Our society is connecting workers with the products people consume and recognizing workers for their contributions. It is important to do that, and to have organized labor – a middle class – to preserve our democracy.
Especially as a teenager, I was always being racially profiled by the police. You just see all this injustice, and you want to do something about it, but you don’t know how.
I think we brought to the world, the United States anyway, the whole idea of boycotting as a nonviolent tactic. I think we showed the world that nonviolence can work to make social change.
I quit because I can’t stand seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children.
The thing about nonviolence is that it spreads. When you get people to participate in nonviolent action – whether it’s a fast, a march, a boycott, or a picket line – people hear you, people see you, people are learning from that action.
Once you see the outcomes and the results, and you see how many people are helped and benefitting, you want to keep on doing it because it’s so simple.
