Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim in CT
Spence, PLEASE enlighten me...in what context did Michelle mean that statement?
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easy..............watch the video...her dreams were coming true
'Barack stood up that day,' talking about a visit to Chicago neighborhoods, 'and spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about 'The
world as it is' and 'The world as it should be…' And, 'All of us driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won't do – that we have an obligation to,
fight for the world as it should be." MICHELLE OBAMA DNC CONVENTION
"
As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is,
not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be -
it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working in the system.
There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families - more than seventy million people - whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year (in 1971). They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don't encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let's not let it happen by default."
We will start with the system because there is no other place to start from except political lunacy. It is most important for those of us who want revolutionary change to understand that revolution must be proceeded by reformation. To assume that a political revolution can survive without the supporting base of a popular reformation is to ask for the impossible in politics.
Men don't like to step abruptly out of the security of familiar experience; they need a bridge to cross from their own experience to a new way. A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives--agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, no-challenging climate.
A reformation means that masses of our people have reached the point of disillusionment with past ways and values. They don't know what will work but they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustrating, and hopeless. They won't but won't strongly oppose those who do. The time is then ripe for revolution.
Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict." SAUL ALINSKY
they were the "ONES" they'd been waiting for
no doubt it was the first time in her adult life she was really proud of America