Charles Evers Quotes

We can't talk about community values without being prepared to invest in those very same communities.

With abolition, it's necessary to destroy systems of oppression. But it's equally necessary to put at the forefront our conversations about creation. When we fight for justice, what exactly do we want for our communities?

I think the black community is no different from any other community. We need to take responsibility for how we live together. We need to be personally responsible for keeping our streets clean, our schools safe, and our houses peaceful.

Collectively, we activists are essential to advancing U.S. policy to help empower marginalized people to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty for good.

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.

If one black man aided by a bevy of good, decent, dedicated, and open liberal-minded whites and Jews can succeed in prevailing over a group of white racists by making them look like the ignorant fools that they are truly are, imagine what a nation of like-minded individuals can accomplish.

Alleviating suffering of the most marginalized communities must begin with assessing the needs of entire communities and allowing the most marginalized to lead the strategy. My belief is those closest to the pain are closest to the solution.

Leftism should be about the people. That's how it began.

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

We must recognize that all the civil rights laws in the world are not going to solve the problem of minority underachievement. Ultimately, blacks and Hispanics are going to have to see that their solution is largely in their own hands.

Indians were here first - it's about time. We're way behind the African Americans and Hispanic Americans in getting politically involved, but we're beginning to take a page out of their notebook.

I know that government doesn't have the all solutions that real solutions do not come from the top down. Instead, the ways to end poverty come from all of us. We are part of the solution.

When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place. So, what we view our role as, is giving people that power.

Real, sustainable community change requires the initiative and engagement of community members.

The Negro has been here in America since 1619, a total of 344 years. He is not going anywhere else; this country is his home. He wants to do his part to help make his city, state, and nation a better place for everyone, regardless of color and race.

I have been inspired by Martin Luther King and how he inspired a movement. I have learned that a cause must be organic; if it is to have an impact it must belong to those who join the movement and not those who lead it.

In the long run, we will need many more African-American, Latino, and Native American leaders, and leaders from low-income communities, who can bring additional insight and a deeply grounded sense of urgency, and who are the most likely to inspire the necessary trust and engagement among students' parents and community leaders.

The key to organizing an alternative society is to organize people around what they can do, and more importantly, what they want to do.

When we empower our communities, we are all better off.

Imagine a world where everyone is really a change maker.

Before, Indian people had been so defeated, they were always looking for outsiders, for the government, to somehow come in and fix things. But now, they seem to realize that they're the only ones who can save themselves.

... a legitimate revolution must be led by, made by those who have been most oppressed: black, brown, yellow, red, and white women—with men relating to that the best they can.

What does the American Negro want? Full citizen status in our American democracy. How shall he reach that goal? By the inward power of the masses. And how shall that power be acquired? Fundamentally, on the highest plane and on the humblest, by a leadership motivated by a world-encompassing philosophy which is rooted in the will of God—a leadership which, itself a vital part of the force of events, is consecrated in humility to the immediate and practical education of the people.

People say that the government should be doing this Yeah, but the government is not doing this. So we do.

If you believe in making change from the bottom up, if you believe the measure of change is how many people's lives are better, you know it's hard, and some people think it's boring.