One thing I noticed working in the Bronx is that leaders come in the craziest places. They don't always show up at community board meetings. Sometimes it's just the guys on the corner that the boys on the block respect.
Interpretation
Leaders can emerge from unexpected places and often earn respect in informal settings.
This quote by Majora Carter highlights the notion that true leadership is not confined to formal settings or traditional roles. It emphasizes that leaders can arise from the most unlikely scenarios, such as the streets of the Bronx, where influence is often derived from respect rather than authority. This calls attention to the importance of community dynamics and the informal methods through which leadership can manifest, suggesting that we should recognize and value these unconventional leaders.
In practice
During a community meeting where we discuss the importance of grassroots movements, this quote can highlight the value of informal leadership.
Smart infrastructure can provide cost-saving ways for municipalities to handle both infrastructure and social needs. And we want to shift the systems that open the doors for people who were formerly tax burdens to become part of the tax base.
Poor people of all colors are getting poorer and our communities are getting more toxic. There is a misconception that to grow our economy we will have to do business as usual, because cleaning up the environment, mitigating climate change is just too costly. Well, I say the business of poverty is just too expensive a bill for humanity to pay any longer.
Environmental justice [means that] no community should be saddled with more environmental burdens and less environmental benefits than any other.
Environmental justice, for those of you who may not be familiar with the term, goes something like this: no community should be saddled with more environmental burdens and less environmental benefits than any other.
I personally think that gentrification happens long before you start seeing white people in formerly people-of-color neighborhoods. It starts happening when we start telling the young, hard-working, quote-unquote 'smart' kids that they need to measure success by how far they get away from our communities.
We need to work together to embrace and repair our land, repair our power systems, and repair ourselves. It's time to stop building the shopping malls, the prisons, the stadiums, and other tributes to all of our collective failures.
Because man and woman are the complement of one another, we need woman's thought in national affairs to make a safe and stable government.
How does a woman in authority convey that authority? Is it possible for a woman to rule without sounding shrill? Is it possible for a woman to manage without manipulating? All of these things seem to me to be very much at the fore today, and were no less the case 2,000 years ago.
You have to take ownership and leadership of tomorrow. For that to be possible, you have to strengthen your capacity and widen your vision as a global citizen.
The great men of a nation reach out to all mankind. They are unifying, not divisive; internationally conciliating and still great nationally.
A prince must not have any other object nor any other thought… but war, its institutions, and its discipline; because that is the only art befitting one who commands.
When a president makes life and death decisions, he should draw strength and wisdom from broad and deep experience with the reasons for and the risks of committing our children to our defense. For no matter how many others are involved in the decision, the president is a lonely man in a dark room when the casualty reports come in.
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