Labor Movement Quotes - Page 2

• Well, we see an increasingly weaker labor movement as a result of the overall assault on the labor movement and as a result of the globalization of capital.

  Angela Davis

  Economic Globalization, Movement, Results

  "Frontline", www.pbs.org. 1997.

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• As it has over the decades, the union movement stands for the fundamental moral values that make America strong: quality education for our children, affordable health care for every person-not just some-an end to poverty, secure pensions and wages that enable families to sustain the middle-class life that has fueled this nation's prosperity and strength. Union members and other working family activists don't just vote our moral values-we live them. We fight for them, day in, day out. Our commitment to economic and social justice propels us and everything we do.

  John Sweeney

  Strong, Children, Commitment

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• History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Teacher, Simple, Labour Movement

  Speech to the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL - CIO), December 11, 1961.

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• The labor movement is people. Our unions have brought millions of men and women together, made them members one of another, and given them common tools for common goals. Their goals are goals for all America - and their enemies are the enemies for progress. The two cannot be separated.

  John F. Kennedy

  Men, Two, America

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• There is nothing stronger than the American labor movement. United, we cannot and we will not be turned aside. Well work for it, sisters and brothers. Well stand for it. Together. Each of us. To bring out the best in America. To bring out the best in ourselves, and each other.

  Richard Trumka

  Brother, America, Stronger

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• Increased interest and participation by labor in the affairs of government should make for economic and political stability in the future. Labor has a constitutional and statutory right to participate.

  John L. Lewis

  Government, Political, Affair

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• Slowly those who create the wealth of the world are permitted to share it. The future is in labor's strong, rough hands.

  Mother Jones

  Strong, Hands, World

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• In less than a century we experienced great movement. The youth movement! The labor movement! The civil rights movement! The peace movement! The solidarity movement! The women's movement! The disability movement! The disarmament movement! The gay rights movement! The environmental movement! Movement! Transformation! Is there any reason to believe we are done?

  Holly Near

  Women, Believe, Gay

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• [The labor movement is] a movement of the working people, for the working people, by the working people, governed by ourselves, with its policies determined by ourselves.

  Samuel Gompers

  People, Movement, Determined

  Proceedings of the Convention, Washington, D.C.: American Federation of Labor (p. 37), 1923.

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• The trade agreement has become a rather distinct feature of the American labor movement. ... It is based on the idea that labor shall accept the capitalist system of production and make terms of peace with it.

  Mary Ritter Beard

  Agreement, Ideas, Movement

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• The origin of the labor movement lies in self-defense.

  Mary Ritter Beard

  Lying, Self, Defense

  Mary Ritter Beard (1920). “A Short History of the American Labor Movement”

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• So long as we have held fast to voluntary principles and have been actuated and inspired by the spirit of service, we have sustained our forward progress, and we have made our labor movement something to be respected and accorded a place in the councils of the Republic. Where we have blundered into trying to force a policy or decision, even though wise and right, we have impeded if not interrupted the realization of our own aims.

  Samuel Gompers

  Wise, Long, Decision

  Samuel Gompers, John McBride, William Green (1948). “The American Federationist”

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• Legislators who are of even average intelligence stand out among their colleagues. . . . A cultured college president has become as much a rarity as a literate newspaper publisher. A financier interested in economics is as exceptional as a labor leader interested in the labor movement. For the most part our leaders are merely following out in front; they [only] marshal us in the way that we are going.

  Bergen Evans

  Leadership, College, Average

  Bergen Evans (1954). “The Spoor of Spooks: And Other Nonsense”, New York : Knopf

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• Today I send this message to every emerging global corporation: "justice; family, community, and union" are the same in every language and, wherever you go and whatever you do, a new global labor movement is coming to find you.

  Andy Stern

  Justice, Community, Movement

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• The labor movement must be destroyed.

  Karl Rove

  Movement, Labor, Destroyed

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• In England, there are only two things to be, basically: You are either for the labor movement or for the capitalist movement. Either you become a right-wing Archie Bunker if you are in the class I am in, or you become an instinctive socialist, which I was.

  John Lennon

  Class, Wings, Two

  "Playboy" Interview with David Sheff, September 1980.

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• The labor movement had been pretty much killed in the 1920s, almost destroyed. It revived in the 1930s and made a huge difference. By the late 1930s the business world was already trying to find ways to beat it back.

  Noam Chomsky

  Differences, Trying, Movement

  "Noam Chomsky on America's Economic Suicide". Interview with Laura Flanders / GRITtv, www.alternet.org. May 4, 2012.

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• Historically, if you look back at the struggle to end slavery, the struggle to gain womens' right to vote, the labor movement - these were big social transitions in which there was a movement on the ground in which a lot of people died, but it also took an independent political party.

  Jill Stein

  Party, Struggle, Independent

  Source: www.pqmonthly.com

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• When the New Deal programs were passed in the mid 1930s, millions of workers were joining unions, striking, and occupying factories to fight for a better life. It was this radical labor movement that forced the establishment to make concessions.

  Kshama Sawant

  Fighting, Joining, Movement

  Source: www.socialistalternative.org

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• Trump's principal policies make clear what's going to happen. This gives an opportunity. Right now it's going to take hard work, but it's possible that there could be a real revival of the labor movement.

  Noam Chomsky

  Real, Hard Work, Opportunity

  Source: www.brooklynrail.org

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• Labor has been severely undermined, but that's happened before. In the 1920s, the labor movement was virtually crushed, in large part by Wilson's Red Scare, but it dramatically revived in the 1930s. It spearheaded the social-democratic New-Deal style changes which were beneficial to the country - not sufficient, but beneficial. That could happen again.

  Noam Chomsky

  Country, Style, Scare

  Source: www.brooklynrail.org

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• The labor movement can be rebuilt, as has happened before after sharp declines.

  Noam Chomsky

  Movement, Decline, Labor

  Source: www.brooklynrail.org

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• The community itself didn't support the union. Now that's kind of interesting about [Barack] Obama, because Obama was supposedly a community organizer in Chicago at that time. Now I'm sure he read the Chicago Tribune, so he knew about it, but when he went to show his solidarity with the workforce, the first place he went was Caterpillar. I don't think he's forgotten, and the labor movement didn't react. Even radical labor historians didn't remember. It was only 15 years ago, after all, but that's a real triumph of propaganda in many ways.

  Noam Chomsky

  Real, Thinking, Years

  Source: www.iww.org

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• Wherever I found resistance to oppression, whether in Africa, in Latin America, certainly here in America in the South, I joined that resistance. I took part in the labor movement, in social movements, in the church community. I felt that it was the honorable thing to do and still do.

  Harry Belafonte

  Latin, America, Community

  Source: www.yesmagazine.org

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• ... no one knows anything about a strike until he has seen it break down into its component parts of human beings.

  Mary Heaton Vorse

  Broken, Breaking Down, Strikes

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