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“The human body resonates at the same frequency as Mother Earth. So instead of only focusing on trying to save the earth, which operates in congruence to our vibrations, I think it is more important to be one with each other. If you really want to remedy the earth, we have to mend mankind. And to unite mankind, we heal the Earth. That is the only way. Mother Earth will exist with or without us. Yet if she is sick, it is because mankind is sick and separated. And if our vibrations are bad, she reacts to it, as do all living creatures.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Because you have no memory for things that happened ten or twenty years ago, you're still mouthing the same nonsense as two thousand years ago. Worse, you cling with might and main to such absurdities as 'race,' 'class,' 'nation,' and the obligation to observe a religion and repress your love.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“I regard the Klan, the Anglo-Saxon clubs and White American societies, as far as the Negro is concerned, as better friends of the race than all other groups of hypocritical whites put together.”
― Marcus Garvey

“There appears to be a vast amount of confusion on this point, but I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be "accepted" by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don't wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet. White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this -- which will not be tomorrow and will not be today and may very well be never -- the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“The only walls that exist are those you have placed in your mind. And whatever obstacles you conceive, exist only because you have forgotten what you have already achieved.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“…“white supremacyâ€� is a much more useful term for understanding the complicity of people of color in upholding and maintaining racial hierarchies that do not involve force (i.e slavery, apartheid) than the term “internalized racismâ€�- a term most often used to suggest that black people have absorbed negative feelings and attitudes about blackness. The term “white supremacyâ€� enables us to recognize not only that black people are socialized to embody the values and attitudes of white supremacy, but we can exercise “white supremacist controlâ€� over other black people.”
― bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black

“God is colourblind. But we are not God. God does not need to see colour and difference. God is far bigger than all of that. We are human. We are destined to grow and learn from each other and with each other and there is no growing, there is no learning, there is no wonder and no majesty in life if we were like God. We were meant to see colour and difference.To deny these is to lack respect. To blind ourselves to these is to fool one another. To shun these is to deny ourselves growth and knowledge.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“I had as many doubts as anyone else. Standing on the starting line, we're all cowards.”
― Alberto Salazar

“I have always been taught to be proud of being Latina, proud of being Mexican, and I was. I was probably more proud of being a "label" than of being a human being, that's the way most of us were taught.”
― Erin Gruwell, The Freedom Writers Diary

“It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

“This past, this endless struggle to achieve and reveal and confirm a human identity, human authority, yet contains, for all its horror, something very beautiful.

I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering � enough is certainly as good as a feast � but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are. That man who is forced each day to snatch his manhood, his identity, out of the fire of human cruelty that rages to destroy it knows, if he survives his effort, and even if he does not survive it, something about himself and human life that no school on earth � and indeed, no church � can teach. He achieves his own authority, and that is unshakable.

This is because, in order to save his life, he is forced to look beneath appearances, to take nothing for granted, to hear the meaning behind the words. If one is continually surviving the worse that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it brings must be borne. And at this level of experience one’s bitterness begins to be palatable, and hatred becomes too heavy a sack to carry.”
― James Baldwin

“Eliminate the concept of division by class, skills, race, income, and nationality. We are all equals with a common pulse to survive. Every human requires food and water. Every human has a dream and desire to be happy. Every human responds to love, suffering and pain. Every human bleeds the same color and occupies the same world. Let us recognize that we are all part of each other. We are all human. We are all one.”
― Suzy Kassem

“People are like M&Ms. They come in a variety of colors, they're hard on the outside, and full of obscene yumminess on the inside.”
― Michael Makai, Domination & Submission: The BDSM Relationship Handbook

“I’m not that kind of Indian,â€� Shanti said, her practiced smile never leaving her face, though it faltered just a bit, and in that slight wobble was something hard and angry, something that looked like centuries of colonial oppression boiling up into an I’m-going-to-kick-your-ass-in-this-pageant-and-then-take-over-all-your-beauty-out-sourcing-needs hatred.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“If all men are made in God's reflection, then why do some people continue to acknowledge only what is in their part of the mirror? If every man was created equal and in the image of God, then how can any man claim that one race is better than another?”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Hey, Lenzi ... my offer from a century ago still stands. If Alden doesn't treat you right, I'm here for you in any capacity, if you know what I mean.”
― Mary Lindsey, Shattered Souls

“Concurrently, the growing class power and public voice of conservative and liberal well-to-do black folks easily obscures the class cruelty these individuals enact both in the way they talk about underprivileged blacks and the way they represent them. The existence of that class cruelty and its fascist dimensions have been somewhat highlighted by the efforts of privileged-class blacks to censor the voices of black youth, particularly gangsta rappers who are opposing bourgeois class values by extolling the values of street culture and street vernacular. Significantly, the attack on urban underclass black youth culture and its gangster dimensions (glamorization of crime, etc.) is usually presented via a critique of sexism. Since most privileged-class blacks have shown no interest in advancing feminist politics, the only organized effort to end sexism and sexist oppression, this attack on sexism seems merely gratuitous, a smoke screen that deflects away from the fact that what really disturbs bourgeois folks is the support of rebellion, unruly behavior, and disrespect for their class values. In reality, they and their white counterparts fear the power these young folks have to change the minds and life choices of youth from privileged classes. If only underclass black folks were listening to gangsta rap, there would be no public effort to silence and censor this music. The fear is that it will generate class rebellion.”
― bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism

“Mr. Bialy said you were a good guy.â€�
“You don’t want a good guy representing you in situations like this one. You want a barracuda when it comes to dealing with bad cops, negligent police departments, and attorneys who represent them. They are afraid of me; they think I’m a bad guy. Please don’t give away my secret.� Sarah chuckles through her tears. He has an easy way about him. I hope he’s an ass-kicker in court.
“Your secret is safe with me, Zack.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black

“Demographics is destiny”
― Arthur Kemp

“The notion that a vast gulf exists between "criminals" and those of us who have never served time in prison is a fiction created by the racial ideology that birthed mass incarceration, namely that there is something fundamentally wrong and morally inferior about "them." The reality, though, is that all of us have done wrong. As noted earlier, studies suggest that most Americans violate drug laws in their lifetime. Indeed, most of us break the law not once but repeatedly throughout our lives. Yet only some of us will be arrested, charged, convicted of a crime, branded a criminal or a felon, and ushered into a permanent undercaste. Who becomes a social pariah and excommunicated from civil society and who trots off to college bears scant relationship to the morality of the crimes committed. Who is more blameworthy: the young black kid who hustles on the street corner, selling weed to help his momma pay rent? Or the college kid who deals drugs out of his dorm room so that he'll have cash to finance his spring break? Who should we fear? The kid in the 'hood who joined a gang and now carries a gun for security, because his neighborhood is frightening and unsafe? Or the suburban high school student who has a drinking problem but keeps getting behind the wheel? Our racially biased system of mass incarceration exploits the fact that all people break the law and make mistakes at various points in their lives with varying degrees of justification. Screwing up-failing to live by one's highest ideals and values-is part of what makes us human.”
― Michelle Alexander

“In America, your ancestors don't matter so much. You're just you.”
― Lensey Namioka, Mismatch

“What is the line between being vulnerable and prostrating yourself for a system that won't recognise you? The onus is never on the system to adjust its hardness, it's on you to shape-shift and acquiesce. Do I don vulnerability as a weapon against this culture? - If you require me to be hard and harder to fight you, I will rebel by being soft like a jelly-beaned being, but like anything, you need to be softer and softer to have the same impact. Do I weaponise my own pain and cause harm to myself by revelling in that pain, nurturing it, putting myself in danger to encourage it and then working it over by verbalising it for display, to show society, I am a human being and I feel pain just like you.”
― Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

“How do people stand for this? How many people have to die before we rise up and say ‘enough is enough?”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black

“Would cops really ignore her cry for help because of the lawsuit?”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black

“I know you don't think that any tongue I speak is mine; it must be rented. I am always denial, or pretense. A child born mid-flight has no nation. I can pull on either culture, but they always melt like a dream, trickle away, water on the oiled pelt of foreign.”
― Jasmine Ann Cooray

“Where is outrage from the National Rifle Association? Where’s the damned NRA? The NRA claims to believe the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States grants all of our citizens the right to survive and protect their families with any gun they want. I guess that’s only true when those citizens are Caucasian! Does the Second Amendment apply if you’re a black man driving through a white neighborhood?”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black

“A racist cop pulls over a black driver for little reason other than the fact that the driver is black and a recent robbery was committed by a couple of young black guys in a white community. The cop quickly realizes the driver is not one of the robbery suspects. He sees a man with a wife and two small children. They are not a couple of young punks. Still,he persists. Why?
“He asks to see the driver’s license and registration. While locating the appropriate documents, the black driver respectfully volunteers that he is legally carrying a handgun. The cop panics—is it the image of a black man with a gun? He barks out conflicting orders and then shoots the man to death, in front of his family. Why? “Is it because the cop is an insensitive racist? Maybe he wasn’t trained or taught any better? Perhaps he lived a completely different life in a completely different world than that of the black man. In this cop’s world, were all black men potential criminals, people to be watched, people to be feared?”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black

“The fact is that this happens in a white community, with a black man, a gun, and a cop who claims he can’t see the black man’s hands. That combination is a recipe for disaster. It doesn’t matter who tells who what to do.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black

“We aren’t asking for any more rights than anyone else in this country. We’re not trying to take anything or anyone’s rights away. We’re not looking for a handout unless it is a handout in friendship.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black

“Can you imagine sitting in the passenger seat and back seat of a car and watching a cop shoot and kill your husband and father?”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Black