I had grown up at a time when people were being lynched, being attacked with water hoses. Becoming active and learning a different way of viewing my life was a healthy reaction to what I was seeing every day.
I believe in life. And I have seen the death parade.
My energy just couldn’t stop dancing. I was caught up in the music of struggle, and i wanted to dance.
I don’t have to live up to that Superwoman myth. I can cry and be human and lean on people who take care of me. That can be very liberating.
Cuba has its own moral system and priorities. That’s what keeps it going, the belief that the country can control its own destiny.
The abnormal, the sick, the vicious have become more and more interwoven into the violent culture of the United States. Into the way news is seen, into the way movies are seen.
I think that one of the problems that exists in the United States and in many places in the world is that people don’t believe that they can make a difference. So a lot of times we’re defeated before we even start. We’ve become consumers of a world vision, of Kentucky Fried Chicken, of McDonalds.
Black Revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. We are shaped by our oppression. We are being manufactured in droves in the ghetto streets, places like attica, san quetin, bedford hills, leavenworth, and sing sing. They are turning out thousands of us.
I can’t do nothin except try to find cloud nine.
I believe in living, I believe in birth, I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth and I believe that a lost ship, steered by tired, sea sick sailors, can still be guided home to port.
It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.
We had to learn that we’re beautiful. We had to relearn something forcefully taken from us. We had to learn about Black power. People have power if we unite. We learned the importance of coming together and being active.
Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory.
The attitudes of many police organizations were extremely negative to the prospect of Rap, and many officials weren’t afraid to say that they were against it. To them, Rappers were just criminals waiting to get caught.
The government recognized immediately that Rap music has enormous revolutionary potential and politicians immediately came together to end it.
Tourism has affected Cuba, because tourists come and they bring racist, sexist ideas. They bring a whole vision that there are rich people all over the world and that’s the way it should be.
I think anybody who is honestly struggling against racism must struggle against imperialism and vice versa.
I realized that I was connected to Africa.
Are you ready to sacrifice to end world hunger? To sacrifice to end colonialism? To end neo-colonialism? To end racism? To end sexism?
All you have to do is ask yourselves, who controls the government? And who are the victims of that control?