Revolutionary Fragments

This enemy of ours is not just Wall Street, it’s the whole culture. It’s a way of looking at us and valuing ourselves in each other. And how you are going to move beyond challenging Wall Street, how you’re going to move to become part of the solution.

You begin with a demonstration. You begin with a protest. But you have to move on from there, and that’s what I see happening now with [the Metamovement]. The people are rightfully, righteously protesting the corporations and the domination of the culture by the corporations and the suffering that that is inducing. But out of the protests they have to move to another stage.

You have to begin doing something that doesn’t depend on exposing the “enemy”. You have to begin becoming the solution yourself instead of just protesting and challenging the enemy. We need people to be reinventing the institutions in our society: Reinventing work, so that we don’t think that having a job and being able to pay the bills is what being a human being is all about. And reinventing education, so that our young people are able to see themselves as part of the rebuilding of our society.

So many of the institutions of our society need reinventing, need re-thinking, and you [the Metamovement] need to do that. You cannot be satisfied with rebelling. You have to be aware that we are at one of the turning points in history where we need revolution, and revolution means reinventing culture.

—Grace Lee Boggs on system change and culture (via oisinnow)

(via pieceinthepuzzlehumanity)