Interviews with Truthout.org: on Civil Rights

Must follow up direct action with electoral politics

A: When you look at US history--the abolition of slavery, the women's movement, the labor movement--[those started with] direct action & very difficult struggles in the street, but those struggles then became political. In the words of Frederick Douglass, "power concedes nothing without a demand," and that demand needs to happen in the street, in our communities, in our schools and in the voting booth. Because failing that, all the progress that we make in the street and in our communities will be rolled back if we simply wave the white flag of surrender inside the voting booth. History says these movements didn't move forward inside the established parties at the time. They needed independent parties. These things [direct action and electoral politics] go together