Howard Zinn, 1922-2010

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Things I Want My Daughter To Know, #2

Success!

“I want to make sure that every day I see someone that looks and acts different from me…to make sure I have the informal interactions with people that I believe ward away the fear of differences and the tendency to look the other way. I think it’s every person’s responsibility to expose themselves to as many different ways of life as possible. It’s part of being a good community member and a contributing citizen…I have no doubt in my mind that this country and all it has to offer belongs to all of us equally.”

-Tara Beard as quoted in Who’s Your City? by Richard Florida

via Keri Smith at wish jar

November 25, 2009

what they said

I want to live in a country where pop media is a form of self-expression and not of mind control.

I want to live in a country where farmers are valued more than lawyers.

I want to live in a country where more money is spent on education than on war.

I want to live in a country where the public health is not determined by profit margins.

I want to live in a country where the bicycle industry is more heavily subsidized than the auto industry.

(tweet sent to adbusters via @gypsythepunk.) I thought it was worth repeating.

Posted by kerismith at 03:21 PM

Things I Want My Daughter to Know, # 1

This is Love.

“Women must have money and rooms of their own. They must have the liberty to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future and the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream”

-Virginia Woolf