grace lee bogg | Revolutionary
“Love isn't about what we did yesterday; it's about what we do today and tomorrow and the day after”
“History is not the past. It is the stories we tell about the past. How we tell these stories - triumphantly or self-critically, metaphysically or dialectally - has a lot to do with whether we cut short or advance our evolution as human beings.”
“activism can be the journey rather than the arrival”
“Being a victim of oppression in the United States is not enough to make you revolutionary, just as dropping out of your mother's womb is not enough to make you human. People who are full of hate and anger against their oppressors or who only see Us versus Them can make a rebellion but not a revolution. The oppressed internalize the values of the oppressor. Therefore, any group that achieve power, no matter how oppressed, is not going to act differently from their oppressors as long as they have not confronted the values that they have internalized and consciously adopted different values.”
“You don't choose the times you live in, but you do choose who you want to be, and you do choose how you want to think.
"We can begin by doing small things at the local level, like planting community gardens or looking out for our neighbors. That is how change takes place in living systems: not from above but from within, from many local actions occurring simultaneously."
"To make a revolution, people must not only struggle against existing institutions. They must make a philosophical/ spiritual leap and become more 'human' human beings. In order to change/transform the world, they must change/transform themselves."
Grace Lee Boggs (1915-2015)
A prominent activist her entire adult life, Grace Lee was born in Rhode Island in 1915, the daughter of Chinese immigrants. She studied at Barnard College and Bryn Mawr, receiving her Ph.D. in 1940. Her studies in philosophy and the writings of Marx, Hegel, and Margaret Mead led not to a life in academia, but rather to a lifetime of social activism.
Lee´s activism began in Chicago, where she joined the movement for tenants' rights, and then the Workers Party, a splinter group of the Socialist Workers Party. In these associations, as well as in her involvement with the 1941 March on Washington, Lee focused on marginalized groups such as women and people of color. In 1953, Lee married black auto worker and activist James Boggs and moved to Detroit, where she remains an activist today, writing columns for the Michigan Citizen. James died in 1993.
Grace Lee Boggs embraces a philosophy of constant questioning – not just of who we are as individuals, but of how we relate to those in our community and country, to those in other countries, and to the local and global environment.
Boggs has rejected the stereotypical radical idea that capitalist society is just something to be done away with, believing more that "you cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it."
She believes that it is by working together in small groups that positive social change can happen, not in large revolutions where one group of power simply changes position with another.
Excerpt from : AMERICANS WHO TELL THE TRUTH
Grace Art By Americans Who Tell the Truth
A collection of portraits & narratives of citizens who courageously address social, environmental & economic fairness by artist Robert Shetterly.
“Evolution is not linear.”
“You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.”
“We urgently need a paradigm shift in our concept of the purposes and practices of education. We need to leave behind the concept of education as a passport to more money and higher status in the future and replace it with a concept of education as an ongoing process that enlists the tremendous energies and creativity of schoolchildren in rebuilding and respiriting our communities and our cities now, in the present.”
“Don't get stuck in old ideas. Keep recognizing that reality is changing and that your ideas have to change.”
“A revolution that is based on the people exercising their creativity in the midst of devastation is one of the great historical contributions of humankind.”
“The most radical thing I ever did was to stay put.”
“People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values.”
“Talk and write in a way that encourages the mutual exchange of ideas and acts like a midwife to people birthing their own ideas.”
“These are the times to grow our souls. Each of us is called upon to embrace the conviction that despite the powers and principalities bent on commodifying all our human relationships, we have the power within us to create the world anew.”
"Rebellions tend to be negative, to denounce and expose the enemy without providing a positive vision of a new future...A revolution is not just for the purpose of correcting past injustices, a revolution involves a projection of man/woman into the future”
“A rebellion is something that is developing as an explosion coming out of the righteous grievances of a community of people.
“This capitalist society has not lasted forever; it’s only a few hundred years old.”