Simon Mainwaring Quotes

Consumers have not been told effectively enough that they have huge power and that purchasing and shopping involve a moral choice.

More than ever before, consumers have the ability to unify their voices and coalesce their buying power to influence corporate behaviors.

While everyone's purpose may be different, with social media we all have that platform to create the change we want to see in the world, and I spend a lot of time encouraging others to step up and use theirs.

Through their own actions, customers can hold companies responsible to higher standards of social responsibility. Through collective action, they can leverage their dollars to combat the force of those investors who myopically pursue profits at the expense of the rest of society.

'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.

I don't even know what a hashtag is. You don't turn a hashtag into a movement - people turn things into a movement.

A brand is only going to want to be more inclusive if they feel like it's going to be good for business as well as making the consumer feel good - so we have to encourage people to do that. Consumers have to stand up and say, 'I have power: my pound or dollar is how I vote.'

If the Karmabanque hasn't worked, it's because there isn't yet a critical mass of people who are prepared to fight back and who instead prefer to be victims.

Don't underestimate the power of the vigilante consumer.

Whether you have a hundred friends on Facebook or whether you're on TV or whatever, at every level, everybody has a platform. We all have a responsibility, given what's going on, to speak using that platform as much as we can, and to engage. Whether that's calling members of Congress, marching, getting involved locally, getting involved with Let America Vote, or if all you can get done during the day is you see the news and you want to make sure your hundred friends on Facebook know what you think about it, that is a really important part of this.

You know, there's a lot of activism that doesn't deal with empowerment, and you have to empower yourself in order to be relevant to any type of struggle.

The role of social media is critical because it helps to spread cognitive dissonance by connecting thought leaders and activists to ordinary citizens rapidly expanding the network of people who become willing to take action.

I encourage everyone out there to get involved.

In 2012, I see the potential for people to come together, huge moments of political and social engagement where elections are part of the strategy for change, but not the end goal and not the only thing that matters.

If the world is to be put together it will not be done by large organizations. It will be done by millions of small organizations…. Participation: That’s what is going to save the human race.

Trends are not real; they are for the consumer, and once we can get enough of us to free ourselves from it and realize that it's not about strong-arming our way through, it's about understanding that we are so needed for the balance of this planet, then I think we can start having changes.

The organizer dedicated to changing the life of a particular community must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community.

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.

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

If you actually want to change your world, there is a better way of doing it than blowing yourself up.

My movement is 'Rose Army.'

As consumers, we are making choices, and we allow things to exist, and we celebrate the existence of things. And we can also boycott those things we don't want to be part of.

It's very important that people who are feeling the need to do something... get activated.

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.

The big percentage is us, the real people, and we have to say something. You have to speak up. You have to.