WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Belafonte, 90, tells Carnegie Music Hall audience in Pittsburgh,  “This will be my last public appearance.” 

Harry Belafonte

“We have achieved a lot in my lifetime. Dr King was not about nothing, Eleanor Roosevelt was not about nothing. I think in the final analysis that we shall overcome, because what we did is … we left a harvest that generations to come [will] reap. That they have not yet plowed. That they have not yet harvested.” -- Guardian

Parent at Success Academy Charter

“It’s like a military-style boot camp,” said one of the parents, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. -- N.Y. Daily News

 Prof. Erin Pahlke, Whitman College

...absent sufficient information for parents, choice-based education systems “penalize schools that enroll low-achievers rather than schools that offer poor instruction” and give school leaders a perverse incentive to focus on “making sure your school’s got the best kids” rather than improving school quality. -- The Atlantic

Barbara Ransby, UIC history professor

The Movement for Black Lives is distinctive because it defers to the local wisdom of its members and affiliates, rather than trying to dictate from above. In fact, the local organizers have insisted upon it. -- New York Times

Jimmy Carter

 Asked if Trump was responsible for souring America’s image in the world, he said “he might be escalating it but I think that precedes Trump. The United States has been the dominant character in the whole world and now we’re not any more. And we’re not going to be." -- Guardian  

John McCain

 “One aspect of the (Vietnam) conflict by the way that I will never ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest income level of America and the highest income level found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur." -- AZ Central

If you think journalists should never challenge statements of generals, I’ve got a great documentary series for you https://t.co/4QuzXyw0OX

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) October 20, 2017

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Wesley Mann

Sankofa co-director Raoul Roach (son of Max Roach), Harry Belafonte and Gina Belafonte at the Many Rivers to Cross festival in Fairburn, Ga. 

 Harry Belafonte

“America has a cancer that’s at work, and it’s slowly distributing itself through the national body. There’s a million reasons to mobilize, but [now] Donald Trump has stepped into the space. It isn’t Trump the man, [it’s] the number of people who approve of him, who embrace him.” -- Billboard

Author Paul Mason

If we do not break this cycle, you can easily see capitalism being replaced by a stagnant neo-feudalism. -- Postcapitalism and the city

Michael Zilles, President Newton, MA Teachers Association

...once this cruel experiment in market competition has played itself out, we are left with chronically underfunded public schools, school closures, disrupted lives, and an ever more unbreakable pattern of segregation, inequality, and poverty. To avoid that risk, any reasonable person would vote “no” on Question 2. -- Boston Globe

Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chair Dave Archambault II

"We need the federal government to step in and start protecting us from the state officials." -- Democracy Now

 Bill McKibben

 "The shocking images of the National Guard destroying tepees and sweat lodges and arresting elders this week remind us that the battle over the Dakota Access Pipeline is part of the longest-running drama in American history -- the United States Army versus Native Americans." -- New York Times

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Strawberry Mansion High in North Philadelphia is one of 37 schools the school had slated for closing. 

Philadelphia Superintendent William Hite 

"Alarming. "This diagram suggests that children who are most in need of resources are receiving the fewest amount of resources." -- Philly Public Schools Notebook

Cassie Creswell, More Than A Score board member

“The state must administer the test but that doesn’t mean the kid has to take it. On a legal basis, the parent should have the right to refuse for the kids.” -- Sun-Times

Rev. Barber

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber

"When you look at Moral Monday and our movement, you see North Carolina and America in all of its beauty." --  NC Civil Rights Leader Questioned About Being Featured in Campaign Attack Ads

Danny Glover

 “Harry was a kind of bridge between the blacklist and the actors who were beginning to speak out.” -- Harry Belafonte Receives Humanitarian Oscar

Richard Berman, right-wing media guru

“I get up every morning and I try to figure out how to screw with the labor unions — that’s my offense,” Mr. Berman said in his speech to the Western Energy Alliance. “I am just trying to figure out how I am going to reduce their brand.” -- N.Y. Times

NYT Editorial

The economy is not working for those who rely on paychecks to make a living, which is to say, almost everyone. Steady gains in the October jobs report, while welcome, do not change that basic fact. -- Job Growth, But No Raises

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Harry Belafonte

“I think artists have a platform, they have a power, the gift – and by using that gift and that power and putting it the service of those who are being ground out by inequity and systems that are unjust, we begin to put a light and a new dynamic into what is going on with the poor and what is going on with the racially oppressed, sexually abused,” Belafonte told Harris-Perry. “And by doing this, we have heightened the consciousness of people who are being constantly distracted at taking a deeper look at what goes on in our social issues.” -- Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC

 Leonie Haimson, Exec. Dir., Class Size Matters

"Send Arne Duncan to Mars" -- Salon.com

Chris Hayes

Following the release yesterday of the State Department report on the environmental impact of the Keystone XL Pipeline, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes delivered a blistering rebuke of America’s dependence on fossil fuels, likening President Barack Obama’s apparent willingness to embrace the project to a drug addicts trapped in a “self-destructive cycle.”

 “Everyone who breaks free of any addiction digs down and finds some inner strength to say no, to stop, to say this is the day I start to turn my life around,” Hayes concluded. “And the question is whether we as citizens, and Barack Obama as a president, as a human being, can find that strength within himself.”-- Chris Hayes Takes on Obama’s
‘Addiction’ to Oil: Just ‘Say No’ 

Maia Wu speaks truth to power. 

Calif. 8th-grader Maia Wu

Currently in my school, parents and teachers are afraid to speak out against what they feel is wrong, which is something that should not be accepted as the "norm". Unfortunately, it's not just teachers and parents, but students as well.  You could even say, my school is run by fear. -- Living in Diagogue