“…[T]he key fact is that we do not have the popularly based, institutionalized, mass political movement that we need to realize any meaningful progressive agenda in the United States. Therefore, the principal task should be building an active membership base for such a movement. Strategic political thinking and critique should be harnessed to that goal as the normative and pragmatic linchpin of analysis. Finally, the movement we need cannot be convoked magically overnight or by proxy. It cannot be galvanized through proclamations, press conferences, symbolic big events, resolutions or quixotic electoral candidacies; it can be built only through connecting with large numbers of people in cities and towns and workplaces all over the country who can be brought together around a political agenda that speaks directly and clearly to their needs and aspirations as they perceive them. This, like all organizing, is a painstaking, slow and time-consuming process, and it promises no guarantees of ultimate victory or even shorter-term success. But there are no alternatives other than fraud, pretense or certain failure.”

Adolph Reed

The revolution is not without, it is within. I have yet to see in my lifetime or history any revolution from without sustain itself. People keeping looking for change on the outside- government, social/political/economic structures, the “other person” etc., however, as long as people remain the same nothing will change. It just ain’t goin to happen! As famous philosophers have said “Know thy self.” The answers are never without. They are always within. As Daisaku Ikeda said: A great human revolution in a single person can change a nation or the whole world for that matter. Maybe you will be that person!

CAW