We celebrate the past to awaken the future.

There's many valid and powerful ways to show pride in our cultures and where we come from.

The record of anarchist ideas, and even more, of the inspiring struggles of people who have sought to liberate themselves from oppression and domination, must be treasured and preserved, not as means of freezing thought and conception in some new mold but as basis for understanding of the social reality and committed work to change it. There is no reason to suppose that history is at an end, that the current structures of authority and domination are graven in stone. It would also be great error to underestimate the power of social forces that will fight to maintain power and privilege.

Not only the studying and writing of history but also the honoring of it both represent affirmations of a certain defiant faith — a desperate, unreasoning faith, if you will — but faith nevertheless in the endurance of this threatened world — faith in the total essentiality of historical continuity.

Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future. Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take hold of it and forge the future with the past.

Recognizing and confronting our history is important. Transcending our history is essential. We are not limited by what we have done, or what we have left undone. We are limited only by what we are willing to do.

What you are is an expression of history.

I believe it is just as important to highlight and memorialize all aspects of our world and cultures. To me, it is important not to bury the shame and trauma caused by the issues you ask about.

The very identity of an institution is bound up irrevocably with the story of its origin, its development, and its traditions, all of which must be familiar to the workers of today, if the movements of yesterday are to be perpetuated and continuity of life and effort maintained. The past must impart its wisdom to the present that the future may justify both and fulfil their aspirations.

In the face of impermanence and death, it takes courage to love the things of this world and to believe that praising them is our noblest calling.

People should remember history so they can truly cherish what they have now.

Grateful I get to represent my culture and tell stories that matter and empower others.

What keeps me pushing forward is to see what my ancestors went through, and I see that I am privileged.

…I think borders do not protect us, they wall us in. I think White Supremacy can be defeated by people reclaiming their histories and seeing how structural racism once excluded many from Whiteness that it now includes–a testament to its problematic construct. I think cultures, like our personal identities, are fluid, not rigid, and inform each other, and we should celebrate that as well. I believe that when we see this history, we can understand that the people and the forces that are working so damn hard these days to keep us separated from one another are a part of the long arc of history that has been doing so since this country began, and probably well before that…