223 Quotes About Protest

There’s a double standard to protest in America. Something is different for black people who should dare to ask questions, and further, for those who protest in blackness. Protest in and by black bodies is never deemed legitimate, never deemed worthy of engagement. It seems that we have simply have not earned our grievance, our grievance is illegitimate – we do not deserve sympathy or, ultimately, justice.

The theory of policing is quite far from the reality of policing. For us, at least, that is.

As Jason Mogus has written, organizing is the act of building power; mobilizing is the act of spending the power you’ve built.

Suddenly the despot sees rising up before him, against him, the enemy who brings death - an eye with too steady a look, a mouth with too unfamiliar a smile; each organ is a possible protest.

The voice of protest is the voice of another and an ancient civilization which seems to have bred in us the instinct to enjoy and fight rather than to suffer and understand.

When it comes to our democracy, and who we determine to have the right to vote--our most sacred of rights--patience is no virtue. We must never be patient when someone else's rights are in the balance. We cannot wait on laws, or elected officials, or anyone else. The only virtue when it comes to the right to vote is impatience.

The freedoms that we have were purchased not just by those in uniform—and they definitely were—but also by those who took their lives into their hands, riding those Greyhound buses—the Freedom Riders, in the deep south, in the 1960s, who knew full well that they would be arrested, and they were, serving time, in the Mississippi State Penitentiary. Rosa Parks, getting from the back of the bus to the front of the bus. Peaceful, nonviolent protest.

It's an insidious thing," Wanda said. "It never happens overnight. This kind of thing crept into our community a long time ago. It latched on. It fed on prejudice. Selfishness. Peoples inability to see life through someone else's eyes. And it grew, bigger and bigger, until we got to a point where some people don't even question why a cop should be allowed to shoot first and ask questions later.

To sin by silence, when they should protest, makes cowards of men.