A Day of Action is a great thing when people come together united for change. I applaud the students, faculty, and community members now and historically that have stood up and spoken out for what they believed in. What we need are lifetimes dedicated to action. The question is not whether the world can change, but how it will change and who will be responsible. A silent, fragmented majority is no advantage to anyone, but the people united and moving as one can overcome even the greatest of obstacles. The twentieth century was testimony to that; advocates came together to demand women’s suffrage and civil rights. Students protested to end wars, free political prisoners, and abolish racist, colonial governments such as Apartheid South Africa. We are constantly besieged by the forces of greed, selfishness, and inhumanity. The variable is always the will of the people. What will we do with our moment? What will history say about us? The good news is that the choice is ours because that history is ours to define. We have everything that we need, free minds, the power to speak and act, and, most importantly, we have each other. I am with you because right now, as always, there is no other place to be.

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Real grassroots reform happens when small groups of people get together to think about how to become involved in the change they want to see. That thinking together, that critical dialogue then emerges into organic praxis. Reform happens best when it bubbles out of the cafes and living rooms out into the streets. What we need now is a model of civic agency in these politically dangerous times that forefronts the localized collective. This model needs to include the reclaiming of public space; it needs to have a critical political education, opportunities for dialogue and leadership development, and, most importantly, opportunities for real and active involvement in the immediacy of civil life.

We must continue in our collective struggle. Hope is not short of will. We’ve only begun to fight. Our cause is just; a better world filled with more peace, more freedom and more light; healthier children with better opportunities to learn and grow; decent and plentiful jobs with livable wages; clean air, civil liberties. Human dignity and justice are not political terms, or at least they shouldn’t be. What we want is what everyone wants; only we want it for everyone.

“This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.”- RFK

When I think about the change we need, what I think about most is the changes we must demand from ourselves. Radical and substantive changes that allow us to retain these qualities of the young. It will be our courage, our imagination, and our relentless pursuit of dignity and justice for all that will bring about the changes we want to see in others, in our schools, in our government and political institutions, and in the world at large.