A Quote by Ani DiFranco

We have a complete void of progressive politics in this country right now. The will of the people goes ignored and unrealized. I'm searching for the people that can enter the political system, a strong third party. We need to consolidate.
You don't choose a party because it's the flavour of the month. I feel I will be able to work under a political system. I feel if people like me don't enter politics to bring change, who will?
If you work through the existing structures you are going to be corrupted. By working through political system that poisons the atmosphere, even the progressive organizations, you can see it even nowadays in the US, where people on the "Left" are all caught in the electoral campaign and get into fierce arguments about should we support this third party candidate or that third party candidate. This is a sort of little piece of evidence that suggests that when you get into working through electoral politics you begin to corrupt your ideals.
If you're a status quo writer, you're considered to not be political but that's as political as if you're a progressive writer. Some politics are asked to show their passports and others aren't. In the Dominican Republique, if you're slightly progressive, people have a lot of suspicions that you're up to some sort of conspiracy, that this is some sort of plot. On the other hand, if you're conservative and mainstream, people tend to take that as a given and don't notice the politics.
Politics is not about a person. We transform America not by electing some guy or woman to be president; we transform this country when millions of people stand up and fight back. That will result in good leadership on top. So the goal right now is not to worry about who's going to be running in 2020 or 2080. The goal now is to mobilize millions of people around a progressive agenda.
With an abusive political relationship, with a political party that's throwing you under the bus, sister, I'm sorry to say but you don't have a future in this political party. You know, what they did to Bernie Sanders is what they have done to every progressive candidate and every real progressive movement within the party. They allow it to show its face and then they use the kill switch.
For thousands of years, China developed its own political system. Its rulers, no matter who they are, are given a conditional right to govern by the people. In the past, but even now it is called a "Heavenly Mandate". If the rulers fail to respect the will of the people, they get deposed. And the Communist Party of China is greatly respectful of the desires of the majority of the Chinese people.
To create such people, such People's Representatives in Indonesia, would take decades, and they can only grow up in a fundamentally different political system, and in a totally new culture. What is now governing Indonesia is morally defunct, it is corrupt. What is ruling the country now is not even a culture or a political system: it is a disease.
The two-party system has served America very well. We always have political movements one way or another but the evolution of a lasting third party probably will not happen.
We have a duty to our country to participate in the political process. See, if you believe in freedom, you have a duty to exercise your right to vote to begin with. I'm [here] to encourage people to do their duty, to go to the polls. I want all people, no matter what their political party is or whether they even like a political party, to exercise their obligation to vote.
I want to ensure that the Democratic Party moves in a more progressive direction, substantively and message-wise. And goes out and reaches people all over this country.
Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means ... the need to be left. I am driven to grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.
The system [in U.S.] is designed for a two-party system. And those two parties have an interest in keeping third parties out. There's too much of the structure that works in the two-party way. They will keep the third party out.
We need a very progressive and strong agenda to bring people into the political process because I worry very much about the future of the American democracy where so many people are giving up.
I hate politics. It's slimy. Any job where people pander for votes, I don't like. The country has gotten so partisan that if you're not on my side, you're the enemy. The only thing I ever try to support is a third party, like Unity08. We need more parties and more choice.
I don't believe that the Democratic party has anything to do with the Left. We have two political parties in the US: a right wing party and a right centrist party. That's the Democrats. I laugh when people describe Barack Obama as a socialist president. As a socialist musician, I'll tell you when we have a socialist president. We don't have one now, not even close.
You can't afford to hate politics. The politics of this country is democracy. Democracy is by the people, of the people and for the people. The day people stop taking active part in the politics of this country, democracy will not survive.
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