QUOTES
“It
is the most painful thing to see how young children become collateral damage of
wars, but when peace treaties are signed landmines do not respect any of these
accords. And as long as these silent killers linger after wars, children will
never know peace”
"...
leadership has to be focused on some very radical ideas that only we as 21st Century
people can talk about: making sure people have a livelihood, making sure people
receive a living wage, making sure the environment, the Mother Earth, is embraced
and cherished and not destroyed. Making sure people are healthy in what they eat,
making sure we hold people and corporations accountable for the damage they do
not only to our environment but to our institutions."
I
try to find hope in struggle and resistance in small places as much as I can.
If
we talk about literacy, we have to talk about how to enhance our children's mastery
over the tools needed to live intelligent, creative, and involved lives.
If
we talk about the environment, for example, we have to talk about environmental
racism - about the fact that kids in South Central Los Angeles have a third of
the lung capacity of kids in Santa Monica.
It's
important for people of color to link up with issues around globalization, food
security, health, the environment.
One
of the main purveyors of violence in this world has been this country.
The
progressive movement against the war of occupation in Iraq is a reason for hope,
as is resistance to free trade agreements in Latin America. Those are moments
that we have to celebrate: that people still find the resolve and energy to resist.
“The
death penalty is inhumane... whether that person is in a jail or it's bin Laden.”
“Today, the media
dictatorship is becoming a substitute to military dictatorship. The big economic
groups are using the media and decide who can speak, who the good guy is and who
the bad guy is...
What
you've done is effectively cut off any discourse or dialogue. If we're only going
to govern by anger, then we've lost the game.”
We
have to take leadership beyond our particular issues. We have to frame the world
that we want to see not only in terms of our own children, but for all children.
