Quotes About Activism

Whether it's microaggressions or blatant racism, it's always been a fight. We've been fighting oppression for 400 years and it will continue to be a fight.

The more that I learn about what's going on, it's really hard to ignore the oppression that people are actually going through.

If you're on the side of the oppressor, or you're defending the oppressor, or you're actually trying to humanize the oppressor, then that's a problem.

I have a real sense of optimism that we are revolutionizing the way we do politics in this country.

I certainly think it's very important that writers as citizens - not necessarily as writers, but just as ordinary citizens - should talk about things that matter to them.

Most activism is brought about by us ordinary people.

Greenpeace is the world's largest feel-good organisation now, and I can say that 'cause I am one of their co-founders.

It's not just about showbusiness - everywhere you go people are discriminated against. And if by having an organised voice against inequality and a lack of diversity we might be able to push that down - how brilliant would it be?

I started calling anti-child labor organizations, asking how I could help. They told me a kid couldn't make any difference, so I decided to start a movement for young people to fight child labor, and to prove them wrong.

We need to learn how to organize, not just to let our anger explode. We need to have organization for the long run, not for one issue, not for one murder, but for everything coming to us in the next 20, 30 years.

In 1970, as a 26 year-old, I joined in the effort in my home state of Massachusetts to organize for Earth Day. But what made the event so successful was that I was only one of about 20 million Americans of all ages and backgrounds who got involved.

For the people of Baltimore, I don't criticize rioting, because I understand it. But after the fires die down, organize, strategize, and mobilize.

Now technology gives you a chance to help organize. You don't have to wait for either the inefficiency or the corruption. You don't have to wait for government. You can actually self-organize and build institutions bottom up.

I've been arrested three times. I don't like getting arrested, but it's not so bad when it's an organized form of nonviolent disobedience. It's something appealing to a higher law.

Another word for politics in my mind is organization. You have to be organized; you have to get out there. It's not just magic.

I'm an educator. I'm an organizer.

I am not a hoodlum. I'm a community organizer.

In 1981, I was a community organizer.

A lot of organizers are trying to figure out how do we create entrances for people so they can be involved in the work in a way that makes them feel is aligned to the things they're interested in and not the things the organizer is interested in?

I am the most optimistic organizer in this country.

What makes community organizing especially attractive is the faith it places in the ability of the poor to make decisions for themselves.

You have to understand when you're organizing with women of color, you can't use words like 'marginalized' and 'second-class citizen' loosely.

My father joined the NAACP when he was 12, in the '50s. He was part of the organizing efforts that led to some of the first sit-ins in North Carolina.

I've done community organizing my whole life and I think to myself, as an organizer, we don't wait for people to come to us and say, 'Help us organize something.' We go out into the community, and we bring the skills to a group of people to organize themselves.