Tricia Friedman

“If, for example, we look at the racial breakdown of the people who control our institutions, we see telling numbers in 2016–2017: • Ten richest Americans: 100 percent white (seven of whom are among the ten richest in the world) • US Congress: 90 percent white • US governors: 96 percent white • Top military advisers: 100 percent white • President and vice president: 100 percent white • US House Freedom Caucus: 99 percent white • Current US presidential cabinet: 91 percent white • People who decide which TV shows we see: 93 percent white • People who decide which books we read: 90 percent white • People who decide which news is covered: 85 percent white • People who decide which music is produced: 95 percent white • People who directed the one hundred top-grossing films of all time, worldwide: 95 percent white • Teachers: 82 percent white • Full-time college professors: 84 percent white • Owners of men’s professional football teams: 97 percent white26 These numbers are not describing minor organizations.”
― Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

“As Gordon Hempton, an acoustic ecologist who records natural soundscapes, put it: “Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything.”23 Unfortunately, our constant engagement with the attention economy means that this is something many of us (myself included) may have to relearn. Even with the problem of the filter bubble aside, the platforms that we use to communicate with each other do not encourage listening. Instead they reward shouting and oversimple reaction: of having a “take” after having read a single headline.”
― Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

“Asked how decades of studying disaster had influenced her political beliefs, Tierney responded, “It has made me far more interested in people’s own capacity for self-organizing and for improvising. You come to realize that people often do best when they’re not following a script or a score but when they’re improvising and coming up with new riffs, and I see this tremendous creativity in disaster responses both on the part of community residents and on the part of good emergency personnel—seeing them become more flexible, seeing them break rules, seeing them use their ingenuity in the moment to help restore the community and to protect life, human life, and care for victims. It is when people deviate from the script that exciting things happen.”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

“Is this feeling permanent?” “Is it transient?” “Is it solid?” “Is it fluid?” “Is it fixed?” “Is it dynamic?” “Is it finite or infinite?” You can also ask: “Is this feeling me?” “Is it not me?” “Is it an obstacle?” “Is it a portal?” Or you can touch the feeling, completely free of storyline, and say, “When experienced directly, this very feeling is basic goodness,” or “Basic goodness is found right here.” In other words, you don’t have to wait until the feeling is gone to find basic goodness.”
― Pema Chödrön, Welcoming the Unwelcome: Wholehearted Living in a Brokenhearted World