Angela Davis: We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.

<< You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world.

And you have to do it all the time.

We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.

I feel that if we don't take seriously the ways in which racism is embedded in structures of institutions, if we assume that there must be an identifiable racist who is the perpetrator, then we won't ever succeed in eradicating racism. In a racist society, which this is, make no mistake, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist. “Radical” simply means “grasping things at the root”.

I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.

And 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”. It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.

Sometimes we have to do the work even though we don't yet see a glimmer on the horizon that it's actually going to be possible.

The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?

Anyway I don't think we can rely on governments, regardless of who is in power, to do the work that only mass movements can do. ― Angela Y. Davis, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle >>