Robin Dg Kelley Quotes

Without new visions, we don’t know what to build, only what to knock down. We not only end up confused, rudderless, and cynical, but we forget that making a revolution is not a series of clever maneuvers and tactics, but a process that can and must transform us

Too often, our standards for evaluating social movements pivot around whether or not they "succeeded" in realizing their visions rather than on the merits or power of the visions themselves. By such a measure, virtually every radical movement failed because the basic power relations they sought to change remained pretty much intact. And yet it is precisely these alternative visions and dreams that inspire new generations to struggle for change.

The lessons are clear: changing white hearts or training more cops won’t do. To put out the fire this time requires dismantling the entire state and corporate machinery of violence.

I could hear something so I realized, of course, what he was trying to tell me was first of all, don’t be judgmental of anybody else, just listen and pay attention and look for the beauty. And then when you find the beauty, study that and don’t bother with the rest of it.53

Political protest is a form of expression, done specifically so as to be seen by an audience—such as the general public or politicians in power—with the hope of convincing that audience to share the protesters’ viewpoint and maybe act on their behalf. Direct action is also political, but avoids the “middleperson”; it is instead an action done to directly pursue a concrete goal, such as acquiring food with which to feed oneself. Holding a sign that criticizes Jim Crow laws is political protest; refusing to get off the bus or move to the back when ordered to is direct action—as, Robin D.G. Kelley points out in Race Rebels, hundreds of individuals in the South were doing before Rosa Parks, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People successfully turned the act into an organized, political tactic. Tea Partiers and conservatives who wave “Don’t Tread on Me” flags are engaging in political protest; those who buy their own land and arm themselves to protect it are engaging in direct action

Introspection,” which took four takes to produce an acceptable version, was unlike anything that came before it. It embodied the most radical elements of Monk’s approach to composition and improvisation.36

In Richmond, for instance, free blacks petitioned the city council to repeal the city’s repressive Black Code, and in New York City there was the stunning behavior of Elizabeth Jennings. On a Sunday morning in 1854 she was pulled out of a horse-drawn trolley car and wrestled to the ground by a white conductor and driver who sought to keep her from sitting in the white section. With the same conviction and audacity shown by the free blacks of Richmond, Jennings took her case to court. Her victory there broke the back of segregation on public conveyances in New York.

Césaires (Aimé and Suzanne) were creative innovators of surrealism—that they actually introduced fresh surrealist ideas to Breton and his colleagues. I don’t think it is too much to argue that the Césaires not only embraced surrealism—independently of the Paris Group, I might add—but also expanded it, enlarged its perspectives, and contributed enormously to theorizing the “domain of the Marvelous.” Aimé Césaire, after all, has never denied his surrealist leanings. As he explains: “Surrealism provided me with what I had been confusedly searching for. I have accepted it joyfully because in it I have found more of a confirmation than a revelation.” Surrealism, he explained, helped him to summon up powerful unconscious forces. “This, for

Hawkins sought out the freshest, most original musicians, and had little patience for those who would quibble over the difference between “modern” or “progressive,” “swing” or “bebop.” “I don’t think about music as being new, or modern, or anything of the type,” he mused. “Music doesn’t go seasonable to me.”44

Thelonious Monk’s music is essentially about freedom.

Thelonious suffered from bipolar disorder, the signs of which are evident as early as the 1940s. But by the early 1960s, just as he began to earn the fame and recognition that had eluded him for the first two decades of his career, various mental and physical ailments began to take an even greater toll, exacerbated by poor medical treatment, an unhealthy lifestyle, the daily stresses of a working jazz musician, and an unending financial and creative battle with the music industry.

Thelonious had been born into extreme poverty. His mother and grandmother spent their lives scrubbing floors for a living, and his father, Thelonious, Sr., cobbled together work as an unskilled day laborer in the railroad town of Rocky Mount. His grandfathers had lived a life of debt peonage, share-cropping for ex-slave masters and surviving pretty much from meal to meal.

Thelonious Monk had much to celebrate on October 10, 1957. It was his fortieth birthday, and after more than two decades of scuffling his career was on an upswing.

Adoring fans, hipsters, bohemians, and wannabes lined up outside the narrow storefront club at 5 Cooper Square, hoping to catch Monk and his legendary quartet—John Coltrane, bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik, and drummer Shadow Wilson. That night, Monk wanted to celebrate. Friends, family, and enthusiastic fans surrounded him. His “‘un’ years,” as his wife Nellie used to call them, were about to end.

Dr. King constantly warned us that we would not be able to build a truly liberatory movement without the “strength to love.” In his 1963 book of the same title, he wrote: We Negroes have long dreamed of freedom, but still we are confined in an oppressive prison of segregation and discrimination. Must we respond with bitterness and cynicism? Certainly not, for this will destroy and poison our personalities…. To guard ourselves from bitterness, we need the vision to see in this generation’s ordeals the opportunity to transfigure both ourselves and American society. Our present suffering and our nonviolent struggle to be free may well offer to Western civilization the kind of spiritual dynamic so desperately needed for survival.