There are three critical ingredients to democratic renewal and progressive change in America: good public policy, grassroots organizing and electoral politics.
Successful organizing is not built on self-interest but rather on dignity and a sense of purpose.
What the poor, the weak, and the inarticulate desperately require is power, organization, and a sense of identity and purpose, not rarefied advice of political scientists.
I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.
Politics is about the improvement of people’s lives. It’s about advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and the world. Politics is about doing well for the people.
The first task in teaching is to bring to consciousness what the students already believe by virtue of their personal experiences about themselves and society.
Why don’t we call on the credit card companies to be accountable? They need to be held accountable for their predatory lending practices.
We can remake the world daily.
What makes community organizing especially attractive is the faith it places in the ability of the poor to make decisions for themselves.
The problem with party politics is that people get involved every two or four years and that is it. In the meantime, the legislature and Minnesota politics are on a separate track.
We must regain our vision and hope and move our country forward on an agenda of peace and justice.
The Democratic Party has lost much of it credibility with working class and low-income people. It retards progress toward presenting a genuine alternative.
Our aims in political activism are not, and should not be, to create a perfect utopia.
There is a major ingredient missing from our perception of how changes are brought about; that ingredient is power.
We must renew democracy itself. We have to fight cynicism and inertia and restore faith in the advancement of our country.
Let there be no distance between the words you say and the life you live.
The best kind of politics is when you help people become their own best selves.
There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans.
Our politics are our deepest form of expression: they mirror our past experiences and reflect our dreams and aspirations for the future.
I was talking about no nukes, the farm crisis. People said that wasn’t stuff that a state auditor was supposed to be talking about. Maybe they were right.
Traditional progressive bread and butter economic issues are the heart of the solution. It’s about ensuring decent jobs with a good wage. It’s about ensuring a free public education in all the communities of America, whether they are in the shiny new affluent suburbs or the crumbling old schools of the older suburbs and cities. It’s about ensuring a system where all Americans have access to health care, instead of a steadily declining share of our population.