Patricia Ireland Quotes

Activists are generally doers - rather than watching television and thinking about the world they will put there energies into doing something 'active' to change the (political) situation.

A small group of motivated citizens can potentially have as much influence as a lobby group spending millions of dollars.

When you are a people's movement, you have one thing. Your only asset is people. And you have to deal with real people. Not the people of your imagination. Not the people you wish people would be. But people as they exist actually out there in the real world.

The way to bring about change is to be proactive and active.

This is the task, I think, of a letter movement. But it should be set up only in states where a significant response can be achieved, for a letter movement necessarily presupposes a strong organization.

I campaign all the time.

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

Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.

I have my chops in organizing, and I know how to create political space through movement building.

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.

Rallies, marches on Washington, protests, et al. are pointless if there is no action to make them mean something.

Still, I love a campaign. I'm never happier than when I'm fighting shoulder to shoulder with our growing army of foot soldiers.

We believe that leaders should be following the masses. We only ran in leadership campaigns to get our ideas across, to use it as a platform.

We are intent on building a movement. The next step is grassroots town meetings. We must keep alive the dialogue around the covenants.

You can do a lot things in the ensuing four years waiting to vote. You can drum up support or opposition.

We need to reshape the movement as one of grassroots activists, and not 'professional activists' who populate the seemingly endless number of national animal rights groups. For many people, activism has become writing a check to a national group that is very pleased to have you leave it to them. Although it is important to give financial support to worthy efforts only, giving money is not enough and giving to the wrong groups can actually do more harm than good.

You can holler, protest, march, picket and demonstrate, but somebody must be able to sit in on the strategy conferences and plot a course. There must be strategies, the researchers, the professionals to carry out the program. That's our role.

When I was 19 or 20, the way I was an activist was by regularly meeting with groups, going to protests, and being there on the ground.

I have spent my life fighting for the underrepresented and I am working tirelessly to be New Mexico's champion in Congress.

Even if you can't be an activist every day, when you can be, do it.

Getting to the point where a cause goes from being a terribly daunting task with a handful of adherents to an acknowledged success with momentum and many allies is a rarity.

On my show, I often discuss all the ways one can get involved politically on a local level, precincts, et al.

When I think of an activist, I think of a community organizer who is working every day and directly with community members and making it a job to take care of and speak up for a community in some way.

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.

Protest is, at its core, designed to move policy.