These quotations support bold grassroots organizing to make significant progress.

My January 2021 TV program includes much information to help us organize bold nonviolent movements from the grassroots to solve major problems.

Here are some quotations that support these efforts.  We did not have time to say these during our TV interview, so I’m posting them here.  I wrote the first batch.  Other people wrote the second batch.

 

Glen Anderson wrote these:

People (and our political, economic and other systems) created the problems that threaten humanity.  Since people caused the problems, people can solve those problems.

Many conservatives assume either (1) that the realities are not problems, or (2) that the problems are “human nature” or beyond our control.  Many liberals and progressives also assume that the problems are too big and beyond our control, so we should settle for making tiny incremental changes.  In contrast to conservatives and many liberals, we know that we must organize boldly to make major systemic changes.

I believe that we can indeed solve the huge problems if we remove the obstacles (e.g., cynicism, big money’s domination of politics, mainstream political and media corruption and biases).  Also, even before we remove those obstacles, we must organize nonviolent grassroots movements to solve the problems.

Live your life meaningfully, vigorously and effectively.  If YOU don’t act BOLDLY for your best values, nobody else will.  This is the kind of gumption I’m urging.

Three questions for action:  If not here, where?  If not now, when?  If not us, who?

Each person can do something!  Together we can accomplish much!

Nonviolent grassroots organizers with good attitudes can say, “The difficult we’ll do right now.  The impossible will take a little while.”

During crazy political times, humor and creativity are revolutionary acts – and they can be effective in “making end runs” around “politics as usual.”

For more information, take my series of 6 workshops on “Nonviolent Grassroots Organizing” and see relevant parts of my blog, www.parallaxperspectives.org.  Glen Anderson (360) 491-9093 glenanderson@integra.net  SEE INFORMATION HERE:  These FREE ONLINE WORKSHOPS can help you make more progress on issues YOU care about – Glen’s Parallax Perspectives

 

Other people wrote these:

The 14th Dalai Lama wrote:  “Let us reflect on what is truly of value in life, what gives meaning to our lives, and set our priorities on the basis of that.”

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote:  “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.  You are able to say to yourself ‘I lived through this horror; I can take the next thing that comes along.’  You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

Martin Luther King urged people to take strong actions in the present moment.  He wrote and spoke about “the fierce urgency of now.”  He also wrote:  “This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.  Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”  (King’s vigorous encouragement is relevant now.  His context was to strengthen the Civil Rights Movement half a century ago.  It is equally relevant now when we work to achieve peace, protect the climate, stop Trumpism, and work for other crucially important and urgent issues.)

Nelson Mandela said:  “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear but the triumph over it.  It always seems impossible until it is done.”

The great historian Howard Zinn wrote:  “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.  And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Naomi Klein wrote this in her book No Is Not Enough:  “The interplay between lofty dreams and earthly victories has always been at the heart of moments of deep transformation. The breakthroughs won for workers and their families after the Civil War and during the Great Depression, as well as for civil rights and the environment in the sixties and early seventies, were not just responses to crises. They were responses to crises that unfolded in times when people dared to dream big, out loud, in public – explosions of utopian imagination.”

 

 

 

About GlenAnderson 1499 Articles
Since the late 1960s Glen Anderson has devoted his life to working as a volunteer for peace, nonviolence, social justice, and progressive political issues. He has worked through many existing organizations and started several. Over the years he has worked especially for such wide-ranging goals as making peace with Vietnam, eliminating nuclear weapons, converting from a military economy to a peacetime economy, abolishing the death penalty, promoting nonviolence at all levels throughout society, and helping people organize and strategize for grassroots movements to solve many kinds of problems. He writes, speaks, and conducts training workshops on a wide variety of topics. Since 1987 he has produced and hosted a one-hour cable TV interview program on many kinds of issues. Since 2017 he has blogged at https://parallaxperspectives.org He lives in Lacey near Olympia WA. You can reach him at (360) 491-9093 glen@parallaxperspectives.org