Words&Dirt

“BLOOM: (In workman’s corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap) Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Raleigh brought from the new world that potato and that weed, the one killer of pestilence by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will, understanding, all. That is to say, he brought the poison a hundred years before another person whose name I forget brought the food. Suicide. Lies. All our habits. Why, look at our public life!”

––Ulysses, by James Joyce, pg. 455

“I am convinced that if we can muster the courage to work together, we can do what needs to be done. Building a progressive future requires building a progressive movement. And that means that in every community in America citizens must stand up and say, ‘We believe in economic justice for all. We will no longer accept a situation in which the wealthy and powerful have undue influence. We are going to change this nation, and we are going to start by doing what needs to be done from the grassroots up.’

It is time, in other words, for you to begin doing in your community what many of us have begun doing in Vermont: take a stand, organize, and use the political process to build democracy all over again.”

––Outsider in the White House, by Bernie Sanders and Huck Gutman, pg. 303