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'We've got to regain knowledge again, and we've got to regain an understanding again, of who we are. Not just those chosen to fuel systems, but individuals who have the power to criticize and analyze, and attack injustice when it becomes prevalent and apparent in front of our faces like it is in ours right now. We've been all put to sleep. Put to sleep to a system. A system that continues to perpetrate ignorance amongst our spirit and amongst our minds. One that wants you not to act. A system that would rather see all of you at that bar drinking beer filling your minds being put to sleep with beer or with drugs rather than acting against it and fighting a system which has been perpetrating imperialist lies and other fucking bullshit for five hundred years. So fuckin drink up or fuckin wake up. You're part of the solution or you're part of the fuckin problem. I am sick and tired of my own complacence in my life and I know I'm fuckin sick of yours. So wake up and stop fuckin sleeping. Wake Up.'

Zack de la Rocha#17

ActivismEducationSystemAwakeningCivic duty

About this quote

What does it mean?
The speaker urges listeners to awaken from systemic ignorance and take action against injustice.
In plain terms
Stop letting the system put you to sleep and start fighting back.
What can you take from it?
Wake up to the system and choose to be part of the solution.

Where it applies

  • political organizing
  • community education

Putting it to work

  • educate peers
  • join movements
  • critique media

Questions to consider

  • Are you acting or asleep?
  • What system are you part of?

Another view

The binary choice between solution and problem oversimplifies complex social dynamics.

More from Zack de la Rocha

  1. 'This next song goes out to those who still believe that there is an american dream. And still believe that within that dream there is something called freedom…

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  2. 'Brothers and sisters, our democracy has been hijacked. Brothers and sisters, all electoral freedoms in this country are over so long as it's controlled by cor…

    Permalink to quote #18
  3. 'He has the nerve to call us violent when last year there were 80,000 cases of police brutality filed against departments all over the country this sheriff pig…

    Permalink to quote #15

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