You may be told that the legal decisions lead the changes, that judges and lawmakers lead the culture in those theaters called courtrooms, but they only ratify change. They are almost never where change begins, only where it ends up, for most changes travel from the edges to the center. - P28
And now, five years after Seattle, the WTO, which before that November day looked like an inexorable tank, ready to crush anything in its path, is still a tank, but one stuck in a ditch. - P51
Four years later a group led by Mexican campesinos and Korean farmers, in coalition with the NGOs inside the September 2003 WTO ministerial in Cancun, brought the organization to the brink of collapse. - P51
Another activist says that it was the presence of the farmers outside that pressured the nations inside to stand up, to remember whose lives were at stake, that kept Korea, for example, where one out of six families farms, from bargaining away more of its local agriculture. - P52
Guardian commentator George Monbiot wrote, "At Cancun the weak nations stood up to the most powerful negotiators on earth and were not broken. The lesson they will bring home is that if this is possible, almost anything is." - P52
It was a triumph for farmers, for the poor, for the power of nonviolent direct action, for the power of people over corporations and justice over greed. It was a power shift, both from the rich nations to the poor and from the towers to the streets. - P53
Cancun was led by Mexican campesinos and Korean farmers representing huge constituencies - P53
But I mean heroism as a comparatively selfless state of being and as a willingness to do. - P55
In its mildest form that heroism is simply citizenship, a sense of connection and commitment to the community, and for a few months after 9/11 we had a strange surge of citizenship in this country. - P55
I wish 9/11 had not happened, but I wish the reaction that hovered on the brink of being born had. - P56
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