Chris Hedges Quotes

If the government or the parties won't address our needs, we will. It's about direct action, even civil disobedience.

The idea of protest organizing, as summarized by community organizer Saul Alinsky, is that if we put enough pressure on the government, it will do things to help people. We don't realize that that kind of organizing worked only when the government was very strong, when the West ruled the world, relatively speaking. But with globalization and the weakening of the nation-state, that kind of organizing doesn't work.

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.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was more politically oriented. Part and parcel of the initial SNCC efforts was to not only go in for voter registration, but for political participation.

The elites hate to acknowledge it, but when large numbers of ordinary people are moved to action, it changes the narrow political world where the elites call the shots. Inside accounts reveal the extent to which Johnson and Nixon's conduct of the Vietnam War was constrained by the huge anti-war movement. It was the civil rights movement, not compelling arguments, that convinced members of Congress to end legal racial discrimination.

People in Detroit aren't just urban gardening. They're starting a new mode of education. They're trying to give children the education to be "solutionaries" rather than people who are going to get jobs in the system. And that is a huge change, a cultural revolution. The things that are happening in Detroit would amaze you if you're used to only looking at statistics, and only thinking of blacks as sufferers and not as activists.

I decided to become a community organizer ... Change won't come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.

The folks that are suggesting Occupy move to electoral politics are ignoring history, ignoring what actually creates change. People get involved in electoral politics because they think there is no movement that can create change.

For myself and the Players Coalition, it was never about the money or having our voices bought. To hear people call me or anyone else a sell-out is insulting. It has always been, and will always be, about lifting the voices of the people and the work of those that fight for them.

It was clear to us that social movements and activism can only take us so far in our mission.

The Umbrella Movement can be described as an encyclopedia. Politicians and student leaders wrote it, and let the masses read it and react passively.

What we've seen is an attempt by mainstream politics and politicians to co-opt movements that galvanize people in order for them to move closer to their own goals and objectives. We don't think that playing a corrupt game is going to bring change and make black lives matter.

I thought I could make change by just working at ground level, but to change a community, you have to change policies.

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.

The social revolution is seriously compromised if it comes through a political revolution.

We must stop being polite and behaved and find new inventive tactics to shift the paradigm. We are the majority.

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

The corporate-powered parties are not gonna do it for us, not the greater or the lesser evil. We have to do it for ourselves. And the minute we stand up and stand together, we are unstoppable.

The role that theater has placed in enhancing consciousness and moving systems ahead. I think of what South African theater meant for the apartheid movement, for example. I think of what music has meant for so many social movements across time.

Sometimes the difference between two candidates is an important one in the immediate sense, and then I believe trying to get somebody into office, who is a little better, who is less dangerous, is understandable. But never forgetting that no matter who gets into office, the crucial question is not who is in office, but what kind of social movement do you have. Because if you have a powerful social movement, it doesn't matter who is in office.

It's really important that we get rid of the idea that protest will create change. We don't realize that that kind of organizing worked only when the government was very strong, when the West ruled the world, relatively speaking.

It is our experience that the nation doesn't move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for black people until it is confronted massively, dramatically in terms of direct action.

Unlike mainstream civil rights groups, which merely sought integration of blacks into the existing order, SNCC sought structural changes in American society itself.

I met Rosa Parks when I was 17. I met Dr. [Martin Luther] King when I was 18. These two individuals inspired me to find a way to get in the way, to get in trouble. So I got in good trouble, necessary trouble.

The powerful don't make revolutions