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A Lesson from History
"Even
ordinary citizens can serve as agents of constructive change.
Conventional wisdom says that if you want to play a significant
role in history, you have to do something big. But it's small
acts of leadership – refusing to move to the back of the bus,
circulating a petition, organizing a strike – that eventually
move mountains. Small acts of leadership, not big heroic acts,
performed by like-minded people ultimately add up. Small acts of
leadership slowly and effectively bring about constructive
change." – ESM
"Never doubt that a small group
of thoughtful, committed people can change the world." –
Margaret Mead
This
page is dedicated to ordinary citizens who are making the world
a better place to live through "small acts of leadership."
 Sarah
Chayes, author of
The Punishment of Virtue: Inside
Afghanistan After the Taliban, has been living in Kandahar
for over eight years. She went to Kandahar a month after Sept.
11, 2001, as a reporter for National Public Radio to cover the
Taliban’s last stand. But she soon gave up reporting to direct
Afghans for Civil Society, a nonprofit group working to help
rebuild the country. She has recently launched a skin-care cooperative
in Kandahar. Read her latest dispatch in The New York Times:
A Voice from Kandahar.
Howard Zinn (1922-2010)
was an historian and
political activist. He is best known for
A Peoples History of the United States,
which presents American history through the eyes of those
outside of the political and economic establishment."I
don't believe it's possible to be neutral. The world is already
moving in certain directions. And to be neutral, to be passive,
in a situation like that, is to collaborate with what is going
on. And I, as a teacher, don't want to be a collaborator....History is full of instances where
people, against enormous odds, have come together to struggle for
liberty and justice, and have won -- not often enough, of course, but
enough to suggest how much more is
possible. The essential
ingredients of these struggles for justice are human beings who, if only
for a moment, if only while beset with fears, step out of line and do
something, however small. And even the smallest, most unheroic of
acts adds to the store of kindling that may be ignited by some
surprising circumstance into tumultuous change." – Howard Zinn,
You
Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
 Amy
Goodman is the host of “Democracy
Now!” – the only national radio/TV news program free of
all corporate underwriting. The show’s “War and Peace Report”
provides access to people and perspectives rarely viewed in the
corporate-sponsored media."I really do think that if for one
week in the United States, we saw the true face of war, we saw
people's limbs sheared off, we saw kids blown apart…, war would
be eradicated. Instead, what we see in the US media is the
video war game. Our mission is to make dissent commonplace in
America." – Amy Goodman
The Dalai Lama is the temporal and the
spiritual leader of the Tibetan people. His life is guided by
three major commitments: (1) the promotion of basic human
values, (2) the fostering of inter-religious harmony, and (3)
the welfare of the Tibetan people.
"I believe that to meet the
challenge of the next century, human beings will have to develop
a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must
learn to work not just for his or her own -self, family,
or nation, but for the benefit of all mankind."
– Dalai Lama
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