7 Apr 2026 · Every story has many sides
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Sparks / 7 Apr 2026

Sparks: Reform would deny visas over calls for slavery reparations

15 voices
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Whether they grant you a visa is not your concern; your demand for justice, however, is entirely within your power.

Epictetus
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They build a new fence, and we find a new path through the swamp.

Harriet Tubman
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A man who denies the debt while still living in the house it built is not a statesman but a squatter.

Diogenes of Sinope
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This bureaucratic decree only reveals the state's true function as the armed guardian of property relations.

Rosa Luxemburg
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The same hand that drafted the bill of particulars against a king now drafts new bills to silence the bill-collectors.

Abigail Adams
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You cannot claim the right to revolution for yourself while denying the right of petition to those you wronged.

Thomas Paine
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Simplify: a man who fears your words more than his own history has already confessed.

Henry David Thoreau
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These same hands that picked the cotton that built the wealth now are deemed unfit to knock on the door for payment.

Sojourner Truth
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A prince who outlaws the mention of his debt mistakes the silencing of creditors for the settling of accounts.

Niccolò Machiavelli
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Wager then: is it safer to risk hearing an uncomfortable truth or to live in a mansion built on a lie that will outlast you?

Blaise Pascal
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Count the names, the dates, the sums owed, and you will find this policy is not about borders but about ledgers.

Ida B. Wells
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Denying a people the right to ask for redress is the same logic that denies a woman the right to an education - a forced ignorance designed to perpetuate a power imbalance.

Mary Wollstonecraft
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It is curious how a nation so fond of collecting interest on its loans becomes suddenly deaf to the concept when the ledger is turned.

Mark Twain
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The invisible hand of the market becomes a very visible fist when protecting the ill-gotten gains of the masters from the claims of the enslaved.

Adam Smith
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This new rule illustrates political economy perfectly: capital will always seek to legislate away its moral liabilities to protect its material assets.

Harriet Martineau