Nate Powell Quotes

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.

I'm an organizer at heart. Organizers know that giving information, being in front of people, talking to people, to build our movement for the kind of country that we see is the most important thing.

Publicity, discussion, and agitation are necessary to accomplish any work of lasting benefit.

I often tell people I don't care whether they join the NAACP or some other group, but you better join something.

I grew up with protests, marches, demonstrations, struggle. But I come from a clan of community workers.

Before we had the Internet, I organized a fax campaign against the first Iraq war. We blasted faxes to the hotel where James Baker and Tariq Aziz were having their final meeting before the two sides went to war. Much more recently, I co-founded Avaaz and Get Up, which inspired the creation of Purpose.

You know, 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.

Twitter, it can be said, completely changed the way activism is done, who can participate, and even how we define it.

I believe activism is the true source of change in the world. Pushing to change social structures in communities that you are a part of is critical for making real lasting change.

We need all the newfangled web-based Internet spread, you know, social media that can catalyze, you know, some serious consciousness about what's going on. But we also need people on the streets pounding the pavement to make a significant and dramatic appearance to suggest that what's going on here is unacceptable.

It's about using social media for social change: creating a community of advocates who can use their voices on behalf of the voiceless, or leverage their talents, skills, knowledge, and resources to put more children into classrooms, or pressure their elected representatives to get global education top of the agenda.

It is my hope that people today will see that, in another time, in another period, when we saw the need for people to speak up, to organize, to mobilize, and to do something about injustice, we came together.

"The life of the union depends upon more people getting to share the limelight, because with the limelight also comes responsibility and with the responsibility comes a little sharing of the load." "There isn't enough money to organize poor people. There never is enough money to organize anyone. If you put it on the basis of money, you're not going to succeed."

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

The great news is that that sort of group of people and that sort of sensibility is beginning to become more active again. And I think partly it just has to do with the time. It has to do with the culture of resistance. The necessity is for us to pull together and to speak up and to make work and be visible.

History is instructive. And what it suggests to people is that even if they do little things, if they walk on the picket line, if they join a vigil, if they write a letter to their local newspaper. Anything they do, however small, becomes part of a much, much larger sort of flow of energy. And when enough people do enough things, however small they are, then change takes place.

We have got to mobilize people and rethink our commitment in terms of what our role is in the political process.

People have got to show up, showing up at meetings, rallies, marches, City Council, courtrooms. You've got to show up.

My kids have lived experiences that could have never been duplicated otherwise. That's one thing about people who get involved in activism, you live so many experiences that otherwise they wouldn't be there. This is why peoples' lives are so enriched.

I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project, and together we'll turn the world inside out. And this starts right now.

Ajamu Baraka comes out of the tradition of the African-American intellectuals, the people who really been standing up for African-American rights and economic rights and workers rights.

All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once...Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you’re all in it now.

I do believe that if millions of people do stand up and fight back, we can stop Donald Trump from doing some really awful things.

As Bernie Sanders said himself, it's a movement, not a man. And that movement continues to move into our campaign.

... we believe in the vocation of communion and participation of our people, who day to day awaken to their political conscience and express their desire for change and profound democratization of society. A change based on justice, built with love, and which will bring us the most anxiously desired fruits of peace.