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The only weapon we have is our bodies, and we need to tuck them in places so wheels don’t turn

Bayard Rustin

When you’re wrong, you’re wrong. But when you’re right, you’re wrong anyhow.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Anyhow Racism Right Wrong
Let us be enraged about injustice, but let us not be destroyed by it.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Destroyed Enraged Injustice
Both morally and practically, segregation is to me a basic injustice. Since I believe it to be so, I must attempt to remove it.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Believe Political Three
There is a strong moralistic strain in the civil rights movement that would remind us that power corrupts, forgetting that the absence of power also corrupts.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Movement Rights Strong
My activism did not spring from being black…The racial injustice that was present in this country during my youth was a challenge to my belief in the oneness of the human family.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Country Oneness Spring
Every gay who is in the closet is ultimately a threat to the freedom of gays.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Fighting Gay Thinking
The only weapon we have is our bodies, and we need to tuck them in places so wheels don’t turn
BAYARD RUSTIN

Body Needs Weapon
Twenty-five, 30 years ago, the barometer of human rights in the United States were black people. That is no longer true. The barometer for judging the character of people in regard to human rights is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, lesbian.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Character Gay Rights
There are three ways in which one can deal with an injustice. (a) One can accept it without protest. (b) On can seek to avoid it. (c) One can resist the injustice non-violently. To accept it is to perpetuate it.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Accept Injustice Protest Seek Violent Way
You have to join every other movement for the freedom of people.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Gay Rights Thinking
Today, blacks are no longer the litmus paper or the barometer of social change. Blacks are in every segment of society and there are laws that help to protect them from racial discrimination.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Gay Law People
The new ‘niggers’ are gays. It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change. The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Barometer Change Nigger Social Vulnerable
Looking back at his career, Mr. Rustin, a Quaker, once wrote: ‘The principal factors which influenced my life are 1) nonviolent tactics; 2) constitutional means; 3) democratic procedures; 4) respect for human personality; 5) a belief that all people are one.’
BAYARD RUSTIN

Careers Mean People
When an individual is protesting society’s refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Acknowledge Dignity Society
You have to all combine and fight a head-on battle – in the name of justice and equality – and even that’s going to be difficult. But if we let ourselves get separated so that we’re working for gays or school children or the aged, we’re in trouble.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Combine Difficult Fight Justice Name Ourselves Separate
If we desire a society in which men are brothers, then we must act towards one another with brotherhood. If we can build such a society, then we would have achieved the ultimate goal of human freedom.
BAYARD RUSTIN

Brother Goal Men

The only weapon we have is our bodies, and we need to tuck them in places so wheels don’t turn

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The only weapon we have is our bodies, and we need to tuck them in places so wheels don’t turn

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