#abolition

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour. ↗

— Frederick Douglass

#activism #agitation #dissent #human-rights #liberties

That a majority of the Abolitionists in this place would patronize a free labor store, in preference to others, I do not doubt; but we do not muster money in Cincinnati. ↗

— Gamaliel Bailey

#cincinnati #doubt #free #i #i do

The rights paradigm, which, as I interpret it, morally requires the abolition of animal exploitation and requires veganism as a matter of fundamental justice, is radically different from the welfarist paradigm, which, in theory focuses on reducing suffering, and, in reality, focuses on tidying up animal exploitation at its economically inefficient edges. In science, those who subscribe to one paradigm are often unable to understand and engage those who subscribe to another paradigm precisely because the theoretical language that they use is not compatible. I think that the situation is similar in the context of the debate between animal rights and animal welfare. And that is why welfarists simply cannot understand or accept the slavery analogy. ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#abolitionist #ahimsa #animals #education #exploitation

But beyond all that, the question that is continually begged is why isn't America leading the way toward total abolition of nuclear weapons. ↗

— Dennis Kucinich

#america #begged #beyond #continually #leading

That was when I realized we weren’t born to be slaves. It was ignorant for any man to think he could be the master of another. We were all meant to be free, and somewhere there were good people helping to heal this broken world. ↗

— Jay Grewal

#american-history #black-history #civil-war #equality #faith

And here a most heinous charge is made, that the nation has been burdened with unnecessary expenses for the sole purpose of preventing the discharge of our debts and the abolition of taxes. ↗

— Robert Walpole

#been #burdened #charge #debts #discharge

What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays' Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie... Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it's down to us. ↗

— Jim Hightower

#caesar #chavez #created #democracy #down

Among the expected glories of the Constitution, next to the abolition of Slavery was that of Rum. ↗

— George Clymer

#among #constitution #expected #glories #next

The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart. ↗

— Mahatma Gandhi

#adjusted #change #democracy #forms #heart

Veganism is not about giving anything up or losing anything; it is about gaining the peace within yourself that comes from embracing nonviolence and refusing to participate in the exploitation of the vulnerable ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#abolitionist #ahimsa #animals #francione #inspirational-quotes