As free citizens in a political democracy, we have a responsibility to be interested and involved in the affairs of the human community, be it at the local or the global level.

The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy.

Our aims in political activism are not, and should not be, to create a perfect utopia.

The American polity is infected with a serious imbalance of power between elites and masses, a power which is the principal threat to our democracy.

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 scientists.

I emphasize self-esteem, self-confidence, and dignity, not as an ideal, but as a real test of community organization. Without leadership development, community organizations do not have staying power.