Eric Reid Quotes

Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry.

My own service started when I was 12, with the small charity I launched with 12 friends. Twenty years later, millions have joined our ranks - educators, business leaders and prominent Canadians.

It's important to do anything you can to support the causes that you care about. I think something as small as posting articles on social media or having important conversations with your friends are ways of getting your voice out there!

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.

Be an active participant in your community and country. Every small gesture makes up the big gestures. Resist, rinse, repeat.

We've seen a great deal of interest from the Occupy movement. It's a diverse movement, not everyone embraces electoral politics, and no one can speak for Occupy.

Harry Belafonte hit me to the Dream Defenders and I liked what they were about. When I asked them how I could help their movement, they said, "You can help by coming down here; you can tweet."

Even though the American Indian Movement on a national-international scale has proven to be extremely dysfunctional, the American Indian Movement I was associated with I'm very proud of. We were a revolutionary, militant organization whose purpose was spirituality first, and that's how I want to be remembered.

The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to annoy people who are not in them.

By 1973, John Kerry had already accused American soldiers of committing war crimes in Vietnam, thrown someone else's medals to the ground in an anti-war demonstration, and married his first heiress.

[Occupy Wall Street] had an impact on consciousness. It was not effective in realizing change.

That's not to say that some of the new media is not advantageous. You can reach lots of folks with what Black Lives Matter is doing, mobilizing people. God bless them.

It's unfortunate that some people do not see what entertainers do in the background, but many of us do so much work with causes. You know some people have chewed me out, saying things like, "Oh why could you post pictures in your dresses and meanwhile they killing black men on the street?" I'm thinking, excuse me do you know what I did today? Do you know what I'm doing right now while I'm reading this post? So I think a lot of celebrities get a bad rap because people see the surface.

What kind of a world are we going to leave the next generation? I, at least, want my children to look back and say, "My daddy was being arrested at the White House fence and booed off commencement stages. He was trying."

I really appreciate when people use their fame and their voice for more than just self-promotion, starting a dialogue about a topic or an issue much bigger than themselves.

The organizers first job is to create the issues or problems, and organizations must be based on many issues. The organizer must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression. He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act. . . . An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent.

It's not enough to raise awareness. You have to give people solutions, and you have to invite them to get involved in whatever way they can, whether that's doing volunteer work or taking a portion of their salary and figuring out where they want that money to go. You have to find ways to inspire people to get involved.

I hope people become inspired to become active in their community. That's the important thing.

If you really want to see change, and have change, you're going to have to get involved.

I was very fortunate to have known Fred Ross Sr., who was organizing the Community Service Organization (CSO) way back in the late 50's and early 60's. I was able to work with him.

Yippies, Hippies, Yahoos, Black Panthers, lions and tigers alike - I would swap the whole damn zoo for the kind of young Americans I saw in Vietnam.

My passion for others and my experience as an actor and citizen of the world has naturally shaped me into a social and political activist who finds fulfillment from their work with meaningful organizations.

I don't know what they are protesting at Occupy Wall Street but I'm on their side. But 10,000 protestors and one Porta Potty?

People on a spiritual path - personal growth, spiritual practice, recovery, yoga and so forth - are the last people who should be sitting out the social and political issues of our day. And there’s an important reason for this: People on such journeys are adepts at change. They know that the mechanics of the heart and mind are the fundamental drivers of transformation.

Americans of good-will, the nice decent church people, the well-meaning liberals, the good hearted souls who themselves wouldn't lynch anyone, must begin to realize that they have to be more than passively good-hearted, more than church goingly Christian, and much more than word-of-mouth in the liberalism.