|
 | "Your silence will not protect you"
Audre Lorde |
| "You can only protect your liberties in this
world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am
free." Clarence Darrow |
| "We must indeed all hang together, or, most
assuredly, we shall all hang separately." Benjamin Franklin, July
4, 1776, remark to John Hancock, at the signing of the Declaration of
Independence |
| "When I rise it will be with the ranks and not
from the ranks." Eugene V. Debs |
| "We must learn to live together as brothers or
we are going to perish together as fools." Martin Luther King,
Jr. |
| "Years ago I recognized my kinship with all
living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the
meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower
class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while
there is a soul in prison, I am not free." Eugene V. Debs,
Founder of the American Railway Union |
| "In Unity there is strength; We can move
mountains when we're united and enjoy life --Without unity we are victims.
Stay united." Bill Bailey, 1994 |
| "If nobody quits until I do, there will be no
quitting!" UMWA organizer John R. Lawson, in 1915 after being
sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in a frame-up trial |
| "My friends, it is solidarity of labor we want.
We do not want to find fault with each other, but to solidify our forces and
say to each other: "We must be together; our masters are joined
together and we must do the same thing." Mother Jones, 1902,
Speaking before the convention of the UMWA, Indianapolis, IN |
| "Then join in hand brave Americans all, By
uniting we stand, by dividing we fall." John Dickinson, From The
Liberty Song |
| "It is a great mistake for any class of
laborers to isolate itself and thus weaken the bond of brotherhood between
those on whom the burdens and hardship of labor (fall). The fortunate ones
of the Earth, who are abundant in land and money and know nothing of the
anxious care and pinching poverty of the laboring classes, may be
indifferent to the appeal to justice at this point, but the laboring classes
cannot afford to be indifferent. What labor everywhere wants, what it ought
to have, and will someday demand and receive, is an honest day's pay for an
honest day's work. As the laborer becomes more intelligent he will develop
what capital he already possesses --that is the power to organize and
combine for its own protection." Frederick Douglass |
| "An injury to one is the concern of
all." Slogan of The Knights of Labor, circa 1880's |
| "Solidarity is not a matter of sentiment but a
fact, cold and impassive as the granite foundations of a skyscraper. If the
basic elements, identity of interest, clarity of vision, honesty of intent,
and oneness of purpose, or any of these is lacking, all sentimental please
for solidarity, and all other efforts to achieve it will be barren of
results." Eugene V. Debs |
| "The boss don't listen when one guy squawks/
But he's gotta listen when the union talks." An old song |
| "Universal economic evils afflicting the
working class can be eradicated only by a universal working-class movement.
Such a movement of the working class is impossible while separate craft and
wage agreements are made favoring the employer against other crafts in the
same industry, and while energies are wasted in fruitless jurisdictional
struggles which serve only to further the personal aggrandizement of union
officials." From the 1905 Call to the Founding convention of the
Industrial Workers of the World. |
| "You can only protect your liberties in this
world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am
free." Clarence Darrow |
| "El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido," (The
people united will never be defeated) |
| "A single bracelet does not jingle."
Congo proverb |
| "United jaws crush the bone." Kigezi
proverb, southwest Uganda |
| "Cross the river in a crowd and the crocodile
won't eat you." Proverb from Madagascar |
| "The workers have nothing to lose in this but
their chains. They have the world to gain. Workers of the world
unite!" Karl Marx |
| "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a
single garment of destiny." Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from
a Birmingham Jail |
| "Am I my brother's keeper? [That frequently
asked question] has never been answered in a way that is satisfactory to
civilized society. Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral
obligation to him that is inspired, not by maudlin sentimentality, but by
the higher duty I owe myself. It is when you have done your work
honestly, when you have contributed your share to the common fund that you
begin to live. Then, as Whitman said, you can take out your soul; you can
commune with yourself; you can take a comrade by the hand and you can look
into his soul and in that holy communion you live. And if you don't know
what that is, or if you are not at least on the edge of it, it is denied you
even to look into the Promised Land." Eugene V. Debs, from a
speech given at the founding of the Federal Council of Churches in Girard,
Kansas, 1908 |
| "The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside
of the family relation, should be one of uniting all working people of all
nations, tongues and kindreds." From the speeches of Abraham
Lincoln |
| "In Germany they came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the
Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the
trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a
Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak
up." Martin Niemoeller, German Lutheran Pastor (1892-1984) |
| "In spite of petty national lines, in spite of
international division lines, the workers of the world over are coming
together on the ground of their common working class interest, without
regard to race, color, creed or flag, and they are coming together because
the earth and all the earth holds, and all its possibilities are
theirs." Father Thomas Hagerty, speaking at the Founding
Convention of the I.W.W., 1905 |
| "The basic law of capitalism is you or I, not
both you and I." Karl Liebknecht, from a speech delivered in 1907 |
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The Communications Workers Of America Local 2201
