First Hand History

""You know for the first time, New Yorkers weren't known for being very nice to each other because they are just rushing around. Thinking about themselves, but for the first time, everybody was paying attention to the people around them.""

"For sometime they can hold it back [but] when that keeps mounting in their hearts sometimes it has to be blown out, otherwise it will be more damaging."

"As a child in grade school I didn't actually notice that there weren’t black children there."

""I had this theory that all the students got together and walk out of the school . If we die, we die as group. If we get killed we get killed as a community"."

"I thought he was looking at me!"

"That's why our job is so important, most people call us on there very worst day. People don't call us when everything's going great, they call us when everything's going bad."

"You need a sense of humor to teach, and don't get too mad about things. "

"Helping folks in need is important to me, seeing them work on putting their lives back together and succeeding is very rewarding."

"You actually see some of the rays of sunshine and the light of hope just from a little bit of volunteering. It's a pretty huge payback for what work you can put into it."

"Normally, in the United States, I don't ever feel like people don't think that I can't do certain things because I'm a woman, or that I can't go certain places, or that I may not have an opinion that's as valid as a man's opinion. I've never never really felt that before here in Austin, but in Nicaragua, I did feel that way."

"People would have died without the food."

"Over there and over here: big difference. So, over there, they understand that they need God. Here, we're losing that, little by little."

"You don't choose what you give, you give what you have, and that's every day."

"I always felt like Red Cross work was at least, in part, volunteer because you were working with so many people in different circumstances."

"One thing I quickly realized, was that the Air Force was by far the best service to be in when it came to taking care of families."

"For someone who had served in Vietnam and faced all kinds of dangers, this was something that I had never experienced, and it was terrifying. ... I don't know where I am sleeping tonight, but I know this won't last because I'm not lazy."

"It's hard to know if VCAM helps them out of poverty because you see some of the same people come back for food month after month."

"The plan was to make sure that everybody knew he was black, to show his picture in all the television commercial and newspaper ads... And there never was any ‘We don't need any black people on the city council’ or that sort of thing. He was just well-received."

"We (Texas Appleseed) are an organization that's focused on problems that affect underserved populations, and by that I mean low-income neighborhoods and low-income people, in many cases people of color who are facing racial discrimination, also children who often need more protection, and people who are eligible for special education services or people with disabilities. We look at problems that really affect those people unfairly, and we look for systemic solutions. By that I mean these large, far reaching solutions that affect a lot of people, like changing laws and changing policies, and changing the way the government works with those people."

"I think we need to get away from why people are hungry and focus on how we can help them."

"Things happen and I accept them and move on."