Lately, I find myself even more committed to feminism, especially for young women. I see it as something that could possibly save one’s life. - Cheryl Clarke

As I said often about the Black Power/Black Arts Movements: we need our history, our culture, our literature. And this is what a whole multicultural generation of lesbians engaged in the 1980’s – creating cultural institutions so that we could live our lives with determination, decision, and yes, of course, pride.

I would say to young people about putting your body on the street, having never done that myself in any way that endangered my life, assess the purpose and the goals. Is the gesture symbolic--if so is it worth risking arrest or endangering your life? The March on Washington was a grand symbolic gesture. And television--the parent of the Internet--revealed a sea change in American opinion about injustice on the basis of race. A national conversation about racial injustice began with the March; and it hasn't really stopped, though it goes out of fashion for some. Now, if only we could have a national conversation about slavery.

For a woman to be a lesbian in a male-supremacist, capitalist, misogynist, racist, homophobic, imperialist culture, such at that of North America, is an act of resistance.