Grassroots Mobilization

In reading my agonizingly long American Government textbook, I found this wonderful quote.

"You may ask, Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path? You are quite right in calling for negotiations. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.... My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is a historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.... We know from painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." - Martin Luther King Jr.