Social Action Quotes

“You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.”
― Jessica Mitford

“Social action must be animated by a vision of a future society, and by explicit judgments of value concerning the character of this future society.”
― Noam Chomsky, Chomsky On Anarchism

“They had no previous connection whatever with Connemara; but they saw connections where others who should have seen them simply looked the other way.”
― Joseph O'Connor, Star of the Sea

“Blaming therapy, social work and other caring professions for the confabulation of testimony of 'satanic ritual abuse' legitimated a programme of political and social action designed to contest the gains made by the women's movement and the child protection movement. In efforts to characterise social workers and therapists as hysterical zealots, 'satanic ritual abuse' was, quite literally, 'made fun of': it became the subject of scorn and ridicule as interest groups sought to discredit testimony of sexual abuse as a whole. The groundswell of support that such efforts gained amongst journalists, academics and the public suggests that the pleasures of disbelief found resonance far beyond the confines of social movements for people accused of sexual abuse. These pleasures were legitimised by a pseudo-scientific vocabulary of 'false memories' and 'moral panic' but as Daly (1999:219-20) points out 'the ultimate goal of ideology is to present itself in neutral, value-free terms as the very horizon of objectivity and to dismiss challenges to its order as the "merely ideological"'.
The media spotlight has moved on and social movements for people accused of sexual abuse have lost considerable momentum. However, their rhetoric continues to reverberate throughout the echo chamber of online and 'old' media. Intimations of collusion between feminists and Christians in the concoction of 'satanic ritual abuse' continue to mobilise 'progressive' as well as 'conservative' sympathies for men accused of serious sexual offences and against the needs of victimised women and children.
This chapter argues that, underlying the invocation of often contradictory rationalising tropes (ranging from calls for more scientific 'objectivity' in sexual abuse investigations to emotional descriptions of 'happy families' rent asunder by false allegations) is a collective and largely unarticulated pleasure; the catharthic release of sentiments and views about children and women that had otherwise become shameful in the aftermath of second wave feminism. It seems that, behind the veneer of public concern about child sexual abuse, traditional views about the incredibility of women's and children's testimony persist. 'Satanic ritual abuse has served as a lens through which these views have been rearticulated and reasserted at the very time that evidence of widespread and serious child sexual abuse has been consolidating. p60”
― Michael Salter, Organised Sexual Abuse

“Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential. Social action without education is a weak expression of pure energy. Deeds uninformed by educated thought can take false directions. When we go into action and confront our adversaries, we must be as armed with knowledge as they. Our policies should have the strength of deep analysis beneath them to be able to challenge the clever sophistries of our opponents.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

“To come so far without a cause is like living many days without a plus. A plus not to oneself in acquiring material things or being mightily famous.”
― Kelechi Erondu

“To be Socially and Morally Responsible today is like building the future but moulding it's bricks today. Slow and steady wins the race but Sure and Safe is a future guided by the Responsibilities of today”
― Kelechi Erondu

“Finding communities that validate and share your anger creates powerful opportunities for collective social action.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“When I was young and living high above the city of Lhasa in the Potala Palace, I frequently looked at the life of the city through a telescope. I also learned a lot from the gossip of the sweepers in the palace. They were like my newspaper, relating what the Regent was doing, and what corruption and scandals were going on. I was always happy to listen, and they were proud to be telling the Dalai Lama about what was happening in the streets. The harsh events that unfolded after the invasion in 1950 forced me to become directly involved in issues that otherwise would have been kept at a distance. As a result I have come to prefer a life of committed social action in this world of suffering.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life

“Maybe it is just easier to focus on life’s trivial missteps when the real challenges feel so insurmountable. But by doing this aren’t we also exhausting ourselves on petty grievances and leaving nothing in the tank for the real issues?”
― Ashley Dotty Charles

“Don’t boo, vote - Barack Obama 2016
We intellectualise society’s faults, dissecting them on Facebook pages…… but rarely do we make the necessary strides to affect change in the real world. We boo, but we don’t vote! We need to transfer our resistance from the internet to the real world and reignite purposeful outrage that drove society forward in the offline era.”
― Ashley Dotty Charles