Susan Steed

“Although most Americans do not realise it, their nations agricultural system has relied heavily on migrant labourers and slaves from Africa, Asia and south of the border for the last four centuries. The country’s agricultural sector has functioned to varying degrees on bondage and servitude from the beginning, which is no different fro agricultural sectors elsewhere in the world. From feudal times to the present day, the arrangements that characterise agricultural work have been remarkably resistant to change, including in the United States. Laws are passed, awareness is raised, workers protest, and lives are lost - but trafficking for slavery and bondage in America’s agricultural sector remains far more prevalent today than almost anyone cares to admit.”
― Siddharth Kara

“I wanted to write a book about poverty that didn’t focus exclusively on poor people or poor places. Poverty was a relationship, I thought, involving poor people and rich people alike. To understand poverty, I needed to understand that relationship. This sent me searching for a process that bound poor people and rich people together in mutual dependence and trigger. Eviction was such a process.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Imperialism vaunts its exploitation of the wealth of Africa for the benefit of civilisation. In reality, from the very nature of its system of production for profit it strangles the real wealth of the continent -the creative capacity of the African people.”
― CLR James

“Today, with the defeat of [the Equal Rights Amendment], the tightening economy, and increased conservatism, it is easier once again for white women to believe the dangerous fantasy that if you are good enough, pretty enough, sweet enough, quiet enough, teach the children to behave, hate the right people, and marry the right men, then you will be allowed to co-exist with patriarchy in relative peace, at least until a man needs your job or the neighborhood rapist happens along. And true, unless one lives and loves in the trenches it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.”
― Audre Lorde