“It is a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations.”

Seems to me that the institutions that function in this country are clearly racist, and that they’re built upon racism.

Now you know where I got my name.

An organization which claims to be working for the needs of a community – as SNCC does – must work to provide that community with a position of strength from which to make its voice heard. This is the significance of black power beyond the slogan

Our noses are broad, our lips are thick, our hair is nappy-we are black and beautiful!

What a liberal really wants is to bring about change that will not in any way endanger his position.

The masses don’t shed their blood for the benefit of a few individuals.

The first need of a free people is to define their own terms.

I place my own hope for the United States in the growth of belief among the unqualified that they are in fact qualified: they can articulate and be responsible and hold power

Integration is a man’s ability to want to move in there by himself. If someone wants to live in a white neighborhood and he is black, that is his choice. It should be his rights. It is not because white people will not allow him.

I ain’t going to jail no more. The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin’ us is to take over. What we gonna start sayin’ now is Black Power!

The time for running has come to an end. You tell them white folk in Mississippi that all the scared niggers are dead!

The only position for women in SNCC is prone.

Black Power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of white America to their questions about it.

I knew that I could vote and that that wasn’t a privilege; it was my right. Every time I tried I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived.

The philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the question whether or not a man can condemn himself.

The secret of life is to have no fear; it’s the only way to function.

Justice requires that we carefully weigh rights and privileges and assure that each member of a community receives his due share. Love does not weigh rights and privileges too carefully because it prompts each to bear the burden of the other.

There’s sort of a theory that’s going around in the China-watching community about a perfect storm coming up with the 2008 Olympics, a U.S. election and a Taiwanese election, some sort of mutually reinforcing explosion and crisis.

When I see an entire community disenfranchised, it disturbs me. Not that I’m a message guy, per se. I write about people. I like to write about human beings, not crap political rhetoric.

We as a people, as a state, and as a community, have too much promise, too much potential, and too much at stake to go any other way than forward. We are too strong in our hearts, too innovative in our minds, and too firm in our beliefs to retreat from our goals.

Where I grew up, in Des Moines, Iowa, there is hardly any downtown economic activity now. Everybody shops in malls – you don’t find a sense of community in malls.

So I taught myself web design, and then in 1999 some friends of mine decided to start a company called Xanga.com, which was a very early kind of social network slash blogging community.

If I stop today at a protest and I read a speech, it is a speech that remains in that moment, and whoever captures it does, and whoever doesn’t, doesn’t, and just keeps walking. It is very sterile, and it can seem even inaccessible and boring for a community.

When you’re buying a pair of TOMS, if you don’t feel like you’re part of a community, then I’ve failed.