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Turning Against The Church I Also Had To Turn Against A Lot Of The Teachings Of People In My Family Who Were Very Much Of The Church And Caught In It, And Every Time I Turned To Find Where Resides The Good In The Church, All I Saw Was The Demonic, The Lucifer Of The Journey.

-Harry Belafonte

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Turning Against The Church

Harry Belafonte

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Turning Against The Church I Also Had To Turn Against A Lot Of The Teachings Of People In My Family Who Were Very Much Of The Church And Caught In It, And Every Time I Turned To Find Where Resides The Good In The Church, All I Saw Was The Demonic, The Lucifer Of The Journey.

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The Catholic Church Had Strict Racial Attitudes And Intolerance For Anybody Who Was Not Catholic. When I Look At A Lot Of Black Ministers And What Went On In The Black Church, I Was More Caught Up With Those Who Were In Cadillacs And Shiny Suits Than I Was With Those Who Were Kingian In Their Style.

Turning Against The Church I Also Had To Turn Against A Lot Of The Teachings Of People In My Family Who Were Very Much Of The Church And Caught In It, And Every Time I Turned To Find Where Resides The Good In The Church, All I Saw Was The Demonic, The Lucifer Of The Journey.

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Where Is The Raised Voice Of Black America? Why Are We Mute?

If I've Impacted On One Heart, One Mind, One Soul, And Brought To That Individual A Greater Truth Than That Individual Came Into A Relationship With Me Having, Then I Would Say That I Have Been Successful.

I Like Colin Powell, I Like His West Indian Background, I Like His Intellect, I Like A Lot Of Things That He Does And His Style. What Is At Fault Here Is A Policy That's Taking This Country To Hell.

Our Foreign Policy Has Made A Wreck Of This Planet. I'm Always In Africa... And When I Go To These Places I See American Policy Written On The Walls Of Oppression Everywhere.

I Don't Find Inspiration On Wall Street. I Don't Find That In Beverly Hills. I Don't Find That In Places Where Opportunity Resides Unbridled, And I Think The Real Creative Energy And The Real Juice Is In Where People Are Caught, In The Economic Abyss.

Do Not Submit. It Is Extremely Critical That Repression Be Met Full Head-on And That It Be Resisted With Every Fiber In Our Being. There Is Just Absolutely No Compromise That Can Be Made With It.

Fascism Is Fascism. Terrorism Is Terrorism. Oppression Is Oppression.

Since I Have Escaped The Harshness Of The Economic Bounds Of Poverty, I Have Stayed Very Connected To It Spiritually. I Reside And Live And Go And Socialize And Exist Among Those Who Suffer Daily From The Relationship That They Have To Poverty, Black Men And Women Who Are Incarcerated. Actually, All People Who Are Incarcerated, Not Just Black.

I'm Very Familiar With Poverty. I Find It Easy To Be With, Whether I'm In America Or In Africa Or In Asia. Wherever I Go And Find The Environment Of Those Who Are Living In Poverty And Resisting Poverty Is A Great In Which I Have Great Comfort.

You Can Cage The Singer But Not The Song.

We [americans] Move About The World Arrogantly, Calling Wars When We Want, Overthrowing Governments When We Want. There Is A Price To Be Paid For It -- Look At 9/11. [that] Wasn't Just Bin Laden. Bin Laden Didn't Come From The Abstract. He Came From Somewhere, And If You Look Where ... You'll See America's Hand Of Villainy.

The Only Thing Left For Barack Obama To Do Is To Work Like A Third World Dictator And Just Put All These Guys In Jail.

We Have Got To Bring Corporate America To Its Knees

Many Who Have Nothing Opposed To The Few Who Have Everything, And As Long As These Disparities Remain, As Long As These Distances Remain Between People And Forces, I Think We'll Be In A Perpetual State Of Upheaval.

You Can Be Arrested And Not Charged. You Can Be Arrested And Have No Right To Counsel.

In The Gun Game, We Are The Most Hunted. The River Of Blood That Washes The Streets Of Our Nation Flows Mostly From The Bodies Of Our Black Children.

I Didn't Like The Wiz And It Wasn't Because Black People Were Doing It. I Didn't Like The Wiz Because It Was A Badly Made Movie Off A Classic. Why Are You Remaking Something Unless You Have Something Better In Mind?

I Not Only Think That They (u.s. Leaders) Are Misguided, But I Think They Know Exactly What They Are Doing And I Think That They Are Men Who Are Possessed Of Evil.

If You Believe In Justice, If You Believe In Democracy, If You Believe In People's Rights, If You Believe In The Harmony Of All Humankind - Then You Have No Choice But To Back Fidel Castro As Long As It Takes!

I'm Called A Folk Singer, And I'm Not Too Sure About That. I Went About My Life Approaching Music Not From The Point Of View Of A Singer, But From The Point Of View Of An Actor. That's How I First Started To Sing.

I Think Now, With Our Technology, Our Capacity To Grow Food, Our Ability To Stop Raping The Earth And Destroying The Ecology And Killing Off Fellow Creatures, We Have A Chance To Bring A New Harmony And A New Path To Human Development.

No Matter What The Greatest Tyrant In The World, The Greatest Terrorist In The World, George W. Bush Says, We're Here To Tell You: Not Hundreds, Not Thousands, But Millions Of The American People ... Support Your Revolution.

Why Are We Mute? Where Are Our Leaders, Our Legislators? Where Is The Church?

Colin Powell's Committed To Come Into The House Of The Master. When Colin Powell Dares To Suggest Something Other Than What The Master Wants To Hear, He Will Be Turned Back Out To Pasture.

As A Matter Of Fact, Compromise Is What Oppression Feeds On.

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There's An Old Saying In The Days Of Slavery, There Are Those Slaves Who Lived On The Plantation, And There Were Those Slaves Who Lived In The House. You Got The Privilege Of Living In The House If You Served The Master To Exactly The Way The Master Intended To Have You Serve Him. That Gave You Privilege. Colin Powell Is Permitted To Come Into The House Of The Master, As Long As He Will Serve The Master According To The Master's Dictates. Now, When Colin Powell Dares To Suggest Something Other Than What The Master Wants To Hear, He Will Be Turned Back Out To Pasture.

I Think There's A Lot That The Larger Society Could Have Been Taught Or Can Be Taught, But I'm Not Sure - Given How Unyielding The Larger Society Has Been - That Much Has Been Learned.

When I Was Born, I Was Colored. I Soon Became A Negro. Not Long After That I Was Black. Most Recently I Was African-american. It Seems We're On A Roll Here. But I Am Still First And Foremost In Search Of Freedom.

African American

I Don't Know What America Has Really Learned. We Are Too Quick To Do What's Expedient On Behalf Of Our Culture Of Greed And Hedonism. We're Quite Prepared To Go To Conditions Of Tyranny In Order To Sustain That Culture, And We Do It In The Name Of Democracy, When Nothing Could Be More Undemocratic. We Do It In The Name Of Saving The Values Of Our Society, When The Way We Behave Corrupts Those Values. We Do It In The Name Of God In Whom We Believe, When In Fact We Have Corrupted Our Own Vision Of The Christian Journey.

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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.

John Say's It's James Who Started First, James Tells The Story In Reverse. I Drag My Belt From Off Me Waist, You Should Have Heard Dem Screaming Round De Place.

From The Point Of View Of The Poor, The Hungry, The Disenfranchised, The Wretched Of The Earth... There Will Never Be Peace Until Their Condition Has Been Alleviated And Until Their Humanity Is In Full Bloom.

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I Delighted In The Music Of Africa, The Earliest Of The Slave Plantation Songs, The Transformation Into Christianity And All That Christianity Brought To The Lives Of The Africans Who Were Forced To Come To America.

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We Have The Opportunity Now To Look At The Two Billion People In The World Who Suffer From The Most Abject Poverty, Hunger, Disease, And Devastation. Add To That Another Two Billion People Who Are Just Plain Poor. If You Look Into The World Of Those Caught In Economic Oppression, Illiteracy, Disease, And Sexism, Then You'll Understand More Clearly What We Have To Do.

Pop Culture Has None Of The Vibrancy That You Find In The Folk Culture, Where People Speak Directly To Their Own Experience In The Human Condition.

I've Always Been Supportive Of The Right Of Israel As A State, And I've Always Fought Against Anti-semitism, Even In My Own Community.

Hitler Had A Lot Of Jews High Up In The Hierarchy Of The Third Reich. Color Does Not Necessarily Denote Quality, Content Or Value. If A Black Is A Tyrant, He Is First And Foremost A Tyrant, Then He Incidentally Is Black. Bush Is A Tyrant And If He Gathers Around Him Black Tyrants, They All Have To Be Treated As They Are Being Treated.

Without Compromise Repression Would Be Defeated. Just As Some Cancers Feed On Hormones, Compromise Becomes The Hormone Of Oppression.

This Generosity That Has Been Offered To The United States Says Very Much About The Venezuelan Spirit.

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Art In Its Highest Form Is Art That Serves And Instructs Society And Human Development.

Although We Had A Lot Of Villainy Here In America, Adolf Hitler Was Certainly The Most Visible Illustration Of What Would Happen If Fascism Went Unchallenged.

The Sham Engineers Of The Music Industry, Who Steer The Wheels Of Public Opinion, Are Driving The Good Features Of Calypso Into The Ground. I Shudder To Think What These Greedy Men Will Eventually Do To This True Art Form.

I Think That They [bush Administration] Are Men Who Are Possessed Of Evil.

I Think [g.w.] Bush Has A Very Selfish, Arrogant Point Of View. I Think He Is Interested In Power, I Think He Believes His Truth Is The Only Truth, And That He Will Do What He Wants To Do Despite The People.

I Think America Offers A Dream That Cannot Be Fulfilled As Easily Anywhere Else In The World As It Could Be Fulfilled Here. Although Oppression Was Common To All Of Us, Those Styles Of Oppression Gave Us The Opportunity To See The World In Dimensions We Didn't Quite See Growing Up In Any One Place.

Each Time We Arrive At A New Level In Extricating Ourselves From Economic, Social, Spiritual Domination, We Have A Moment When We Dance In The World Of These New Experiences, Only To Find That The Music Soon Stops, The Dance Ends, And We're Struggling Once Again To Save Ourselves From Being Thrown Back Into Those Conditions.

New Experiences

I Realized That Most White Americans Knew Very Little About Our History And Our Struggle, And Were Having Difficulty Understanding The Basis For Our Agitation And Our Resistance And Our Complaints. I Also Discovered That While Black Americans Had A Sense Of The Beauty And Tragedy Of The Journey From The Time Of Slavery Until Now, We Were Not Rooted In The Specifics. I Thought One Way To Familiarize People With That History Would Be Through The Voices Of The Great Folk Artists.

Carmen Jones Was The First All-negro Film That Became A Great Box-office Success. It Established The Fact That Pictures With Negro Artists, Pictures Dealing With The Folklore Of Negro Life, Were Commercially Feasible. This Was A Sign Of Growth That Had Occurred In The United States And Throughout The World.

Through Electing Officials That Will Protect The Constitution And Commit Themselves To The Rights Of The People And The Health Of The Nation, We Will Be Able To Ensure That No Group Of Ideologues And No Private Sector Institution Can Coopt Our Rights, Take Us Into Senseless Wars And Steal The Nation From Its People.

When I Was 40 And Looking At 60, It Seemed Like A Thousand Miles Away. But 62 Feels Like A Week And A Half Away From 80. I Must Now Get On With Those Things I Always Talked About Doing But Put Off.

Not Since The Early Days Of The Civil Rights Movement Has America Been Given An Opportunity As Great As The Opportunity We Have Now. It's One Thing For Us To Avenge Our Pain, Our Anger, And Our Rage By Targeting Bin Laden And A Handful Of Men Who Have Wrought This Villainy. But One Should Be Wise Enough To Ask, What Fueled All This? What Continues To Sustain The Possibility That This Will Not Go Away? I Think The Answer Is Poverty.

The Usa Has More People In Prison That Any Other Country, Including Countries With Much Larger Populations. 13% Of The Population Is Black But 80% Of The People In Prison Are Black, Mostly For Soft Crimes.

The Human Spirit Is Resilient And Truth - No Matter How Long You Abuse It And How Long You Try To Crush It - Will, As Dr. King Would Say, Rise Up Again, And In The Final Analysis Will Prevail.

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I Don't Think That (u.s. President) George Bush...is A Man Of Honor.

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We've Come To This Dark Time In Which The New Gestapo Of Homeland Security Lurks Here, Where Citizens Are Having Their Rights Suspended.

Terrorism Is In Many, Many Ways The Final Utterance Of Voices Unheard.

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Bring It On. Dissent Is Central To Any Democracy.

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