Norman Finkelstein Quotes

The great thing about social movements is everybody gets to be a part of them.

The organizer dedicated to changing the life of a particular community must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community.

You can make the case that slacktivism is important because it makes people feel affiliated to a movement and be part of it, and talk about it.

Community organizing is all about building grassroots support. It's about identifying the people around you with whom you can create a common, passionate cause. And it's about ignoring the conventional wisdom of company politics and instead playing the game by very different rules.

For me the march was a labor - a labor of love - but I was busy handing out flyers for the National Association of Black Social Workers, so I really wasn't standing in the crowd listening and observing. I was busy.

Activists are generally doers - rather than watching television and thinking about the world they will put there energies into doing something 'active' to change the (political) situation.

I'm incredibly impressed by people who organize to achieve a goal, and believe that they can make a difference and then go ahead and do just that. I think it's incredible.

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

The Occupy movement did create spontaneously communities that taught people something: you can be in a supportive community of mutual aid and cooperation and develop your own health system and library and have open space for democratic discussion and participation. Communities like that are really important.

People don't realize they have the power. People don't realize that if they come together, there are more of them than those who occupy the seat that I'm in right now.

I am on the side of the people.

While there are plenty of reasons that we lost in 2016, there's at least one that we can definitely fix for next time: We can make sure that no one is left behind in where we go, in who we talk to, in what we say, and in what we do.

When you are organizing a group of people, the first thing that we do is we talk about the history of what other people have been able to accomplish - people that look like them, workers like them, ordinary people, working people - and we give them the list: these are people like yourself; this is what they were able to do in their community.

Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.

The tide will at last change for us if those of us who can lead do so, and do so by not just talking but making things happen. And to to those who support us, we must call out for action, real tangible actions to help us turn this tide our way.

I hope my work inspires people to speak and to stand up together to make change. Big or small, it doesn't matter.

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.

When things happen socially in our community, as artists, we've got the right to exercise our voices if we choose to, use our powers for good.

It's amazing the support we've been able to get from Latinos and just in general from everyone.

Whether you want to do a letter-writing campaign or a march or start a social media hashtag - whatever it is - know that there are people out there that are thinking exactly like you're thinking and are also afraid to take that next and very important step.

Still, I love a campaign. I'm never happier than when I'm fighting shoulder to shoulder with our growing army of foot soldiers.

I think our work as movement leaders isn't just about our own visibility but rather how do we make the whole visible. How do we not just fight for our individual selves but fight for everybody?

It's about cultural forums and movements and collectives of people taking a stand. That's all activism is.

Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.

To be part of building a movement, you have to keep moving.