Battling racism and battling heterosexism and battling apartheid share the same urgency inside me as battling cancer.
Interpretation
The struggle against social injustices is as critical as the fight against disease.
In this quote, Audre Lorde expresses that the fight against racism, heterosexism, and apartheid is of equal importance to her as the battle against cancer. This highlights the urgency and significance of social justice issues, indicating that fighting for equality and liberation is a matter of life and death, much like dealing with a serious illness.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of fighting for civil rights.
The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.
There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.
Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought. Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder. Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings. Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.
Non-violence is a very powerful weapon. Most people don't understand the power of non-violence and tend to be amazed by the whole idea. Those who have been involved in bringing about change and see the difference between violence and non-violence are firmly committed to a lifetime of non-violence, not because it is easy or because it is cowardly, but because it is an effective and very powerful way.
In the clearing stands the boxer, and a fighter by his trade._x000D_ _x000D_ And he carries a reminder of every glove that laid him down..._x000D_ _x000D_ or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame_x000D_ _x000D_ "I am leaving! I am leaving" but the fighter still remains.
It is a mistake to look at someone who is self assertive and say, "It's easy for her, she has good self-esteem." One of the ways you build self-esteem is by being self-assertive when it is not easy to do so. There are always times when self-assertiven ess requires courage, no matter how high your self-esteem.
I wouldn't have had a sporting career if it hadn't been for the volunteers who agreed to coach me, as a teenager, growing up in south Wales, at a time when others were telling me that wheelchair racing wasn't really athletics.
If the society today allows wrongs to go unchallenged, the impression is created that those wrongs have the approval of the majority.
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