Howard Rheingold Quotes

If this is about holding meetings, if this is a social movement, where they gather 20, I will get up and gather 200,000 people. Where they gather 100,000, I will bring together 1 million from my party.

Occupy Wall Street didn't just spring from the earth organically, out of thin air. This was all part of the global socialist movement.

For any movement to gain momentum, it must start with a small action. This action becomes multiplied by the masses, and is made tangible when leadership changes course due to the weight of the movement's voice.

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

There's a difference between an outburst of spontaneous anger, which doesn't have a political objective, and a more measured response that we saw in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

I think we're going to start to see a new model of civic advocacy where people get together once in a while to protest, but it's more about an ongoing, sustained engagement in issues, networks and communities about which people care.

I've spent a lot of time in America since Sept. 11, 2001. Being here, I was noticing that the people, who in the '60s used to voice their opinions about their rights, are much different today. People are afraid to voice opposition to the government in a mass way.

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.

Anonymous is not an organization. It is an idea, a zeitgeist, coupled with a set of social and technical practices.

With each protest we all said to each other that we’ve got to keep the crazies in check. We didn’t do it, but the next time we said again, “we’ve got to keep the crazies in check.”

In cities men cannot be prevented from concerting together, and from awakening a mutual excitement which prompts sudden and passionate resolutions. Cities may be looked upon as large assemblies, of which all the inhabitants are members; their populace exercises a prodigious influence upon the magistrates, and frequently executes its own wishes without their intervention.

We are on the threshold of a significant breakthrough, and the greatest weapon is the mass demonstration.

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.

Different people were complaining, and I remember saying, 'Why don't we just demonstrate?' The Whitney was the first.

Let the grassroots turn on the hate because that's the only thing that will make them do their duty.

In the late 1960s, the masses were supposed to be passive, not entering into the public arena and having their voices heard.

'Boycott caused all the trouble,' they say, as if I could have canvassed all those people personally to take a stand in 1983. Nonsense! The committee were the ones with the power to make the decisions, not me. They started the unrest, they did the sackings, and they reaped what they sowed.

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.

Injustice has exhausted people but also pushed them to organize and fight back in very sophisticated ways.

I am not naive enough to believe that voting is the only way to bring about transformational change, just as I know that protest alone is not the sole solution to the challenges we face.

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

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.

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.