Killer Mike Quotes

I thought my parents were always having card parties - and they were - but they were actually also having meetings to organize people. My older sister would be part of youth organizing, and she'd have dance parties. People would be dancing and talking about how to improve their neighborhood.

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

I don't think I'm more politically-based as much as socially-based. My grandmother died on February 29th, and she kept all of my magazine and newspaper scraps, every interview. 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.

Families are incubators for citizen activists.

I have been a lifelong community activist and frankly did not dream of being in public office.

I'm involved in issues, and issues are about grass-roots politics.

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

I think I will always have a connection to young people, to try to bring their voices to the polls, bring their voices wherever they can make a difference.

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

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.

Generally, it is human endeavour to have young people lead, and you see that in public life in the U.S. and everywhere.

I believe in helping young people rock causes they care about because I was one of those young people... a long time ago.

Young people have so much more power than they tend to think to be able to affect politics. And if people will organize and get involved and go out and knock on doors and hand out leaflets and make a change, then they can determine the future.

My grandfather raised me believing in the power of youth to change the world.

Kids automatically teach each other how to use technology, but they're not going to teach each other about the history of democracy, or the importance of taking their voices into the public sphere to create social change.

Grass Roots Convention

With my good friend Rob Penny, I founded the Black Horizons Theater in Pittsburgh with the idea of using the theater to politicize the community or, as we said in those days, to raise the consciousness of the people.

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

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'm still proud of who I am, of my youth, and I feel like now, as individuals, we begin to realise that we can change the future. We all have to participate.

I hope to make clear that involvement in small scale community work can make a difference in our city's politics.

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

Few cities have more skilled, experienced organizers and activists and grassroots organizations than St. Louis and Philadelphia.