[W]e brown folks especially have to stop talking about race. We have to stop. That is not to say racism isn’t and will not be a problem, but the fact is that our rhetoric alienates the people whose minds we need to change. We make it about class, we automatically bring in this huge group of people who we’ve alienated: poor and working class white folks. And we need them, and they need us.
—Sherman Alexie, poet, author
[T]he whole rhetoric of saving, we’re going to save Puget Sound, is wrong — we are always going to be saving Puget Sound, we are never going to save Puget Sound as long as millions of people live here…. One of the things about American life… is the sense of dislocation that so many people have. Even if they grew up in the place that they’re still living [in], they don’t really have a strong understanding of what does make that place unique, you know, just what it really means to call this place home…. But the natural world is by definition rooted to this place, through eons, and I think the more that we can preserve that and connect with it, the richer our lives are.
—John Lombard, author of Restoring Puget Sound: a Conservation Strategy for the 21st Century
It came out recently that Americans are lonelier than they used to be, and a quarter of Americans say they have not one friend they can turn to…. This creates an incredible fear and insecurity. Conviviality is a basic orientation to life. It signals to people that I am safe to approach.
—Cecile Andrews, author of Slow is Beautiful: Visions of Community, Leisure, and Joie de Vivre
The ultimate hope… is that in building localized economies, we might be able to address both social injustice and the environmental peril that we presently face.
—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and, most recently, Deep Economy
There’s been a Weimarization of the American working class. They’ve been completely abandoned by the Democratic party, by state and federal assistance agencies…. The jobs where they can be paid $50 an hour with retirement benefits and health plans are a distant memory. They know their children will never get that. And they’re ripe to be sucked into this world of magic realism of angels and miracles and healing.
—Chris Hedges, author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America
[M]y take on religion is a very skeptical one, generally, and Judaism is the only religion I know. It all stems back to this kind of hypocrisy that I felt in Hebrew school. There are all these laws that I had to follow, but in the end, people didn’t behave well to one another. They treated each other like shit.
—Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan
Women in jail are given men’s clothing…. They often smell like men’s sweat. They get their own underwear, but even those are not new. Every single prisoner talked to me about this: they aren’t given more than a few pads or tampons a week, so women resort to using socks. I don’t think people have any idea, well women would, how utterly disgusting you feel.
—Silja Talvi, author of Women Behind Bars: The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System
Suppose you just moved into 12 Maple Ave. … The person who just moved out of 12 Maple Ave. … communicated with Afghanistan three times a week, and had visitors at 3 o’clock in the morning… 12 Maple Ave. is associated with somebody suspected of possible terrorism. You don’t know it, but now you’re on some black list in the bowels of the NSA. Now suppose your son wants to go to the Naval Academy. ... Your son isn’t going to get into Annapolis and you’re not going to know why. ... [T]he people that create the atmosphere for this to take place are precisely the people that feel that “I am an upstanding, law-abiding person, so I don’t care what the government does to anybody else...”
—James Bamford, investigative journalist and author of Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency
The mandate of the War on Terror could not be more expansive. As a military strategy, it is unwinnable. But… as an economic strategy it’s unbeatable. First, you expand the region of the security state. ... Secondly, you privatize and outsource it all. The War on Terror is a new economy, not a war. It makes a lot more sense as an economy.
—Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine
The global economy is more concerned with the hourly fluctuation of the ticker tape, of the NASDAQ, than it is with the hinterland. Does Seattle give a thought to Forks, WA? Forks may still look to Seattle, but Seattle doesn’t look to Forks.
—Jonathan Raban, author of Surveillance
[P]eople always say to me, “Why can’t the Haitians — why can’t you all get your thing together?” But I know people will be saying that about Iraq 100 years from now: “Why can’t they get their shit together?”
—Edwidge Danticat, novelist and author of the memoir Brother, I’m Dying
[C]ivil rights and Vietnam were hostage to one another and, of course, at its most basic level, [we] were testing whether violence or non-violence is the better avenue to foster a democracy. We were trying to foster democracy in Vietnam by force of arms, [but] the civil rights movement said the essence of democracy is non-violence, and that one way of thinking about that is that every vote, which is the heart of democracy, is nothing but a piece of non-violence. A ballot is kind of a commitment to non-violence that’s been wrung out of eons of sacrifice.”
—Pulitzer Prize-winning Historian Taylor Branch, author of the trilogy America in the King Years
Leninism and corporate management theory have much in common despite different goals. Corporate America wants to maximize profit. In Leninism, theoretically, the goal is equality for all. Both ultimately think that power comes from the gun.
—Cathy Wilkerson, author of Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman
Often, when I was in private with men, there would be what you would expect: that certain misogynistic lockerroom talk. But what I interpreted was that they’re not allowed to express weakness, especially around male buddies…. You put those things together, and the only thing you’re allowed to do is say, “Oh, she was worth a blowjob,” because you can’t say “Gee, that rejection really hurt.”
—Norah Vincent, author of Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Journey into Manhood and Back
Insecurity and sexual frustration are big problems for a lot of people, and stifle their ability to really express themselves in a positive way. That may sound really Northwest, but I think that those are the kinds of things that really weigh people down.
—Ellen Forney, illustrator, author of Lust
Everyday I see dozens of amazing moments. Dozens of amazing interactions. I’m an insomniac, so [last night] I went grocery shopping late. I was in a 24-hour store. There was this old Black guy. I didn’t see him and he didn’t see me, and we both reached for the same loaf of French bread. We laughed. And he has this raspy voice: “I love this French bread, ’cuz even when I make just a baloney sandwich it makes me feel special.” So, first, just the luxury of being in a grocery store at 2 in the morning, I never discount that, and the beautiful interaction with a stranger over a loaf of French bread: How could you not have hope for humanity?
—Sherman Alexie, one more time
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