderness, or indigenous culture will survive the global market economy. We are losing our forests, fisheries, coral reefs, topsoil, water, biodiversity, and climatic stability. The land, sea, and air have been functionally transformed from life-supporting systems into repositories for waste. Feeling the momentum of loss at the beginning of a new century, one wants to close one's eyes. Yet that is the very thing that will bring forth ruin.
I believe in rain, in odd miracles, in the intelligence that allows terns and swallows to find their way across the planet. And I believe that we are capable of creating a remarkable future for humankind. In the United States, more than 30,000 citizens' groups, nongovernmental organizations, and foundations are addressing the issue of social and ecological sustainability in the most complete sense of the word. Worldwide, their number exceeds 100,000. These groups follow Gandhi's imperatives: Some resist, others create new structures, patterns, and means. The groups tend to be local, marginal, poorly funded, and overworked. It is hard for most groups not to feel justified anxiety that they could perish in a twinkling. At the same time, a deeper, extraordinary pattern is emerging. If you ask these groups for their principles, frameworks, conventions, models, or declarations, you will find that they do not conflict. Never before in history has this happened."
-- Paul Hawken
The Resurgence of Citizens' Movements
The echo goes on, a reflected image of the possible and forgotten: the possibility and necessity of speaking and listening; not an echo that fades away, or a force that decreases after reaching its apogee.
An echo that turns itself into many voices, into a network of voices that, before Power's deafness, opts to speak to itself, knowing itself to be one and many, acknowledging itself to be equal in its desire to listen and be listened to, recognizing itself as diverse in the tones and levels of voices forming it.
This network of resistance is not an organizing structure; it doesn't have a central head or decision maker; it has no central command or hierarchies. We are the network, all of us who resist.
-- Subcommandante Marcos
at the First International Encuentro
for Humanity and against Neoliberalism, August, 1996.
"Even the smallest person can change the course of the future."
-- Galadriel to Frodo, while in Lothlorien
Frodo: "I wish it need not have happened in my time."
Gandalf: "So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
-- Frodo and Gandalf in Moria
That we are not a collection of individuals dispersed by the world, but rather a living harmony of colors and voices, a constant shout of desires and thoughts that are born, that grow, that lovingly fertilize in one heart and one will, woven of hope. We call this existence and form of harmonic and collective thinking communal. That we don't resign from being who we are. That we will continue defending our autonomy and defending it. We will also defend everyone who is like us, who want to live differently for their color, their song, their vision of their own lives and freedom, with dignity.
-- From the Declaration of the Indigenous National Congress
in Nurio, Mexico, March 2-4, 2001
There is always a moment in any kind of struggle when one feels in full bloom. VIVID. ALIVE. To be such a person or to witness anyone at this moment of transcendent presence is to know that what is human is linked, by a daring compassion, to what is divine. During my years of being close to people engaged in changing the world I have seen fear turn into courage. Sorrow into joy. Funerals into celebrations. Because whatever the consequences, people, standing side by side, have expressed WHO THEY REALLY ARE, and that ultimately they believe in the love of the world and each other enough TO BE THAT.
-- Alice Walker, Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer's Activism
Being an activist means being aware of what's happening around you as well as being in touch with your feelings about it -- your rage, your sadness, your excitement, your curiosity, your feeling of helplessnes, and your refusal to surrender. Being an activist means owning your desire.
-- From "An Activist Love Story" by
Paula Allen and Eve Easler, in The Feminist Memoir Project
History has the cruel reality of a nightmare, and the grandeur of man consists in his making beautiful and lasting works out of the real substance of that nightmare. Or, to put it another way, it consists in transforming that nightmare into vision; in freeing ourselves from the shapeless horror of reality-if only for an instant-by means of creation.
-- Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude
The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.
-- HL Mencken
Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.
-- Albert Camus, The Rebel
The quest stands on the edge of a knife, stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains as long as the company is true. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Go now, and rest, for you are weary with toil and much sorrow. Tonight you shall sleep in peace.
-- Galadriel to the Fellowship at Lothlorien
Never have so many been held incommunicado by so few. More and more have the right to hear and see, but fewer and fewer have the privilege of informing, giving their opinion and creating. The dictatorship of the single word and the single image, much more devastating than that of the single party, is imposing a life whose exemplary citizen is a docile consumer and passive spectator built on the assembly line following the North American model of commercial television.
-- Eduardo Galeano
If we were logical, the future would be bleak indeed. But we are more than logical. We are human beings, and we have faith and we have hope, and we can work.
-- Jacques Cousteau
I've often been threatened with death. If they kill me, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people. Let my blood be a seed of freedom and the sign that hope will soon be reality. A bishop will die, but the Church of God, which is the people, will never perish.
-- Archbishop Oscar Romero
The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
-- Luke 4:18-19
But why sacrifice? None of us asked to come into a world on the brink of tearing itself apart. Yet, here we are. Either we will survive and flourish as one human race, or we will suffer and, in all likelihood, vanish... Truth is, we are each of us the Ring Bearer. What we do as individuals helps determine the fate of all.
-- Pamela White, In gathering darkness
out of the ruins
out from the wreckage
can't make the same mistake this time
we are the children
the last generation
we are the ones they left behind
and i wonder when we are ever gonna change
living under the fear, till nothing else remains
we don't need another hero
we don't need to know the way home
all we want is life beyond
thunderdome
looking for something
we can rely on
there's gotta be something better out there
love and compassion
their day is coming
all else are castles built in the air
and i wonder when we are ever gonna change
living under the fear till nothing else remains
all the children say
we don't need another hero
we don't need to know the way home
all we want is life beyond
thunderdome
so what do we do with our lives
we leave only a mark
will our story shine like a light
or end in the dark
give it all or nothing
we don't need another hero
we don't need to know the way home
all we want is life beyond
thunderdome
-- Tina Turner, We Don't Need Another Hero
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves in the long and bitter, but beautiful struggle for a new world. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr., Beyond Vietnam (April 4, 1967)
What is being born in Bethlehem? The light overhead is a flare not a steady star. What course can we chart by the lights presently hitting Bethlehem? As questions vex us to nightmare - as signals from the epi-center of the Christian epoch are being pelted from space to the homes and hearts of earth's present population, the fear and consolation is that - "Surely, some revelation is at hand."
Bill C. Davis, Time To Dote On "The Second Coming" (4/18/2002)
But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness -- each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked -- each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity.
-- Herbert Butterfield
Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only goal worth struggling for. This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments - a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.
-- Albert Camus
Yesterday we bowed for kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today, we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.
-- Khalil Gibran
... We pose the questions of independence and sovereignty by calling for a new continent-wide independence movement. The current political model is mortally wounded and no viable alternative can exist without breaking the bourgeois, neoliberal system that has operated in Venezuela since 1945. In our model of democracy, the people, civil society, are protagonists who participate in making political, even military, decisions. There are no half-measures on questions of sovereignty. There has to be direct democracy, people's government with popular assemblies and congresses where the people retain the right to remove, nominate, sanction, and recall their elected delegates and representatives.
-- Hugo Chavez Frias
With the proclamation that the first of May, At Merry Mount shall be kept holly day.
-- Thomas Morton, 1627
There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.
-- August Spies, Haymarket Martyr, 1887
Amid the myths and hysterias of opposing hatreds, it is difficult to cause truth to reach the bulk of the people, or to spread the habit of forming opinions on evidence rather than on passion. Yet it is ultimately upon these things, not upon any political panacea, that the hopes of the world must rest.
-- Bertrand Russell
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
-- Albert Einstein
The money king is only an illusion. Capitalism is blind and barbaric. It buys consciences, governments, peoples, and nations. It poisons the water and the air. It destroys everything. And to the U'wa, it says that we are crazy, but we want to continue being crazy if it means we can continue to exist on our dear mother EARTH.
-- U'wa communique May 7, 2002
People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable.
Be honest and transparent anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People who really want help may attack you if you help them.
Help them anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt.
Give the world your best anyway.
-- Mother Teresa
I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can still do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
-- Edward Everett Hale
We must recognize that our alienation is not unique, that it is shared by the majority of the world's peoples. To be ourselves would be to oppose the freezing of history with the mobile features of a living human face.
-- Octavio Paz
We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.
-- General Omar Bradley
The two kinds of people who exist in this world [at any one time] are the decent and the indecent. Color, religion and nationality are irrelevant. Kindness, decency and behavior are what matters most. Our collective challenge, it seems, is to create a city and community where decent people of all races, ethnicities and religions can look into the faces of other decent people and see only one thing -- God's image smiling back.
-- Rabbi Micah Greenstein
I can't get involved! I've got work to do! It's not that I like the Empire. I hate it! But there's nothing I can do about it right now. It's such a long way from here.
-- Luke Skywalker
I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.
-- Eduardo Galeano
When the cold of Winter comes
Starless night will cover day
In the veiling of the sun
We will walk in bitter rain
But in dreams
I still hear your name
And in dreams
We will meet again
When the seas and mountains fall
And we come, to end of days
In the darkness I hear a call
Calling me there
I will go there
And back again
-- Fran Walsh & Howard Shore, "The Breaking of the Fellowship"
Weaver's Past Signatures
There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for awhile. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out from the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.
-- Sam in Ephel Duath
In the struggle of "Good" against "Evil", it's always the people who get killed.
-- Eduardo Galeano
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
-- Raymond Williams
From the dust of my body, may trees grow
Let people learn a lesson from trees
They give food to the hungry
Water to the thirsty
Shelter to the tired and homeless
Let us learn to be selfless, grow more trees
And make the world a beautiful place.
-- Garhwali women's folk song
Don't take life seriously because you can't come out of it alive.
-- Warren Miller
A deep man believes that the evil eye can wither, that the heart's blessing can heal, and that love can overcome all odds.
-- Emerson
There is a land of the dead and a land of the living... and the only bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.
-- Thornton Wilder, from The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Man is born crying. When he has cried enough, he dies.
-- RAN, Akira Kurosawa
If I can't dance, I want no part of your revolution
-- Emma Goldman
The struggle of humanity against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
-- Milan Kundera
Our task must be to free ourselves...by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
-- Albert Einstein
I sit on a man's back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all possible means -- except by getting off his back.
-- Leo Tolstoy
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and never will. People might not get all that they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.
-- Frederick Douglass
We must learn to live together as brothers or we are going to perish together as fools.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
I'm here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum.
-- Roddy Piper in "They Live"
© 2002
Boston Global Action Network
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