Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya Quotes

I grew up with protests, marches, demonstrations, struggle. But I come from a clan of community workers.

“Student strike” has the same sort of emotional appeal to the French as “family farm” has in America.

I came from a tradition of demonstrations and protests, and I really believe in them. I think they are powerful ways of bring people together, to organize, to raise awareness, and most importantly to empower people.

Protests have a value in society that I don't think you can quantify.

If democracy were to be given any meaning, if it were to go beyond the limits of capitalism and nationalism, this would not come, if history were any guide, from the top. It would come through citizen's movements, educating, organizing, agitating, striking, boycotting, demonstrating, threatening those in power with disruption of the stability they needed.

History shows that all protest movements rely on symbols - boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, flags, songs. Symbolic action on whatever scale - from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to wearing a simple wristband - is designed to disrupt our everyday complacency and force people to think.

The power of protest depends not only on how many turn out, but also on what legislative, judicial, and civil society institutions exist to enact the will of those marching in the streets.

It was the spirit of the workers that was dangerous. They are always marching and singing. The tired, gray crowds ebbing and flowing perpetually into the mills had waked and opened their months to sing.

By the force of our demands, our determination and our numbers, we shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces, and put them back in the image of God and democracy.

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

We are at the point where we can mobilize all of this righteous indignation into a powerful mass movement.

We are not afraid of their guns. Honduras army pattern is just 7000 men. If we take up arms, we would quickly run away so few soldiers. But our goal is to allocate the regime in a peaceful and honorable way. Women, children, youth, students, workers -- we all have united in a civic front against the coup. Even my 80 year old mother went to the streets and practiced non-violent resistance.

I've played hundreds of protests. I've marched on dozens of picket lines. I've strummed my guitar at innumerable demonstrations.

The absolute key issue is: how do you create enough political pressure? It's up to us to create that political will and there are tried and tested techniques for doing that. So we're talking about the need for civil disobedience that escalates into a rebellion and uprising.

If people go out and start protests for everything, then entire Tamil Nadu will become a grave yard!

Nonviolent, visual protests have a long history of forming images that can quickly go viral and set a powerful tone for a moment.

When I was 19 or 20, the way I was an activist was by regularly meeting with groups, going to protests, and being there on the ground.

One of the beautiful things about a movement is that there are many strategies and many tactics contained within it. Not every participant in a movement is required to do exactly the same things.

Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.

Am I allowed to suggest that we owe much to these stubborn and sectarian people, those indefatigable strikers who take over our factories and bring disorder to our streets, these obstinate creatures who ceaselessly fought for reforms while fantasizing of the Revolution, these Marxists who, marching against the current of History, disturbed the complacent sleep of capitalism? … Communism is dead. Let us rejoice.

We cannot have a political club and call it an army.

We [the Rukus Society] created a culture of resistance where going to jail was considered a privilege. We refused bail, went to jail and took our lumps without complaining. We were confident of the support we had ...

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,

My parents were active in the anti-war movement in the 1960s, so I grew up with a tradition of civic activism around our dinner table and going to different marches for different causes.

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.