We urgently need to bring to our communities the limitless capacity to love, serve, and create for and with each other. We urgently need to bring the neighbor back into our hoods, not only in our inner cities but also in our suburbs, our gated communities, on Main Street and Wall Street, and on Ivy League campuses.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the need for love, service, and collaboration within all communities, regardless of their socioeconomic status.
Grace Lee Boggs highlights the importance of fostering strong community ties through love, service, and creativity. She advocates for the reestablishment of neighborly connections in all areas, including urban and suburban settings, suggesting that true progress comes from collective effort and support among individuals. The call to 'bring the neighbor back' is a call for increased social responsibility and unity across diverse communities.
In practice
This quote can be used in a community meeting to encourage local involvement.
People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values.
We urgently need a paradigm shift in our concept of the purposes and practices of education. We need to leave behind the concept of education as a passport to more money and higher status in the future and replace it with a concept of education as an ongoing process that enlists the tremendous energies and creativity of schoolchildren in rebuilding and respiriting our communities and our cities now, in the present.
How do we redefine education so that 30-50 percent of inner-city children do not drop out of school, thus ensuring that millions will end up in prison?
You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.
Keep recognizing that reality is changing and that your ideas have to change. Don’t get stuck in old ideas.
The struggle we're dealing with these days, which, I think, is part of what the 60s represented, is how do we define our humanity?
In community work, you reach some people, but in writing, I can reach many more people, not only in exploring issues of domestic violence, but also by showing the importance of strong women in communities.
I want every young Indigenous girl to think about getting involved in their communities. You're never too young to help with community efforts.
I was taken by the power that savoring a simple cup of coffee can have to connect people and create community.
Without the ability to plant roots and invest in your community or your school - because you're paying 60, 70, 80 percent of your income to rent - and eviction becomes something of an inevitability to you, it denies you certain freedoms.
Community means caring: caring for people. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says: "He who loves community destroys community; he who loves the brethren builds community." A community is not an abstract ideal.
Business, labor and civil society organizations have skills and resources that are vital in helping to build a more robust global community.
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