A Quote by Janine di Giovanni

Any protester knows that the only way activism works is to get the people on your side. — © Janine di Giovanni
Any protester knows that the only way activism works is to get the people on your side.
The way the media cycle works, the way the news works, and the way people's attention span works, is that we only learn that people exist when there is crisis.
I never took drug to escape. I know some people take drugs to escape, but I took drugs because I was an experimenter. And an artist. And I was always trying to go to the other side of that veil and get information, like all writers have done through the millennia. To get some insights on how the whole thing works, if there's any way to know how it works, and write about it.
Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.
Mike Pence not only knows the Capitol. He knows the players in the House and the Senate. He knows how the committee system works. But he also knows all the governors. And so that really brings a unique talent to the picture.
We've had to deal with so many complications. We're still dealing with them. And what can we do? Nothing - well, unless we take your side's point of view and make deals with the devil. But why? Why can't we make deals with God? People do all the time. 'God, if you do this for me, I promise to be good.' Stuff like that. Yeah, but I don't see any contracts like you guys have. No hard evidence that it works. How come we can only get things we want by being bad? Why can't we get them by being good?
Any writer knows that what's left out is as essential, if not more so, than what's there. Unlearning works that way.
I think that people who study the scriptures get a dimension to their life that nobody else gets and that can’t be gained in any way except by studying the scriptures. There’s an increase in faith and a desire to do what’s right and a feeling of inspiration and understanding that comes to people who study the gospel—meaning particularly the Standard Works—and who ponder the principles, that can’t come in any other way
Any artist can't get away from the way the world works, which is that it wants to know what you did, and you're only interested in what you're doing right now.
There are some political issues where mainstream press attention only hurts. We think about activism as being this generic model of consciousness-raising, then hopefully media attention, attraction of new people to your cause, building public support for your cause, then decision-makers reacting to that change in public opinion. That's true for some types of activism, but it is not true for all of them.
Writing is a strange synthesis between the two parts of your mind: the analytical side and the side that knows nothing at all, and you have to allow the dreaming side free rein.
The weird thing about having your birthday on a school day is that by the time you get to be ten, or eleven for sure, no one at school knows it's your birthday anymore. It's not like when you're little and your mom brings cupcakes for the whole class. But even though no one knows, you walk around like it's supposed to be a national holiday. You walk around thinking that people are supposed to be nice to you, like maybe on your birthday you're ten times more breakable than on any other day. Well, it doesn't work that way. It just doesn't.
You win any which way you can. You do what you have to do to get by. That's the way it works in any job.
As long as people are marginalized and distracted [they] have no way to organize or articulate their sentiments, or even know that others have these sentiments. People assume that they are the only people with a crazy idea in their heads. They never hear it from anywhere else. Nobody's supposed to think that. ... Since there's no way to get together with other people who share or reinforce that view and help you articulate it, you feel like an oddity, an oddball. So you just stay on the side and you don't pay any attention to what's going on. You look at something else, like the Superbowl.
I guess because the shows were activist in their own way - the marriage of my public activism and my career activism, you know - people understand me very well. They also understand there's a very strong bipartisan part in all of this.
I think the best way to be an activist is to live your life well and be honest. It means being out. If you are not comfortable marching, you can make a big difference just by working side by side with someone who actually knows you're gay and a fine human being.
The person who knows only his side of the argument knows little of that.
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