Aja Brown Quotes

The electoral system is not where change starts - it usually starts in communities and from the bottom up - but it is where change can be stopped.

Turmoil is everywhere, and the whole world is waiting for solutions to come from the top down. That's not how it works - community change from the bottom up makes a real difference.

I believe the people of Compton are ready for change. They've spoken. Their voice has clearly been heard that they don't want to go backward. They want to go forward.

It's important that people press from the outside. It's important that people are able to make change from the inside. Both of those things are important. Protest is fundamentally a political act.

Real, sustainable community change requires the initiative and engagement of community members.

By bringing the voices of the ordinary people faced with extraordinary challenges to television screens around the world, I hope to affect change in one community at a time.

Collectively, we activists are essential to advancing U.S. policy to help empower marginalized people to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty for good.

Where there is a sufficient social movement of self-reliant communities, there can be political change. There must be political change.

If our society is to address social issues, it will be done at the local level or not at all.

Changing social policy is just dogged hard work.

Public policies in our democracy are eventually a reflection of public opinion," so public opinion must be reshaped if we are to avoid disaster.

If you believe in making change from the bottom up, if you believe the measure of change is how many people's lives are better, you know it's hard, and some people think it's boring.

We must try to influence the government, not fight to take power.

My only agenda is, I would like to see mainstream America more empowered to set an agenda.

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.

People have to know that when momentum for a national movement has to be built, basic things have to be talked about first.

Poverty is just a word. I mean, how do you dismantle capitalism? It's through small actions. It's through breaking down poverty as a lived experience of not enough food, of your health not being good. So those are things that we can actually work on without ever having to call a politician.

If you want change, and you want things to get better across the country, there's different ways to go about it.

I think it's possible for Tennessee to be flipped to a Democratic majority, which would be beneficial to enacting policies that I would like to see, but beyond party allegiance, we have an opportunity to involve ourselves in change that will empower us not just now but in the future.

Alleviating suffering of the most marginalized communities must begin with assessing the needs of entire communities and allowing the most marginalized to lead the strategy. My belief is those closest to the pain are closest to the solution.

change starts at the bottom. I think we're disempowered by the idea that it starts at the top, when really change is like a tree. It does start at the bottom.

As important as it is to change the light bulbs, its more important to change the laws

Once I learned about grassroots organizing, I got so enamored with it because I thought 'Wow this is the way you do it!'

We live in the age of communication. Write letters to the editor. Speak to your congressman, to your senator. If you are young, especially young people are taken by this human rights activities. They should organize the universities.

Modifying the core institutions of the society is no small challenge.