I'm involved in issues, and issues are about grass-roots politics.
I remember when the feminist movement started. I was in Edmonton. There was no feminist movement in Edmonton.
Think globally, act locally": "Our salvation depends upon our ability to create a religion of nature.
The only one who can fight for these values like democracy and freedoms are the people of any country or any society, not the foreigners.
In terms of Hurricane Sandy, I really do see some hopeful grassroots responses, particularly in the Rockaways, where people were very organized right from the beginning, where Occupy Sandy was very strong, where new networks emerged.
My passion for service came from my parents, and my community involvement began at a very young age, when I volunteered with the local Chamber of Commerce in Lowell, MA to help revitalize our city.
If there is going to be change, real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves. That's how change happens.
Use your voice on the local level where it has the potential to be more widely heard.
Barack is at a level where he can't - no matter how much he wants to or how much we want him to - he's not going to come take out our garbage, so to speak. He can't be the garbage man and the president. He can't be the mayor and the alderman. He can't fill all those roles. So I always push for local, local activity on the political scene.
What we need to recognize, less than 1 percent of the people organized around issues that are already supported by conservatives and liberals, and there are a lot of them that aren't publicized, back home, can overcome corporate forces in Washington.
Mend the part of the world that is within your reach.
The people are learning that you cannot leave decisions only to leaders. Local groups have to create the political will for change, rather than waiting for others to do things for them. That is where positive, and sustainable, change begins.
President Obama started in public life not as an elected official but as a community organizer. He worked with churches and other groups on the south side of Chicago to push public leaders to fight poverty, improve the local school system and make housing more affordable, and to bring about the change the community needed and deserved.
I'd rather work with a grassroots organization than in politics. I'm not sure I'd be the best politician because I don't think I'm good about tactfully tiptoeing around questions in the right way.
You cannot build a grass-roots campaign unless you are connecting with people.
I think too much reliance is placed in noisy demonstrations, importing speakers from a distance and the like. They excite prejudice and close the avenues to sober reason. The "home production" principle in my judgment is the best.
We have to get back down to basics. We have to start organizing at the neighborhood level to get people educated to vote.
I come from somewhere and from specific black people in the South, including my parents, who built our first school, and rebuilt it after it was burned to the ground. And they used to bake pies and cakes to raise money to keep it going. So, I learned to struggle from a very early way in a way that was truly indigenous to the South.
Real change occurs from the bottom up; it occurs person to person, and it almost always occurs in small groups and locales and then bubbles up and aggregates to larger vectors of change.
Many people send me letters in England saying, 'I want to be a war photographer,' and I say, go out into the community that you live in. There's wars going on out there; you don't have to go halfway around the world on an airplane where there are bombs and shells. There are social wars that are worthwhile.
I was previously involved in local and state politics, but not national, because grassroots democracy starts at the bottom. This was the breaking point for me, though - and it made the case that in order to fight locally, we have to fight nationally; we can't afford to neglect any area of life in this democracy.
We need to reshape the movement as one of grassroots activists, and not 'professional activists' who populate the seemingly endless number of national animal rights groups. For many people, activism has become writing a check to a national group that is very pleased to have you leave it to them. Although it is important to give financial support to worthy efforts only, giving money is not enough and giving to the wrong groups can actually do more harm than good.
Be informed, ask questions, band together with your community, and fight at the local level. And make sure you take your local elections as seriously as the national ones.
In my four years as a state legislator, I went to dozens of nontraditional events - everything from bird watchings to tree giveaways, neighborhood cleanups to self-defense clinics for women - going where people are instead of asking them to come to me. It's how I learned about their struggles and how legislative decisions affected their lives.
The Tea Party is simply a loose description of local activism driven by Americans who want smaller government and more self-reliance. That sounds like what the Founding Fathers had in mind, does it not?
