Within a matter of weeks, freedom riders are boarding buses all over the South. The riders are harassed and jailed, sometimes they are beaten by angry crowds of whites while southern sheriffs look the other way. John Lewis: Good Trouble, news report
The activists Occupy Wall Street are continuing the fight for independence and economic injustice. Who Rules America? II, 1987
America’s campuses began to buzz with activism ... One hundred thousand people rallied in Washington. (United States of America & Dissent & Protest & Demonstrations & Activism) Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States VII: Johnson, Nixon and Vietnam: Reversal of Fortune, Showtime 2012
Civil rights activists began to be portrayed in the media and among many politicians as criminals. 13th, 2016
In 1965 Malcolm X, the US Civil Rights leader, arrives in the UK on a speaking tour, spreading the message of black liberation. On a visit to the Congress of Black Unity in London, Michael encounters the charismatic revolutionary. Michael X: Hustler, Revolutionary, Outlaw, caption, Sky Showcase 2021
He [Malcolm] never went anywhere without his little black case, which a mobile library of statistics ranging from transportation of slaves hundreds of years ago to the latest figures on black poverty. ibid. Michael
Courtaulds Ltd: 900 workers went on strike after a row with the management … ‘The strike as such here involved coloured people.’ ibid. Malcolm’s BBC interview
RAAS is one of a growing number of black civil rights organisations that emerge in the 1960s. With Michael at the helm, it soon gains a high profile. By 1967 Michael X is the most high profile black activist in Britain and claims to have some 60,000 followers of his RAS Organisation. ibid.
Michael’s high-profile appearances attract the attention of the authorities. Six weeks later, he addresses his next rally under police surveillance. ibid.
We were weened on the concept of the empire and the mother-country and we firmly believed this. No more loyal subjects of the king and queen had ever had … To come here and discover we weren’t wanted has been a very shattering blow … It’s not a matter of hate that our people are feeling towards the people of this country, but a very simple emotion like that of a rejected love. ibid. Michael’s TV interview
After serving eight months in prison, Michael is released but remains under police surveillance. He immediately persuades his white liberal backers to fund a new venture: the Black House [inc Lennon]. ibid. caption
The assault on Marvin Brown gives the Metropolitan police reason to read the Black House. Michael is charged with robbery and extortion. ibid.
There is a difference between leadership and demagoguery. ibid. professor, re Malcolm X
In the town of Arima, Michael sets himself up as leader of Christina Gardens – a small agricultural commune centred around his claimed political ethos of self-help. ibid. caption
Michael, alongside two of his followers stands accused of the murder of Joseph Skerritt. If found guilty, the penalty is death by hanging. ibid.
One of the only pro-life groups in America to train children for front-line activism. Stacey Dooley, Brainwashing Stacey: Anti-Abortion Camp, BBC 2016
The night I first met Jacob, he told me what he and other children in northern Uganda are living through. Kony ***** 2012
This movie expires on December 31st 2012, and its only purpose is to stop the rebel group, the LRA, and their leader Joseph Kony. ibid.
He [Kony] takes children from their parents and he gives them a gun to shoot. ibid. father to son
For 26 years Kony has been kidnapping children into his rebel group, the LRA. Turning the girls into sex slaves and the boys into child soldiers. He makes them mutilate people’s faces. And he forces them to kill their own parents. ibid.
It’s been over 30,000 of them. ibid.
It’s simply not an important enough issue on the radar screen of American foreign policy. ibid.
Dunnes shop worker Mary Manning refused to handle SA goods and was backed up by her shop steward, Karen Gearon. Both were suspended. 9 colleagues came out in support. The strike lasted 3 years and forced the Irish government to ban the import of all SA goods. Saul Staniforth tweet 19th July 2023
Kids don’t have a little brother working in the coal mine, they don’t have a little sister coughing her lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of the Northeast. Why? Because we organised; we broke the back of the sweatshops in this country; we have child labor laws. Those were not benevolent gifts from enlightened management. They were fought for, they were bled for, they were died for by working people, by people like us. Kids ought to know that. That’s why I sing these songs, damnit! No roots, no fruit! Utah Phillips