A Quote by Van Jones
Listen, here's reality. It is completely unfair and absolutely necessary that people who have been oppressed and marginalized have to lead everybody. That is MLK, that is Dolores Huerta, that is Fannie Lou Hamer, that is Ella Jo Baker, that is Nelson Mandela. You walk down the line.
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I'm not going to let Donald Trump take away from our community, something that Fannie Lou Hamer shed blood to give us. Something that Ella Jo Baker braved conditions in the South and sweatshops in Harlem to give us.
Of course, Nelson Mandela, everybody knows Nelson Mandela. I mean, he's a great gift not only for Africa but for the whole world, actually. But do not expect everybody to be a Nelson Mandela.
All talks about legacies of white supremacy must be tied to empowering the lives of poor and working people as a whole. The black agenda - from Frederick Douglas to A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr, Fannie Lou Hammer to Ella Baker - has always been tied to race talk inseparable from expanding possibilities of democracy, expanding empowerment of everyday people.
When I saw Fannie Lou Hamer speech I said, "Well, how did this Democratic Party that Miss Hamer is talking about, become the Democratic Party that now is the party of the African-American community?"
Some people think that [it was] Martin Luther King Jr.'s idea to have a boycott. It was a black woman, a teacher, who said we should boycott the buses. You had people like Fannie Lou Hamer; Delta, Mississippi.
I just think of Fannie Lou Hamer, because even though she didn't know my name Ms. Hamer was thinking of me. I just want to do a good job, because I want her to look over that edge of heaven and say, "That's why I did it. That's why. I knew we had the capacity and the talent to be everything America says we can't be. All we needed was an open door."
I have crossed over on the backs of Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Madam C. J. Walker. Because of them I can now live the dream. I am the seed of the free, and I know it. I intend to bear great fruit.
That is part of why we must keep talking about Fannie Lou Hamer and about our history as a party and as a nation. We can't forget. If we forget, we can get self-righteous. We are great, but we had to grow into that greatness. Let's not forget that we shut people out.
Marriage equality is a very middle-class issue and voting rights is a very working-class issue. If you do not vote, who are you speaking for? Who will be the next Fannie Lou Hamer? If not you or someone you know, then who?
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Facts and figures from Nelson Mandela's life, set to the trailer from 'Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.'
"Man's goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished."
Don't talk to me about what's happened since [Nelson] Mandela! His successor was absolutely hopeless - "no such thing as AIDS" - and this present President... It's a tragedy, you know, what's happened there post-Mandela, because he was an iconic figure.
Look at Nelson Mandela. Why did people want to follow him? He's a lousy speaker. If he hadn't got all the other things, you wouldn't spend time listening to him. But people actually don't listen to what he's saying, in a way. They are listening to him because he has communicated that he is ready to put his life on the line.
I was just an infant when [Fannie Lou] Hamer spoke - barley even awake in the world. But here she was, pressing the Democratic Party to refuse to recognize the all-white Mississippi delegation, because obviously there was no way Mississippi could have an all-white delegation. Black people had been kept from registering through violence and intimidation. She had experienced that violence herself and was there to speak about it and to insist the delegation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party be recognized instead.
Nelson Mandela, Dada Vaswani, Harsh Mander, Shabana Azmi - I admire their humanitarian work. But sadly even Nelson Mandela could not keep corruption out of his cabinet and within a year, I am told, the victims of apartheid turned into perpetrators of corruption on their own people. Greed has no boundaries of colour or country does it?
When we shot "Cry Freedom," I wasn't even allowed in South Africa. They told me I could come but I wasn't going to leave. I had heavy death threats at that time. So we shot in Zimbabwe. In 1995, I had the privilege and the honor to meet Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela the same day: I had breakfast with Desmond Tutu and lunch with Nelson Mandela. Then I had the good fortune to have Mr. Mandela actually come to my house in California. There's been a tremendous amount of change.
The famous passage from her book is often erroneously attributed to the inaugural address of Nelson Mandela. About the misattribution Williamson said, "Several years ago, this paragraph from A Return to Love began popping up everywhere, attributed to Nelson Mandela's 1994 inaugural address. As honored as I would be had President Mandela quoted my words, indeed he did not. I have no idea where that story came from, but I am gratified that the paragraph has come to mean so much to so many people.
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