David Grinspoon Quotes

We spent a lot of time talking about politics at home. We went to the camp at Greenham Common.

I'm a lad of the '60s. I started a magazine to try and end the Vietnam war, but it was a number of years before I had the profile, the financial resources and the time to do more.

King consciously steered away from legal claims and instead relied on civil disobedience.

For most women, Greenham was a place of principle, growth and song. Often joyful, sometimes terrifying, and almost always cold. As it got harder, with constant evictions and mounting violence from a frustrated and humiliated police force, the women got more determined. It was a community with a shared purpose - to live in peace.

It's very hard to have lived through the Sixties and not be political.

The atomic issue was a natural path into political issues.

We are on the threshold of a significant breakthrough, and the greatest weapon is the mass demonstration.

I want to see young people in America feel the spirit of the 1960s and find a way to get in the way. To find a way to get in trouble. Good trouble, necessary trouble.

Different people were complaining, and I remember saying, 'Why don't we just demonstrate?' The Whitney was the first.

My mum was always extremely political. I have fond memories of making signs as a child for the nuclear disarmament protests at Greenham Common, or helping her bake cakes for them.

I joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1980s and protested at Greenham Common.

The day of the march, we were forbidden to go to the march site. The man I worked for, the Presbyterian minister, knew we would want to be sort of martyrs for the cause and risk arrest. He didn't want any of that going on. So he made us stay in the neighborhood.

I was very much a child of the 1960s. I protested the Vietnam War and grew up in a fairly politicized home. My father was like a cross between William Kunstler and Zorba the Greek. I grew up among left-wing lawyers.

The peace movement here is the biggest thing in human history.

I think direct political action, civil disobedience, in particular, is something to be taken very seriously.

In 1982 over one million people gathered in Central Park of New York City to demonstrate against nuclear weapons. It was the largest demonstration in the history of the United States.

I’m not saying that all those who are marching on Washington are Communists. I’m saying that a lot of fine Negro citizens have been misled in this country and are being used by the Communists to exploit them.

Mr. President, we are going to march on Washington. The people are restless. The Black masses are restless.

People have to carry on with their lives, so only so much direct action can take place. Anti-nuclear activism may look dormant from appearances, but it’s there, like magma. It’s still brewing, and the next trigger might be another big protest or political change,

Peoples do not defy repression and death, nor do they remain for nights on end protesting energetically, just because of merely formal matters.

I saw the first of the 7-mile-long column appear - red and orange and green banners, 'Ban the Bomb!' etc., shining and swaying slowly. Absolute silence. I found myself weeping to see the tan, dusty marchers, knapsacks on their backs - Quakers and Catholics, Africans and whites, Algerians and French - 40 percent were London housewives.

In the late 1960s, the masses were supposed to be passive, not entering into the public arena and having their voices heard.

Historically, mass demonstrations have worked best at shifting public opinion and pressuring the powers-that-be when organizers highlighted one concrete demand: 'Bring Our Boys Home from Vietnam'; 'End Segregation Now'; 'Support Women's Right to Choose.'

I think there's a weapon of cynicism to say, 'Protest doesn't work. Organizing doesn't work. Y'all are a bunch of hippies. You know, it doesn't do anything,' because, frankly, it's said out of fear, because it is a potent force for political change.

My parents were activists and my mother was hugely involved with the anti-Vietnam War protests.