It’s important to realize that we all need to work together. With Weaving Movements, we are all interdependent and we all have to work together. If we could just realize that and understand that, we’ll keep our country strong.
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.
My children grew up very resourceful and strong in spite of them having to live with different families and that I had to drag them all over the country with me.
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.
As we’ve focused more on our food and where it comes from, people now have greater awareness of what’s being put onto our food, pesticides, labeling issues, and consumer health.
Giving kids clothes and food is one thing, but it’s much more important to teach them that other people besides themselves are important and that the best thing they can do with their lives is to use them in the service of other people.
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.
As organizations, we have to find ways to create more opportunities, especially for our young people. A lot of corporations, they have to make opportunities for young people – create internships, for example, even if it’s only half-time.
