Michelle Alexander Quotes

Public service and community organizing and movement building is such a part of my DNA that it's really hard to separate it.

My generation had to be taken seriously because we were stopping things and burning things. We were able to initiate change, because we had such vast numbers. We were part of the baby boom, and when we moved, everything moved with us.

Therefore, our fight must primarily be a political mass struggle with revolutionary goals.

We have to realize we are building a movement.

You can kill a revolutionary but you can never kill the revolution.

Activism has been very productive in our society.

You can't build a lasting political movement based on hostility to government.

Political action alone will not suffice. A new political party cannot win by conventional means. A new political party can win if it serves its proper function as the political arm of a complete patriotic resistance movement.

If you want to change a country, you're going to be bumped every now and then.

I would describe and I have described myself to people who ask as a freedom fighter.

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

I think my mom exposed me to the concept of using your voice for anything you care about.

If I wanted to change the world, the last thing I would do is write a play.

People may recognize me as some sort of superhero, but it's different. Spider-Man and all these other superheroes, they get superpowers and do what they want to save the city. If we need to save Hong Kong, we can't rely on superpowers, we can just rely on the people.

When I was in high school, people would ask me what I wanted to do, and I would always say I wanted to 'lead marches and give speeches.'

You don't need role models to be part of a social movement as long as you care about the issues.

My mother informed me that the way to be a change agent to create change, the first line of defense, or however you want to phrase that, is politics and government.

With Black Lives Matter, we knew from the very beginning that it wasn't just going to live online. We were like, 'We're creating this thing and then it's also going to live with black folks on the street and protests and organizations.' It was very important for us to use the hashtag as a way to have a larger conversation and as an organizing tool.

If we are not actively fighting against regressive ideologies, we are contributing to making them grow.

I'm an organizer at heart. Organizers know that giving information, being in front of people, talking to people, to build our movement for the kind of country that we see is the most important thing.

We can't just assume that this resistance is going to produce the kinds of candidates or the kinds of parties that will truly honor people of all colors, all backgrounds, all ethnicities, from every nation and every faith and every gender, unless we do the work in our own communities of organizing and being in deep dialogue with one another across all forms of difference. It's my hope that we'll seize this opportunity and not let the moment pass.

Personally, I am uneasy about the notion of "a politically engaged university," for reasons I wrote about over 30 years ago, at the height of protest and resistance (reprinted in For Reasons of State).

The racist rhetoric from politicians is inspiring people to organize, as more people see what happens by not getting active.

Be prepared to organize nonviolent workshops - a teach-in around what is happening in America today. Organize your teachers and schoolmates, and be prepared to engage in some action.

I resolved that no revolutionary movement was going to be brought into being in the USA unless I brought it into being.