Freedom Is a Constant Struggle

1) "Since the rise of global capitalism and related ideologies associated with neoliberalism, it has become especially important to identify the dangers of individualism. Progressive struggles—whether they are focused on racism, repression, poverty, or other issues—are doomed to fail if they do not also attempt to develop a consciousness of the insidious promotion of capitalist individualism. Even as Nelson Mandela always insisted that his accomplishments were collective, always also achieved by the men and women who were his comrades, the media attempted to sanctify him as a heroic individual."

2) "The soaring numbers of people behind bars all over the world and the increasing profitability of the means of holding them captive is one of the most dramatic examples of the destructive tendencies of global capitalism. But the obscene profits obtained from mass incarceration are linked to profits from the health care industry and from education and other commodified human services that actually should be freely available to everyone."

3) "Why do I say that Ferguson reminds us of the importance of a global context? What we saw in the police reaction to the resistance that spontaneously erupted in the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown was an armed response that revealed the extent to which local police departments have been equipped with military arms, military technology, military training. The militarization of the police leads us to think about Israel and the militarization of the police there—if only the images of the police and not of the demonstrators had been shown, one might have assumed that Ferguson was Gaza. I think that it is important to recognize the extent to which, in the aftermath of the advent of the war on terror, police departments all over the US have been equipped with the means to allegedly 'fight terror.'"

4) "This is one of the reasons I think so many people began to identify with the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. It wasn’t a sense of 'Oh, we have to lend solidarity to these people over there in South Africa.' It was because they began to see that we have a common... connection. If that’s not created, no matter how much you appeal to people, no matter how genuinely you invite them to join you, they will continue to see the activity as yours, not theirs."

5) "I think the interconnectedness of antiracist movements with gender is crucial, but we also need to do this with class, nationality, and ethnicity—I don’t think that we can imagine Black movements in the same way today as we once did. The assumption that Black freedom was freedom for the Black man created a certain kind of border around the Black struggle which can no longer exist. So I think that the Black radical tradition has to embrace the struggles against anti-Muslim racism, which is perhaps the most virulent form of racism today. It makes no sense to imagine eradicating anti-Black racism without also eradicating anti-Muslim racism."

6) "I don’t think we have any alternative other than remaining optimistic. Optimism is an absolute necessity, even if it’s only optimism of the will, as Gramsci said, and pessimism of the intellect."

7) "The FBI is still haunted by the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover. And the CIA and ICE are institutions that have active and vivid memories of the mass organized struggles to end racism, to end war, to overthrow capitalism."

8) "The struggle for women’s rights was ideologically defined as a struggle for white middle-class women’s rights, pushing out working-class and poor women, pushing out Black women, Latinas, and other women of color from the discursive field covered by the category 'woman.'"

9) "G4S operates private prisons in South Africa. G4S is the largest corporate employer on the entire continent of Africa. G4S, this megacorporation that is involved in the ownership and operation of prisons, that provides armies with weapons, that provides security for rock stars, also operates centers for abused women and for 'young girls at risk.' I mention this because it seems that they have grasped the connection in ways that we should have long ago. Speaking of megacorporations, I heard that students have successfully protested Starbucks. Is today the last day Starbucks will be available on this campus? Hallelujah. Especially since Turkish coffee far exceeds what Starbucks could ever hope for."

10) "Everyone is familiar with the slogan 'The personal is political'—not only that what we experience on a personal level has profound political implications, but that our interior lives, our emotional lives are very much informed by ideology. We ourselves often do the work of the state in and through our interior lives. What we often assume belongs most intimately to ourselves and to our emotional life has been produced elsewhere and has been recruited to do the work of racism and repression."