56 Quotes About Organizing

Actions & statements made on the basis of critical analysis & discernmentare not the same as divisiveness. Know the difference.

Sometimes, when we pray for miracles what we are really praying for is God to do the work that we are too afraid to take action about. Often, the miracle resides in us and we need to simply "be all in", rather than standing on the fence waiting.

Standing still is never an option so long as inequities remain embedded in the very fabric of the culture.

Protest is telling the truth in public. Sometimes protest is telling the truth to a public that isn’t quite ready to hear it. Protest is, in its own way, a storytelling. We use our bodies, our words, our art, and our sounds both to tell the truth about the pain that we endure and to demand the justice that we know is possible. It is meant to build and to force a response.

You can always hope and wait for someone to want something in your home, but you cannot wait forever, and sometimes you must just give cherished things away with the wish that they end up with someone who will create new memories of their own.

People now ask me if I'm passing the torch. I always explain that no, I'm keeping my torch, thank you very much. And I'm using it to light the torches of others.Because the truth is that the old image of one person with a torch is part of the problem, not the solution. We each need a torch if we are to see where we're going.And together, we create so much more light.

And still, again and again, even more distinctly than before, as if they had been working their way closer to the surface, the comrades tapped and tapped. Beneath the blazing rays of the sun, on this morning when the world seemed young, such was the stirring which the land carried in its womb. New men were starting into life, a black army of vengeance slowly germinating in the furrows, growing for the harvests of the century to come; and soon this germination would tear the earth apart.

There’s a double standard to protest in America. Something is different for black people who should dare to ask questions, and further, for those who protest in blackness. Protest in and by black bodies is never deemed legitimate, never deemed worthy of engagement. It seems that we have simply have not earned our grievance, our grievance is illegitimate – we do not deserve sympathy or, ultimately, justice.

The theory of policing is quite far from the reality of policing. For us, at least, that is.