Quotes About Community

I say I don't know how to make them accept me.

little whispering fidgeting of a shut-away congregation wondering who to pray to

It has been estimated that one-third of the 139 square miles designated "Detroit" is now vacant-land-prairie. That's crime.

1952 there were over 700 cases of polio in Detroit. Dr. Bodywork Bob had told me that. I told Rouse; he bogeyed a hole. Polio was hitting families all over town, white and colored, rich and poor, center of the city and suburbs.

In Detroit we understand the phrase "Affirmative Action" a little different than they do in the rest of the world. In Detroit it means: Take a step, don't step back, don't talk, don't wait—act! Knock your brother upside his head and drag him through the water, but save his life. Affirmative action is a lifesaving dance.

Thanks, little brother," said the Dump to Blue. "You helped me and they helped you. Now I see a lot depends on a helping hand from a few good friends!

Going back to school is like going back in time. Immediately, for better or for worse, you must give up a little piece of your autonomy in order to become part of the group. And every group, of course, has its hierarchies and rules- spoken and unspoken. It is like learning to live once again in a family- which, of course, is the setting where all learning begins.

Never be the only one, except, possibly, in your own home.

The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's people that has not previously been taken into account.

have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.

Disabled people caring for each other can be a place of deep healing," says Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha in Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice.

After a decade of all-volunteer advocacy, I have come to view every incarceration as a missed opportunity to love and transform; as a loss of time, life, and dreams of our community; and as state violence. Some of our greatest assets and resources in this struggle are exiled from our communities and languishing in this nation's labyrinth of violent institutions.

For a government that claims to seek to reduce and prevent violence, transformative and holistic measures like community conversations and community accountability should be at least a part of the solution.

You enter some activist space, Tumblr, a campus group, your neighborhood cultural center. You're expected to make mistakes, but to eventually never mess up anyone's pronoun, ever, to never accidentally use the wrong vocabulary, regardless of how educated you are, self-educated or formally.

In a single session, with the brand of rapid-fire energy that had fueled our work together thus far, we wrote "We Are Here." Two lines of the song conveyed the message I most hoped would resonate: "We are here for all of us Ã¢â'¬Â¦ Our souls were brought together so we could love each other.

No feeling compares to having others love what you love, and then enthusiastically sharing it with others. Fame for the sake of fame had never been the dream. But spreading light is a pleasure I'll always live for.

Elaine Brown's book A Taste of Power. Elaine rose up from an impoverished childhood in North Philly to become the first and only female leader of the Black Panther Party, the '60s political organization formed to challenge police brutality, fight systemic racism, and empower black communities.

Dittany hadn't lived in Lobelia Falls all her life without coming to realize that walls do in fact have ears and every little bird is a stool pigeon at heart.

The bigger your commitments, the more help you are going to need.

Het meisje met de leeuwengeest! Je werd leider van je volk, en dat ben je tot je dood gebleven... Je bent de moeder van miljoenen mensen. - Leo

Political is personal; personal is political. I never was a political person until I realized I was a lesbian. I was this oblivious middle-class white kid who didn't understand the powers of oppression or structure or anything. My very existence became politicized for me and that's what enabled me to see all these things. It wasn't just me, it was a whole cultural movement that was also doing those things that I was a part of.

Leaving home but going back home: once you crossed the ocean you were always on the wrong side. That was the lot of the immigrant, belonging everywhere but nowhere. Displaced, and unplaced.

Let us drink to fellowship. May the Light bless us all, friend and stranger, and make true our tongues, and truer our hearts, and truest of all our deeds.

I raise my glass to karma—which, I'm realizing, is sometimes a group effort.