I would have put more emphasis on bringing working class people together to fight for a government that works for all of us.
I collaborated with so many people from Chicago - so many Black people, young Black women organizations like BYP100 and Assata's Daughters. Just being out there, I saw what a community mobilizing can accomplish in terms of freedom and how music and my words in my music can play a significant part in that.
In our case, I, a working engineer, inventor and scientist, am bringing new innovation to campaigning to enable a grass-roots movement.
The power of Bernie Sanders was not only in his email list. The centers of power were local groups that formed on Facebook and Reddit.
It is my hope that people today will see that, in another time, in another period, when we saw the need for people to speak up, to organize, to mobilize, and to do something about injustice, we came together.
There are powerful forces undermining progress in Africa. But one must never underestimate the power of the people to bring about change.
The organizers first job is to create the issues or problems, and organizations must be based on many issues. The organizer must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression. He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act. . . . An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent.
One does not necessarily have to wait for a revolutionary situation: it can be created.
It's really important that we get rid of the idea that protest will create change. We don't realize that that kind of organizing worked only when the government was very strong, when the West ruled the world, relatively speaking.
After the second chapter of Days of Obligation, which is about the death of a friend of mine from AIDS, was published in Harper's, I got this rather angry letter from a gay-and-lesbian group that was organizing a protest against the magazine. It was the same old problem: political groups have almost no sense of irony.
If you want to make changes in the world, you're going to have to be there day after day doing the boring, straightforward work of getting a couple of people interested and building a slightly bigger organization and carrying out the next move and suffering frustration and finally getting somewhere. That's how the world changes.
It is natural for the ordinary American when he sees something wrong to feel not only that there should be a law against it but, also that an organization should be formed to combat it.
It is time to stop waiting for someone to save us. It is time to face the truth of our situation - that we're all in this together, that we all have a voice - and figure out how to mobilize the hearts and minds of everyone in our workplaces and communities.
This is what it's all about. From what I could see, you could get a bunch of people together, whip up the press and have some impact.
Government doesn’t always work the way its supposed to. Sometimes you have to use brute force, bring people together …
What else can the young be? When you are on the bottom, you must organize from the bottom up
A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things.
I decided to become a community organizer ... Change won't come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.
Every important change in our society, for the good, at least, has taken place because of popular pressure-pressure from below, from the great mass of people.
Never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problem. All social movements are founded by, guided by, motivated and seen through by the passion of individuals.
When [Steven Lerner] says that unions and so forth are "dead," he's talking about clout. He's talking about power. But "community organizations," the ACORN types, these are the groups that can successfully organize a strike - a strike meaning people just stop paying back on their loans.
What we need to realize is that there can be, shall we say, a movement, a stirring among people, which can be organically designed instead of politically designed.
People were asleep, but I think they're waking up now. Trump has given everybody a good kick, and people are waking up and realizing they've got to get involved.
People! Take to the streets and scream 'BE REASONABLE!'
In the 1960s, various parts of the population became energized and began to enter the public arena to call for the rights of women, students, young people, old people, farmers and workers. What are called "special interests" - meaning the whole population - they began to press to enter the public arena. And they said that puts too much pressure on the state and therefore we have to have more moderation in democracy and they should go back and be quiet and obedient.
