We live in a society of an imposed forgetfulness, a society that depends on public amnesia.
Angela DavisRead
As soon as my trial was over, we tried to use the energy that had developed around my case to create another organization, which we called the National Alliance against Racist and Political Repression.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the determination to channel the momentum of a significant event into meaningful social action.
Angela Davis speaks to the power of transforming adversity into proactive change. After her trial, she emphasized the importance of using the energy and attention garnered from her experience to establish an organization aimed at combating racism and political repression, illustrating how challenges can inspire collective action for justice.
In practice
In a speech about social justice, highlighting the importance of turning challenges into a movement.
We live in a society of an imposed forgetfulness, a society that depends on public amnesia.
Well, we see an increasingly weaker labor movement as a result of the overall assault on the labor movement and as a result of the globalization of capital.
Racism is a much more clandestine, much more hidden kind of phenomenon, but at the same time it's perhaps far more terrible than it's ever been.
Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of our social problems.
It's true that it's within the realm of cultural politics that young people tend to work through political issues, which I think is good, although it's not going to solve the problems
Radical simply means 'grasping things at the root.'
The old world order changed when this war-storm broke. The old international order passed away as suddenly, as unexpectedly, and as completely as if it had been wiped out by a gigantic flood, by a great tempest, or by a volcanic eruption. The old world order died with the setting of that day's sun and a new world order is being born while I speak, with birth-pangs so terrible that it seems almost incredible that life could come out of such fearful suffering and such overwhelming sorrow.
I think that to acknowledge a new generation is to acknowledge some degree of obsolescence in yourself, and that is very hard to do and often comes with undeniable anger.
Tonight, tonight we've reached a milestone in our nation's march toward a more perfect union: the first time that a major party has nominated a woman for president. Standing here, standing here as my mother's daughter, and my daughter's mother, I'm so happy this day has come.
What we are witnessing at the moment is a rearrangement of the world in an intermediate stage; the change is not in the use of a natural force but in the application of technique to all spheres of life.
What is it you want to change? Your hair, your face, your body? Why? For God is in love with all those things and he might weep when they are gone.
If it hadn't been for that march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, there would be no Barack Obama as President of the United States of America.
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