Challenge yourself today to take action to make your community look the way you’d like it to. 

What creative ways can you think of to build positive and supportive community in your area?

There is strength in numbers: USE IT! You have the power to make a difference, to create community that is healthy and positive to you. We, as people and citizens, CAN change our society, even if that means “breaking the rules” every once in awhile. If you can envision an alternative to a problematic social structure, and you can communicate that vision to others… then you can make your vision a reality!

We challenge you to create positive, non-violent change in your community!

1. Gather together community leaders and people with IDEAS for a panel discussion at the library about creating change in your community. Invite people from as many different groups and backgrounds as you can to participate in the discussion. Make an action plan at the end of your workshop for real, lasting change that you have agreed would be beneficial.

2. Reach out to an existing non-profit or community-building group in your area, and offer them your skills as a volunteer! Are you a good writer? Web designer? People person? Whatever you strengths, these groups could certainly use your help.

3. Start a group of your own! Create a support group, create a book club focusing on any subject you’d like.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. on COMMUNITY

“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

(“A Christmas Sermon;” 12-24-1967)

“The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.”
(from Strength to Love; 1962)

 

“We have built gargantuan bridges to span the seas and gigantic buildings to kiss the skies. We have dwarfed distance and placed time in chains. We’ve learned to swim the seas like fish. We’ve learned to fly the air like birds. And yet we have not learned the simple art of walking the earth as brothers.” 
(“America’s Chief Moral Dilemma;” 5-10-1967)

“The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of nonviolence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.”
(“My Trip to the Land of Gandhi;”  1959)

“We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself.”
(“The Rising Tide of Racial Consequence;” 1960)