“I was very fortunate to have known Fred Ross Sr., who was organizing the Community Service Organization (CSO) way back in the late 50’s and early 60’s. I was able to work with him.”

My mother was a dominant force in our family. And that was great for me as a young woman, because I never saw that women had to be dominated by men.

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.

We can’t let people drive wedges between us, because there’s only one human race.

Don’t be a marshmallow. Walk the street with us into history. Get off the sidewalk. Stop being vegetables. Work for Justice. Viva the boycott!

Leadership is a choice one makes.

Going door to door and talking to people, convincing them to vote – this is what I call Organizing 101.

Walk the street with us into history. Get off the sidewalk.

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.

We know we only have about half of our population that’s voting.

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.

As a youngster and being a Latina, you see so much injustice.

I had been a Girl Scout from the time I was 8 to the time I was 18 years old. I had belonged to my church organization and youth groups. But, you never really found a way that you could make a change.

When a group of people get together, it’s collective power. You know that you’re doing it for the good.

People would say ‘Who is a leader?’ A leader is a person that does the work. It’s very simple. It’s a personal choice for people who choose to put in their time and their commitment to do the work. It’s a personal choice.

Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.

If you haven’t forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others?

One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.

Most of the time, I’ve been really fortunate to work with people who are really fun to work with.

I can’t say enough good things about my band. I feel very fortunate that I found them when I did, very early in my career.

Every day I tell myself how fortunate I am to be where I am.

We’re all fortunate to be able to be doing this for a living, so we’re just grateful to be here and we just do what we do and we let the people decide.

We all become afraid. We all look at others and think these other people are more fortunate than us.

And now I’m at the national level and that doesn’t happen to most people and I realize that. I know that I’m very fortunate but this great country allowed that to work in my favor.

Fortunate are the people whose roots are deep.