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About this quote

What does it mean?
Community organizing is valued for trusting the poor to make their own decisions.
In plain terms
Organizing trusts poor people to decide for themselves.
What can you take from it?
Trust the marginalized to lead their own change.

Where it applies

  • community work
  • non profit leadership
  • grassroots activism

Putting it to work

  • support grassroots led initiatives
  • facilitate local decision making

Questions to consider

  • Who decides for whom in our communities?
  • How can we better support local leadership?

Another view

External resources and support are still necessary alongside self determination.

More from Paul Wellstone

  1. We can remake the world daily.

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  2. What the poor, the weak, and the inarticulate desperately require is power, organization, and a sense of identity and purpose, not rarefied advice of political…

    Permalink to quote #23
  3. There is an elementary aspiration which undergirds the humane impulse in our history and our culture and binds us together as political activists. This is a si…

    Permalink to quote #20

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