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Organizing Quotes

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Organizing Quotes

“Nothing can suppress the impact of organized citizenry. Year after year, the young generation forgets on how there was a time when Congress worked for us to some degree. There was a time when citizen action was worthwhile and produced results. So as we get - a younger generation doesn't have the historical context. The preamble of the Constitution starts with we, the people. It doesn't start with we, the corporation. It doesn't start with we, the Congress. It starts with we, the people.”

PeopleGovernmentActionCitizensConstitutionCorporationsOrganizing
Author:Ralph Nader
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“Getting intimate means giving a damn, worrying about what happens to people in our everyday lives. It means attending to their individual needs, perspectives, & interests--by asking the basic questions: who, where, when, why, & how. It means accepting that the answers to these questions may bring an uneasy & jarring level of consciousness to the ways in which we receive, recognize & respond to others & ourselves.”

CaringOrganizingEmotional Labor
Book:Being Bad: My Baby Brother and the School-to-Prison Pipeline
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“We are all a little schizophrenic. Each of us has three different people living inside us every day—who you were, who you are and who you will become. The road to sanity is to recognize those identities, in order to know who you are today.”

ThinkingLifePastHappinessHealingPrinciplesPlansRelationshipDreamsIdentityPersonalityFutureEgoLife And LivingSelf ImprovementEnlightenmentSelf AwarenessGoalsPlanningSelf RealizationOnenessLife ChangingWellnessExplorationSanityPresentTrue SelfDreamingHabitsLife PurposeNowStayingpositiveu ComStaying PositiveOrganizingMental DisordersKnowing YourselfIdentitiesHell To WellRoad To Recovery
Author:Shannon L. Alder
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“This, then, is the job ahead. It is the job of building broad, deep People’s Organizations which are all-inclusive of both the people and their many organizations. It is the job of uniting, through a common interest which far transcends individual differences, all the institutions and agencies representative of the people. It is the job of building a People's Organization so that people will have faith in themselves and in their fellow men. It is the job of educating our people so that they will be informed to the point of being able to exercise an intelligent critical choice as to what is true and what is false. It is the job of instilling confidence in men so that they are sure they can destroy all of the evils which afflict them and their fellows, whether unemployment, war, or other man-made disasters. It is the greatest job man could have — the actual opportunity of creating and building a world of decency, dignity, peace, security, happiness; a world worthy of man and worthy of the name of civilization. This is the job ahead. The building of these People's Organizations and the achievement of popular participation cannot and will not be done by denouncing the present deplorable condition of democracy. It will not be done by wailing self-recriminations. It can be done only by setting ourselves to the dirty, monotonous, heart-breaking job of building People’s Organizations. It can be done only by possessing the infinite patience and faith to hang on as parts of the organization disintegrate; to rebuild, add on, and continue to build. It can be done only by those who believe in, have faith in, and are willing to make every sacrifice for the people. Those who see fearlessly and clearly; they will be your radicals. The radical will look squarely at all issues. He will not be so weighted down with material or malignant prejudice that he can only look upward with a worm’s-eye view. He will not look down upon mankind with the distorted, unrealistic, ivory-tower bird’s-eye view, but will look straight ahead on the dead level, seeing man as a man. Not from a long distance, up or down, but as a man living among men.”

FaithBuildingCreatingPatiencePositivityUnitingOrganizingRadicalsOrganizationsOrganizers
Book:Reveille for Radicals
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“Undoubtedly street blockades and other forms of confrontational opposition can be very useful against any political opponent, but once far-right formations have managed to broadcast their xenophobic, dystopian platforms, it is incumbent upon us to drown them out with even better alternatives to the austerity and incompetence of the governing parties of the Right & Left. On its own, militant anti-fascism is necessary but not sufficient to build a new world in the shell of the old.”

TransformationNew WorldAntifaOrganizingAntifascism
Book:Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook
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“The crisis creates situations which are dangerous in the short run, since the various strata of the population are not all capable of orienting themselves equally swiftly, or of reorganizing with the same rhythm. The traditional ruling class, which has numerous trained cadres, changes men and programmes and, with greater speed than is achieved by the subordinate classes, reabsorbs the control that was slipping from its grasp. Perhaps it may make sacrifices, and expose itself to an uncertain future by demagogic promises; but it retains power, reinforces it for the time being, and uses it to crush its adversary and disperse his leading cadres, who cannot be be very numerous or highly trained.”

RevolutionClass StruggleHegemonyOrganizing
Book:Selections from the Prison Notebooks
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“How about you tell me which plants are which, and we'll... organize them. So that they all have the chance to thrive. We can designate areas for different kinds of plants and transplant the rest outside the fence. Like at the library." She walked toward the east side of the garden. "Here's the Nonfiction section. Vegetables only here." "New Studies and Treaties," Caz said, designating an area at the front of the Nonfiction section. "Your seeds can go here. And in the back, Histories--- that's the old growth." "In the front of the cottage, Fiction. That'll be all the flowers." "What about the berries?" "Journals of Scientific Papers," she decided, because of the way the brambles both supported and strangled one another. "Along the far fence.”

GardeningOrganizingPlantingComparableCottagecoreBook Genres
Book:The Spellshop
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“In a fractal conception, I am a cell-sized unit of the human organism, and I have to use my life to leverage a shift in the system by how I am, as much as with the things I do. This means actually being in my life, and it means bringing my values into my daily decision making. Each day should be lived on purpose.”

Self HelpFractalsOrganizingEmergent Strategy
Book:Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds
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“it's vital to avoid a longtime error of leftist politics, starting with Marxism: failure to understand the powerful role in human society of subjective forces such as spirituality. That failure has opened the door wide to right-wing manipulation of spiritual hunger. That failure undermines the possibility of mobilizing masses of Latinos/as for whom faith has been an affirmation of heart in a heartless world. The bottom line in any organizing for social justice needs to be respect for others' needs, including spiritual needs.”

SpiritualityMarxismLeftismOrganizingLatinosLatinasLeftist Politics
Book:De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century
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“Rosa Parks drew solace & sustenance from the long history of Black resistance before her time, placing her action & the Montgomery bus boycott in the continuum of Black protest. Her speech notes during the boycott read: 'Reading histories of others--Crispus Attucks through all wars--Richard Allen--Dr. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. & Jr. Women Phyllis Wheatley--Sojourner Truth--Harriet Tubman, Mary McLeod Bethune. For Parks, the ability to keep going, to know that the struggle for justice was possible amidst all the setbacks they encountered, was partly possible through reading & referencing the long Black struggle before her.”

InspirationReadingHistoryResistanceBlack HistoryOrganizingMontgomery Bus BoycottRosa Parks
Book:A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History
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“Believing in people, the radical has the job of organizing people so that they will have the power and opportunity to best meet each unforeseeable future crisis as they move ahead to realize those values of equality, justice, freedom, the preciousness of human life, and all those rights and values propounded by Judeo-Christianity and democratic tradition. Democracy is not an end but the best means toward achieving these values. These values are not even debatable in a free society; they are accepted, they are the reasons for the democratic society.”

ValuesDemocracyDemocratic SocietyOrganizingRadicalsDemocratic ValuesOrganizers
Book:Reveille for Radicals
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“The West’s adversarial political system, in which all manner of decisions were made by majority rule, was little more than a refined version of civil war, replacing one form of coercion (fighting) with another (voting).”

DemocracyVotingPolitical ActionOrganizingSocial Capital
Book:To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement
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“[...] fundamental PIM problems are surprisingly resistant to technology change. [...] Despite apparent technology improvements, we still forget to deal with vital actionable items. find it hard to judge the value of new information, keep large amounts of infomation of questionable value, and fail to retrieve important information that we have made stringent efforts to organize.”

OrganizingInformation ManagementTechnology ChangePersonal Digital Archiving
Book:The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff
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“The books were in no particular order, and Lundy found the process of sorting them remarkably soothing, involving, as it did, a strange sort of scavenger hunt through the entire shack. Books had been used to prop up tables and level out shelves; they were piled on surfaces where books had no business being and tucked under the edge of the thin mattress of the Archivist's bed. In the case of books that had become load-bearing, Lundy used her school ruler to carefully note their heights and went searching for rocks or pieces of scrap wood that would do the job as well, if not better. In the case of books left too near to water or exposed to the air, she rolled her eyes and whisked them away to literary safety.”

BooksLibrarySortingOrganizing
Book:In an Absent Dream
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“There had always been aspects of the daily management of Birnam Wood that Mira had seen as her beneath her; she had always acted as though the administration and the democratic protocols were unworthy of her attention and her time. It was one of the ways in which the two friends perfectly complemented each other, for as Mira had often pointed out to her, Shelley really rather liked bureaucracy; she found genuine fulfilment in ticking items off a list, and organising, and making blueprints for the future, and establishing processes of feedback and methods of appeal. Mira had no patience for any of that. She loved to speculate, loved to feel the scope and flex of her own imaginative audacity, loved to test and contradict herself, to keep enlarging, constantly, her own sense of what it was possible to hypothesise and conjure up and entertain, and although this roving speculative energy was something Shelley honestly admired and envied about her, she could also see that it amounted, at times, to a kind of capriciousness, even a callousness, when it came to those aspects of mundane existence that could not be posited or wished away. There was a kind of safety in abstraction, Shelley felt, in visions that remained visions, in ideas that remained ideas….”

IdeasProcessManagementAdministrationBureaucracySpeculationBig IdeasOrganizingProtocolsHypothesizing
Book:Birnam Wood
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“I WILL NOT ALLOW MY NEGATIVE FEELINGS TO CONTROL ME; I WILL REMAIN POSITIVE" -Stephanie”

MotivationHealingGuidanceCleaningOrganizingSelfhelpDoershipInpsirationPositivethinkingNegativethoughts
Book:Clean Up Your Home To Clean Up Your Life & Say Hello To Aromatherapy: Restore Your Sanctuary, Regain Your Peace, Ignite Your Senses
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“A fifth point concerning nonviolent resistance is that it avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. The nonviolent resister would contend that in the struggle for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter or indulging in hate campaigns. To retaliate in kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can only be done by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives.”

LoveHateActivismBitternessNonviolenceNonviolent ResistanceOrganizing
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“To acknowledge the existence of the bully and his accompanying risks is not the same as accepting him as a permanent feature of our world. I know that if we accept trauma and fear, it wins. "Bullies don’t just go away. Their legacies don’t just disappear. The bully must be confronted intentionally, his impact named and addressed. Even so, it seems there’s no clear consensus on how to deal with the bully on our blocks. Do we confront him? Match violence with violence? Do we ignore him, or try to kill him with kindness? I don’t think there’s a silver bullet to handling the bully, no one-size-fits-all strategy. But the right strategy has to be rooted in a context bigger than the immediate one, has to be rooted in more than aiming to end the presence of the bully himself. We must focus on the type of world we want to live in and devise a plan for getting there, as opposed to devising a strategy centered on opposition.”

FearViolenceRiskTraumaActivismResistanceOppressionBullyingSolidarityOrganizing
Book:On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope
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“The biggest job in getting any movement off the ground is to keep together the people who form it. The task requires more than a common aim: it demands a philosophy that wins and holds the people's allegiance; and it depends upon open channels of communication between the people and their leaders.”

PhilosophyLeadershipCommunicationActivismWorking TogetherOrganizingMovements
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“The mass meetings also cut across class lines. The vast majority present were working people; yet there was always an appreciable number of professionals in the audience. Physicians, teachers, and lawyers sat or stood beside domestic workers and unskilled laborers. The Ph.D.'s and the no "D's" were bound together in a common venture. The so-called "big Negroes" who owned cars and had never ridden the buses came to know the maids and the laborers who rode the buses every day. Men and women who had been separated from each other by false standards of class were now singing and praying together in a common struggle for freedom and human dignity.”

RaceClassActivismCivil RightsAfrican AmericansBlacksOrganizingMontgomery Bus Boycott
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“Love, for Gandhi, was a potent instrument for social and collective transformation. It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and nonviolence that I discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking for so many months. The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social-contracts theory of Hobbes, the “back to nature” optimism of Rousseau, the superman philosophy of Nietzsche, I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.”

LoveJusticeFreedomActivismNonviolenceSocial ReformGandhiNonviolent ResistanceOrganizing
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“A second basic fact that characterizes nonviolence is that it does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. The nonviolent resister must often express his protest through noncoöperation or boycotts, but he realizes that these are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.”

ActivismRedemptionNonviolenceReconciliationHigh RoadOrganizingBeloved CommunityBoycottsNoncooperation
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“The answer is found in the realization that unearned suffering is redemptive. Suffering, the nonviolent resister realizes, has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities. "Things of fundamental importance to people are not secured by reason alone, but have to be purchased with their suffering," said Gandhi. He continues: "Suffering is infinitely more powerful than the law of the jungle for converting the opponent and opening his ears which are otherwise shut to the voice of reason.”

SufferingEducationTransformationActivismResistanceNonviolencePersuasionOrganizing
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“I had decided that after many months of struggling with my people for the goal of justice I should not sit back and watch, but should lead them back to the buses myself.... At 5:55 we walked toward the bus stop, the cameras shooting, the reporters bombarding us with questions. Soon the bus appeared; the door opened, and I stepped on. The bus driver greeted me with a cordial smile. As I put my fare in the box he said: "I believe you are Reverend King, aren't you?" I answered: "Yes I am." "We are glad to have you this morning," he said. I thanked him and took my seat, smiling now too. Abernathy, Nixon, and Smiley followed, with several reporters and television men behind them. Glenn Smiley sat next to me. So I rode the first integrated bus in Montgomery with a white minister, and a native Southerner, as my seatmate.”

JusticeActivismIntegrationSegregationOrganizingMontgomery Bus Boycott
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“As a result of the failure of the moral forces of the nation to mobilize behind school integration, the forces of defeat were given the chance to organize and crystallize their opposition. While the good people stood silently and complacently by, the misguided people acted. If every church and synagogue had developed an action program; if every civic and social welfare organization, every labor union and educational institution, had worked out concrete plans for implementing their righteous resolutions; if the press, radio, and television had turned their powerful instruments in the direction of educating and elevating the people on this issue; if the President and the Congress had taken a forthright stand; if these things had happened, federal troops might not have been forced to walk the corridors of Central High School. But it is still not too late to act. Every crisis has both its dangers and opportunities. It can spell either salvation or doom. In the present crisis America can achieve either racial justice or the ultimate social psychosis that can only lead to domestic suicide. The democratic ideal of freedom and equality will be fulfilled for all--or all human beings will share in the resulting social and spiritual doom. In short, this crisis has the potential for democracy's fulfillment or fascism's triumph; for social progress or retrogression. We can choose either to walk the high road of human brotherhood or to tread the low road of man's inhumanity to man. History has thrust upon our generation an indescribably important destiny--to complete a process of democratization which our nation has too long developed too slowly, but which is our most powerful weapon for world respect and emulation. How we deal with this crucial situation will determine our moral health as individuals, our cultural health as a region, our political health as a nation, and our prestige as a leader of the free world. The future of America is bound up with the solution of the present crisis. The shape of the world today does not permit us the luxury of a faltering democracy. The United States cannot hope to attain the respect of the vital and growing colored nations of the world unless it remedies its racial problems at home. If America is to remain a first-class nation, it cannot have a second-class citizenship. A solution of the present crisis will not take place unless men and women work for it. Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advance rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. Without persistent effort, time itself becomes an ally of the insurgent and primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social destruction. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action. It is the shame of the sunshine patriots if the foregoing paragraphs have a hollow sound, like an echo of countless political speeches. These things must be repeated time and again, for men forget quickly; but once said, they must be followed with a dynamic program, or else they become a refuge for those who shy from any action. If America is to respond creatively to the present crisis, many groups and agencies must rise above the reiteration of generalities and begin to take an active part in changing the face of their nation.”

AmericaChangeUnited StatesDemocracySocial JusticeActivismCivil RightsFascismSocial ChangeOrganizing
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“A mass movement of a militant quality that is not at the same time committed to nonviolence tends to generate conflict, which in turn breeds anarchy. The support of the participants and the sympathy of the uncommitted are both inhibited by the threat that bloodshed will engulf the community. This reaction in turn encourages the opposition to threaten and resort to force. When, however, the mass movement repudiates violence while moving resolutely toward its goal, its opponents are revealed as the instigators and practitioners of violence if it occurs. Then public support is magnetically attracted to the advocates of nonviolence while those who employ violence are literally disarmed by overwhelming sentiment against their stand.”

ViolenceConflictActivismResistanceCivil RightsNonviolenceNonviolent ResistanceOrganizingMovementsMass Movements
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“The nonviolent approach provides an answer to the long debated question of gradualism versus immediacy. On the one hand it prevents one from falling into the sort of patience which is an excuse for do-nothingism and escapism, ending up in standstillism. On the other hand it saves one from the irresponsible words which estrange without reconciling and the hasty judgment which is blind to the necessities of social progress. It recognizes the need for moving toward the goal of justice with wise restraint and calm reasonableness. But it also recognizes the immorality of slowing up in the move toward justice and capitulating to the guardians of an unjust status quo. It recognizes that social change cannot come overnight. But it causes one to work as if it were a possibility the next morning.”

ChangeJusticeSocial JusticeActivismNonviolencePossibilitiesSocial ChangeNonviolent ResistanceOrganizing
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“What has been completely forgotten and cannot be overemphasized is that a People’s Organization carries within it two major functions. Both are equally important. One is the accepted understanding that organization will generate power that will be controlled and applied for the attainment of a program. The second is the realization that only through organization can a people’s program be developed. When people are brought together, or organized, they get to know each other’s point of view; they reach compromises on many of their differences, they learn that many opinions which they entertained solely as their own are shared by others, and they discover that many problems which they had thought of only as “their” problems are common to all. Out of all this social interplay emerges a common agreement, and that is the people’s program. Then the other function of organization becomes important: the use of power in order to fulfill the program.”

GroupsActivismActivistsOrganizingOrganizationsProgramsPeople S Organizations
Book:Reveille for Radicals
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“There should not be too much concern with specifics or details of a people’s program. The program items are not too significant when one considers the enormous importance of getting people interested and participating in a democratic way. After all, the real democratic program is a democratically minded people--a healthy, active, participating, interested, self-confident people who, through their participation and interest, become informed, educated, and above all develop faith in themselves, their fellow men, and the future. The people themselves are the future. The people themselves will solve each problem that will arise out of a changing world. They will if they, the people, have the opportunity and power to make and enforce the decision instead of seeing that power vested in just a few. No clique, or caste, power group or benevolent administration can have the people’s interest at heart as much as the people themselves.”

PeoplePowerDemocracyOrganizationActivismParticipatingActivistsOrganizingOrganizersPower To The People
Book:Reveille for Radicals
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“Those who have devoted themselves to the building of People’s Organization have become more and more convinced that one of the most significant educational approaches is not through argument, through lectures, through logic, or any other conventional common practices but through rationalization. These organizers feel, on the basis of their experiences not only in People’s Organizations but in their own general life, that most people in a great many instances act first and think afterward of the reasons why they acted. It seems as though a good part of our knowledge and what we may refer to as our own philosophy and attitudes are not things that we carefully and laboriously think through but are the rationalizations or self-justifications of acts we have already committed.”

ThinkingActingActivismRationalizationActivistsOrganizingOrganizersRationales
Book:Reveille for Radicals
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“In a People’s Organization popular education is an exciting and dramatic process. Education instead of being distant and academic becomes a direct and intimate part of the personal lives, experiences, and activities of the people. Committee members find that they must become informed about the field of activities of their committee; they later discover that in order to be capable of carrying out their own activities they must know about all those other problems and activities that are related to the committee’s work. The committee that becomes interested in housing shortly finds itself involved in the fields of planning, health, race relations, and many other fields. Knowledge then becomes an arsenal of weapons in the battle against injustice and degradation. It is no longer learning for learning’s sake, but learning for a real reason, a purpose. It ceases to be a luxury or something known under the vague, refined name of culture and becomes as essential as money in the bank, good health, good housing, or regular employment.”

EducationLearningActivismActivistsOrganizingRadicalsOrganizersPractical Knowledge
Book:Reveille for Radicals
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“The building of People’s Organizations is the creation of a set of realignments, new definitions of values and objectives, the breaking down of prejudices and barriers and all of the many other changes which flow out of a People’s Organization. The actual development of these social forces, coupled with the popular education, participation, and reorientation which is part of this whole process, inevitably means significant changes in the attitudes, the philosophies, and the programs of the constituent community agencies as well as the local people.”

ChangeActivismActivistsOrganizingRadicalsOrganizationsOrganizersPeople S Organizations
Book:Reveille for Radicals
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“The American dream was wrought in the fire of the passionate hearts and minds of America’s radicals. It could never have been conceived in the cold, clammy tomb of conservativism. The American radical descends from those who begot, nurtured, fought, and suffered for every idea that moved men’s feet forward in the march of civilization — the radicals of the world. The hopes and aspirations of the radicals of the world found fruit in the American Revolution. Here in the New World man would find the new life, the new order; even our money carried this message, NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM. The history of America is the story of America’s radicals. It is a saga of revolution, battle, words on paper setting hearts on fire, ferment and turmoil; it is the story of every rallying cry of the American people. It is the story of the American Revolution, of the public schools, of the battle for free land, of emancipation, of the unceasing struggle for the ever increasing liberation of mankind.”

HistoryActivismLiberationAmerican DreamAmerican HistoryAmerican RevolutionActivistsOrganizingRadicalsOrganizers
Book:Reveille for Radicals
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“The universal premise of any people’s program is, "We the people will work out our own destiny.” This is the cardinal basis of democracy, and various specific issues are not too important in comparison with the main issue. Can there be a more fundamental, democratic program than a democratically minded and participating people? Can man envisage a more sublime program on earth than the people having faith in their fellow men and themselves? A program of co-operation instead of competition?”

DemocracyOrganizationActivismCooperationActivistsOrganizing
Book:Reveille for Radicals
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