Boots Riley Quotes

We're seeing young people find their own voices and find their activism.

More people, especially young people, are realising that if they want change, they've got to go about it themselves - they can't depend on a particular person, i.e. me, to do all the work. They are less easy to fool than they used to be, they now know what's going on all over the world.

Our Revolution has been the keeper of the flame doing the vital work of building a grassroots movement that leverages the people's agenda.

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

The most powerful thing we can do is get involved locally. Help our local community and become community activists in our own smaller circle.

Only a well-organized movement of young people, educators, workers, parents, religious groups and other concerned citizens will be capable of changing the power relations and vast economic inequalities that have generated what has become a country in which it is almost impossible to recognize the ideals of a real democracy.

I'm not a grassroots organizer; that is clear. I believe in a division of labor. I'm not trained to organize the grassroots, and grassroots has to come from the grassroots.

We have to deal with where we are. We have to create cooperatives, we have to create intentional communities, we have to work for local cooperation where we are.

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

I learned about community organizing from my parents. As a child, their stories were so instructive.

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

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.

I think we should focus more, rather than less, on mobilising the middle classes. They often have a bit of time and money to contribute to change.

Kids are meeting in coffee shops and basements figuring out what's unsustainable in their communities. That's the future.

The monied interests are doing what they do best - making money. The rest of us need to do what we can do best - use our voices, our vigor, and our votes.

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.

I'm just one of the kids, and all because the students at Hamilton Heights High School listened to the facts, educated their parents and themselves, and believed in me.

I want our millennials and our young people to do what they started out doing with meet-ups, to talk about what is going on, and spread the education.

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 voting is the lowest form of political action that you can do. A lot of times, it keeps people from doing stronger things.

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.

Sometimes it takes a child to raise a village - or to take down an injustice.

I really feel like people who want to change things need to go out and change it themselves and not look to politicians to do that.

I've been in the newspapers since I was about 15 - not for rapping, but for real substantive stuff I was doing in the community, organizing around gang violence in the schools. So I had already made my grandma proud before I was on TV. I've always been who I am.

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.