Yochai Benkler Quotes

You can make the case that slacktivism is important because it makes people feel affiliated to a movement and be part of it, and talk about it.

Here is what is needed for Occupy Wall Street to become a force for change: a clear, and clearly expressed, objective. Or two.

Activists and geeks, standing together, are demonstrating powers beyond the reach of government control.

What was extraordinary about Occupy London was that it was a village with a louder voice than one of the biggest cities of the world.

The viral power of online media has proven how fast creative ideas can be spread and adopted, using tools like cellphones, digital cameras, micro-credit, mobile banking, Facebook, and Twitter. A perfect example? The way the Green Movement in Iran caught fire thanks to social media.

Like civil-rights protesters who sang rousing hymns as they were carried off to jail, Twitterers are bearing witness to what's happening around them, and calling out into the darkness of cyberspace for confirmation. I'm here. You're here, too. We are present.

I urge you to read the Occupy Manifesto, written by the New York City General Assembly. It is unavoidably clear. This is not directionless action. If it were, the media would have moved on.

Art morphs with what's going on in the world. We say 'Ferguson'; we don't say 'Mike Brown.' Just like we say 'Selma,' not 'Jimmie Lee Jackson.' There is something startling about the people in a particular place, a city or a small town, rising up and taking to the streets.

My movement is 'Rose Army.'

I think there's a weapon of cynicism to say, 'Protest doesn't work. Organizing doesn't work. Y'all are a bunch of hippies. You know, it doesn't do anything,' because, frankly, it's said out of fear, because it is a potent force for political change.

Now I know we have the power to incite change through the Internet - keep sharing our stories, our dreams, and our struggles.

All change starts with a distant rumble at the grassroots level.

Harry Belafonte hit me to the Dream Defenders and I liked what they were about. When I asked them how I could help their movement, they said, "You can help by coming down here; you can tweet."

I am part of a broad social movement. Ten years ago, it would have unimaginable for some random Dutch historian to go viral when talking about taxes. Yet here we are.

As the Occupy Movement demonstrated, it's tough to change anything when you're talking about everything.

We want to spread the movement and want people to join in. Any one who is against corruption should join, be it Baba Ramdev or the common man.

21st-century activism is different perhaps in the sense that the individual can be more present in the process, especially via social media, but the underlying drivers remain the same as desire to change the status quo.

I think the Women's March is actually reflective of this idea that you can create a big tent, but that doesn't mean the people inside of the tent are going to agree on everything. In fact, they might have very public fights about the things that they don't agree with.

The virtual world is a 'public square' much more vast than Tiananmen Square. And you can't send in the tanks to crush the netizens.

I thought my parents were always having card parties - and they were - but they were actually also having meetings to organize people. My older sister would be part of youth organizing, and she'd have dance parties. People would be dancing and talking about how to improve their neighborhood.

I remember a time when you were protesting on the street together with your professors, with your union, with your school organizations. Everybody was in the streets. Now, everybody is kept alone in his box, in this fragile condition, afraid of losing tenure.

Be an active participant in your community and country. Every small gesture makes up the big gestures. Resist, rinse, repeat.

We've seen a great deal of interest from the Occupy movement. It's a diverse movement, not everyone embraces electoral politics, and no one can speak for Occupy.

Mass civil disobedience can use rage as a constructive and creative force.

Our revolution is like Wikipedia, okay? Everyone is contributing content, [but] you don't know the names of the people contributing the content. This is exactly what happened. Revolution 2.0 in Egypt was exactly the same. Everyone is contributing small pieces, bits and pieces. We drew this whole picture of a revolution. And no one is the hero in that picture.