Quotessence
Home / Topics / Community Organizing Quotes

Community Organizing Quotes

Browse 19 quotes about Community Organizing.

Community Organizing Quotes

“Phillip. the Dream Defenders founder, had a similar insight. For him, the experience of the Blackout had been a lesson in the varieties of power. Borrowing a concept from Joseph Nye, the political scientist, he now came to understand social media as a form of 'soft power,' a force that shapes culture through argument and story. But there was also 'hard power,' which Nye, in assessing the capacity of different nation-states, characterized as military and economic might. For movements, hard power was the ability to lobby for legislation, elect sympathetic political leaders, get resources allocated toward your cause. Social media, Phillip now saw more clearly, was good at building soft power. But when it came to hard power, it could do very little. And if for Nye every successful state needed a mix of the two, this was doubly true of social movements, which didn't stare with a store of either. The only way to built hard power was on the ground. As Rachel put it, 'You just can't shortcut organizing.' It made them want to stop the performance, the race for followers, even the reflex to always make their actions public-they would think carefully about if and when to use tactics like occupations and sit-ins.”

Social JusticeSocial MediaSocial MovementsPolitical ActivismCommunity Organizing
Book:The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas
Create image

“The seven core members also became more involved in local Minneapolis politics. Drawing attention at a national level had been the driving impetus of the earlier Black Lives Matter protests, which had relied on getting that hashtag to spike. Now it was clear that if their focal point was police funding, it would need to be a local effort, dependent on a partnership with the city council and the mayor's office, where these budgetary decisions were made. They would need to learn the mechanics and make some allies. This was organizing as it had long been done, and they got good at it. It was also, in a way, what separated Minneapolis from Cairo. Whereas the Middle East lacked a democratic or grassroots political tradition-and had no way to even imagining how to create one-this wasn't the case in America....But there was a long history of African American organizing that predated Silicon Galley. Miski and their friends got to know city council members and their aides, inundated them with research material, visited their offices, and maybe most important, brought people out to hearings when the budget was being discussed, arguing in forum after forum against the belief that all the police needed were a few more bodycams. All this happened without much fanfare and largely off-line.”

Black Lives MatterAdvocacySocial MovementsPolitical ActivismCommunity Organizing
Book:The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas
Create image

“If the parents of schoolchildren in an elementary school in Austin worry most about the dangers their children face crossing busy streets near the school, they getting a stop sign installed or a traffic pattern changed will be their first goal. Other aims and actions may follow, once they experience their collective power. "Winning creates imagination," says Sister Judy Donovan, leading organizer of Valley Interfaith. "Once they see they can get a stop sign, they start thinking about what might be done in the school." Successful action gives people lessons in their own power.”

CollectivityCommunity OrganizingCollective PowerMovement BuildingSocial Technology
Book:Better Together
Create image

“The rules in this new 'post-partisan' era are pretty simple: If the Democratic Party wants it, it's 'stimulus.' If the Republican Party opposes it, it's 'politics' - as in headlines like this: 'Obama Urges GOP To Keep Politics To A Minimum On Stimulus.' These are serious times: As the president says, it's the worst economic crisis since the Thirties. So politicians need to put politics behind them and immediately lavish $4.19 billion on his community-organizing pals at the highly inventive 'voter registration' group ACORN for 'neighborhood stabilization activities.”

IfsWantNeedsPresidentCommunitySimplePartyBehindsGroupsEconomicWorstSeriousPoliticianRepublicanActivityCrisisDemocraticBillionsErasPostsNeighborhoodUrgesVotersMinimumRepublican PartyDemocratic PartyStimulusHeadlinesPartisansGopPalsEconomic CrisisAcornsRegistrationCommunity OrganizingVoter Registration
Author:Mark Steyn
Create image

“I think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing, and activities on the ground, that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power throughout which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways, we still suffer from that.”

ThinkingWayStillsAbleTogetherPoliticalSufferingCommunityLosesRightsMovementActivityTragedyCourtTrackFocusedTendenciesCivil RightsCivil Rights MovementCoalitionsCommunity Organizing
Author:Barack Obama
Create image

“I remember reading [ Studs Terkel's] "Working" when it first came out and just finding that very powerful. I was going into community organizing. What stuck was to reveal the sacredness of ordinary people's lives. That everybody has a story. And I think Studs is terrific at drawing out that shimmering quality of people's everyday struggles.”

PeopleThinkingFirstsStoriesRememberReadingCommunityPowerfulQualityStruggleFindingsOrdinaryEverydayDrawingStuckOrdinary PeopleTerrificVery PowerfulSacrednessStudsCommunity Organizing
Author:Barack Obama
Create image

“Hopefully folks will look at the good things that I've done over the years, you know, my 10 years in Congress, my 12 years in state legislature, my many years of community organizing for the environment, for police accountability, for criminal justice reform, economic empowerment, trying to fight for small-business people, all these things.”

PeopleKnowsTryingYearsLooksStatesDoneFightingCommunityJusticeEnvironmentEconomicEmpowermentPoliceGood ThingsCongressFolksCriminalsReformHopefullyAccountabilitySmall BusinessLegislatureCriminal JusticeState LegislaturesEconomic EmpowermentCommunity Organizing
Author:Keith Ellison
Create image

“[Barack] Obama isn't pointing to anyone, and certainly doesn't like it when others note (correctly) that his influences were the likes of Saul Alinsky, the Chicagoan and modern founder of community organizing, or Frank Marshall Davis, the communist journalist and agitator from Chicago who mentored Obama in Hawaii in the latter 1970s, and who Obama warmly acknowledges in his memoirs.”

CommunityInfluenceModernNotesLikesMemoirBarackJournalistAcknowledgeLatterCommunistChicagoFrankFoundersHawaiiPointingCommunity Organizing
Author:Paul Kengor
Create image

“All the eight years of [Barack] Obama when [George W.] Bush was asked repeatedly, "I don't do that. I had my time. It's his time now." The protocols and the history, the traditions say that past presidents don't comment. That didn't work for Bill Clinton. He couldn't help himself. Obama is not commenting, but Obama is actively engaged in the sabotage of the [Donald] Trump administration, with all of these community organizing uprisings.”

YearsHelpingPastPresidentCommunityTrumpTraditionBillsClintonEightAdministrationBarackEngagedMy TimeCommentUprisingSabotageProtocolCommunity Organizing
Author:Rush Limbaugh
Create image

“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.”

PeopleDifferentGamesCausesCommunityCommonCompanySupportBuildingPassionateConventionalIdentifyingConventional WisdomGrassrootsCommunity OrganizingIgnoring Facts
Author:Tom Peters
Create image