Organizer Quotes - Page 4

• From the moment an organizer enters a community, he lives, dreams, eats, breathes, sleeps only one thing, and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army.

  Saul Alinsky

  Dream, Sleep, Army

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• When [Bill] Clinton came along, it sort of moderated a little bit, but Clinton had a different device for breaking unions called NAFTA [North America Free Trade Agreement]. Because the government was entirely lawless, employers could exploit NAFTA to threaten union organizers with transfer. It's illegal, but when you've got a lawless government, it doesn't matter if it's illegal. I think the number of union drives blocked increased by about 50 percent.

  Noam Chomsky

  Thinking, Government, Agreement

  Source: www.iww.org

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• Usually, being a volunteer organizer essentially means that I am part of a core base of individuals, that when we start a project - whether it be a big thing like the inauguration or whether it be something that's a longer-term, let's say, educational campaign about a foreign policy issue or a domestic issue - we sit together and we divvy up, and oftentimes it's relevant to different things we do.

  Eugene Puryear

  Educational, Mean, Issues

  Source: www.slate.com

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• Agitators, organizers, activists, intellectuals aren't bound by those rules. We're not trying to figure out, how do I thread this particular needle?

  Bill Ayers

  Trying, Figures, Thread

  Source: thepointmag.com

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• I started as a community organizer. Every one of my campaigns was premised on getting new people involved. And if there's a theme in my public career it's that if ordinary people get involved then good things happen. So I want to see the Democratic Party move in that direction. And what that means is that we aren't just micro-targeting to eke out presidential victories; it means that we're showing up in places where right now we're not winning a lot.

  Barack Obama

  Party, Moving, Mean

  Source: abcnews.go.com

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• One of the things that's very important, when you're an activist and an organizer like me, is to understand that when things happen of that nature, some people become immobilized and other people begin to find solutions. And Detroit is the kind of city where we begin to find solutions.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Cities, People, Important

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Just as the law in civilized countries assumes that the voice of conscience tells everybody, "Thou shalt not kill," even though man's natural desires and inclinations may at times be murderous, so the law of Hitler's land demanded that the voice of conscience tell everybody: "Thou shalt kill," although the organizers of the massacres knew full well that murder is against the normal desires and inclinations of most people. Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it - the quality of temptation.

  Hannah Arendt

  Country, Men, Law

  "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" by Hannah Arendt, (Ch. VIII), 1963.

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• Look, we live in a celebrity culture and sometimes you get caught in the wave and the buzz and a lot of it's flattering but, you know, one of the things that I try to remind people of is, is that I was in politics as a state senator operating in obscurity for many years. Before that I was a community organizer working in low income communities in Chicago and nobody knew my name then. And so, having involved myself in public service for a pretty long time without getting too much attention, hopefully I can keep some of the attention that I'm getting now in perspective.

  Barack Obama

  Names, Years, Perspective

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• Barack Obama is a street corner community organizer who is using the office of the presidency here to virtually undermine it.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Office, Community, Streets

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• We should certainly not be perpetuating further harm to others or to the environment. Suppose that workers at ExxonMobil are trying to unionize. We have two choices: to help them improve their lives, or to keep away so that their lives will be worse. Neither choice has any effect on use of fossil fuels. So radical organizers can both help them unionize and improve their lives, and convince them to find a different way to survive and work for ending the use of fossil fuels.

  Noam Chomsky

  Two, Choices, Trying

  Source: thefifthcolumnnews.com

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• [My father] came over as an immigrant and didn't know any English. He went to work at a sweat shop in Baltimore. He told me later that this guy was coming around, and the guy seemed to be for the workers, so he signed up. It turned out that guy was an IWW organizer . My father didn't regret signing up; he just really didn't know what was going on.

  Noam Chomsky

  Regret, Father, Sweat

  Source: www.iww.org

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• The community itself didn't support the union. Now that's kind of interesting about [Barack] Obama, because Obama was supposedly a community organizer in Chicago at that time. Now I'm sure he read the Chicago Tribune, so he knew about it, but when he went to show his solidarity with the workforce, the first place he went was Caterpillar. I don't think he's forgotten, and the labor movement didn't react. Even radical labor historians didn't remember. It was only 15 years ago, after all, but that's a real triumph of propaganda in many ways.

  Noam Chomsky

  Real, Thinking, Years

  Source: www.iww.org

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• What is also true is that partly because my docket was really full here, so I couldn't be both chief organizer of the Democratic Party and function as Commander-in-Chief and President of the United States. We did not begin what I think needs to happen over the long haul, and that is rebuild the Democratic Party at the ground level.

  Barack Obama

  Party, Thinking, Long

  Source: abcnews.go.com

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• I think [ chief organizer of the Democratic Party ] it's something that I have an interest in.

  Barack Obama

  Party, Thinking, Chiefs

  Source: abcnews.go.com

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• The idea of protest organizing, as summarized by community organizer Saul Alinsky, is that if we put enough pressure on the government, it will do things to help people. We don't realize that that kind of organizing worked only when the government was very strong, when the West ruled the world, relatively speaking. But with globalization and the weakening of the nation-state, that kind of organizing doesn't work.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Strong, Government, Ideas

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• What first got me involved in politics was being 14, and a youth organizer comes to my house with a van full of 14 year old girls. "Hey, you want to go to the beach with us? But first we're going to go support the cannery workers' strike in Watsonville."

  Boots Riley

  Girl, Beach, Years

  Source: therumpus.net

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• A first-rate organizer is never in a hurry. He is never late. He always keeps up his sleeve a margin for the unexpected.

  Arnold Bennett

  Firsts, Unexpected, Planning

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• The ability to write compelling emails may be the single most useful talent an organizer can possess.

  Bill McKibben

  Writing, Climate, Email

  Bill McKibben (2007). “Fight Global Warming Now: The Handbook for Taking Action in Your Community”, p.112, Macmillan

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• No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.

  Leonard Ravenhill

  Fashion, Prayer, Passion

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• Obama's Marxist mentors - Franklin Marshall Davis, Saul Alinsky and Bill Ayers - also understood that you don't build an army of street organizers or a recurring voting constituency by teaching people of the streets to fish. When you 'share wealth around' you make the distributees dependent on your next handout - beholden to your largesse with other's people's money and personally worse off in every respect.

  David Limbaugh

  Teaching, Army, People

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• As I review the great history of our nation, community organizers have been at the center of so many of our great social movements.

  Cory Booker

  Community, Movement, Progressive

  "A Great American Tradition: Community Organizing" by Cory Booker, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 10, 2008.

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• Art can no longer be merely a mirror, it must act as the organizer of the people's consciousness... No form of representation is so readily comprehensible to the masses as photography.

  El Lissitzky

  Photography, Art, Mirrors

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• I work with Kick G.A.M.E., the grassroots artist movement. Not to tell people we have the best union plan in the world, but to show people that if some activists, if some revolutionaries, if some street organizers from the hood can come together and put together a preliminary program to give health care to independent artists.

  Immortal Technique

  Independent, Artist, People

  Source: www.hiphopcanada.com

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• Eleanor Marx was a pragmatic person of actions and deeds and she was an organizer.

  Rachel Holmes

  Deeds, Action, Eleanor

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I am a runner. Last October, there was a marathon here in Beijing. I didn't participate this time, but friends told me that the run wasn't prepared too well. The organizers had only arranged about three hours' worth of food and water supplies. Most people don't finish within three hours, however. Too bad for them - or so it seemed. In fact, however, even those finishing last were perfectly taken care of, particularly during the fourth and fifth hour when demand is highest.

  Zhang Xin

  Running, Taken, Water

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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