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via TED

Comedian Pardis Parker at the Global Ted COnference 2022.

In April 2022, comedian Pardis Parker performed a five-minute set at the global TED Conference in Vancouver, Canada, where he admitted he’s “terrified of wanting to be a billionaire.” The performance was a funny and bold, statement in a culture obsessed with the ultra-wealthy.

Parker’s fear of becoming a billionaire began after he left Canada for Los Angeles. “I think the biggest difference between Canada and L.A. is the extent to which people in L.A. fetishize wealth,” Parker said.

“I'm terrified, man. I'm terrified that L.A. is changing me that I'm becoming one of those people who chases money, who fetishizes wealth who wants to be a billionaire,” he continued. “When I say that people get angry they get defensive. They’re like, ‘What's wrong with being rich? What's wrong with being a billionaire? What's wrong with being financially savvy?’ It's just like yo man, if you own a billion of anything that doesn't make you savvy, that makes you a hoarder.


He then points out that billionaires are just as quickly forgotten as anyone else. “There's 2,668 billionaires on the planet right now. Name them. You can't, and that's while they're still alive,” Parker joked.

Parker finishes his chunk by sharing how almost everyone can leave a legacy long after they’re gone. For example, give kids a full-size candy bar on Halloween. “That's it, that's it. Legacy cemented. It's been 30 years since I went trick-or-treating and me and my brother still talk about 39 Grenon.”

Parker’s stand-up routine presents a fun way of rethinking what it means to be rich and leave a legacy and he’s right. In the end, people will probably forget those who impressed them with their wealth, but they’ll never forget someone who made them feel good.

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Feminism = fighting for equality for women. This comic breaks it down.

Women have been advocating for equal rights for centuries, and the fight is just beginning.

There's no one right way to be a feminist.

In fact, feminist history is so rich because of the diversity in beliefs, practices, and ideologies. Thanks to famous feminists like Sojourner Truth, Audre Lorde, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, and so many more, feminism has transcended race, class, and time to reach a number of women and impact new laws and ways of thinking.

Rebecca Cohen, a cartoonist based in Berkeley, explains the importance of feminism as a catalyst for real change through a series of comics:  

All images by Rebecca Cohen, used with permission.


In the words of feminist author and speaker Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a feminist is "a person who believes in the social, economic and political equality of the sexes."      

Of course, we still have a ways to go to get to a place where this definition is true. But as feminism continues evolving, I hope this is a definition men and women can get behind as we continue to fight for justice and true equality!  

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Aspen Institute

We've all heard the inspiring Margaret Mead quote, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

For many Americans, it sometimes feels like the closest we come to change-making is the one vote we cast at the polls every four years — an unfulfilling process that can leave us more frustrated with the system than hopeful that the changes we desire will ever come. It's tempting to trade in optimism for apathy.

But no person is powerless to create change. History has shown us time and time again that even the smallest groups can make their voices heard and inspire a positive change in not only their immediate communities, but across the country.


Here are three examples you may not know about of individuals and small groups taking a stand and creating big change.

1. The Delano Grape Strike boosts migrant farmworkers.

Image by Joel Levine/Wikimedia Commons.

The life of a farmer has never been an easy one, but it has improved significantly in the past 40 years thanks to the efforts of Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, a community of like-minded people, and ... grapes.

Huerta and Chavez, frustrated with the low wages, lack of health care, and poor conditions their fellow farmers were forced to work in, formed the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. They went door-to-door to unite local farmers — who were discriminated against and sometimes even pitted against one another whenever they demanded better wages — to create a community of workers seeking the basic rights they deserved.

Through a series of organized boycotts starting on Sept. 8, 1965, and lasting more than five years, the Delano Grape Strike aimed to bring national attention to the injustices facing migrant workers.


Image via iStock.

And it did just that. More than 14 million Americans joined the boycott aimed at two of the largest corporations involved in the grape industry in Delano, California: Schenley Industries and the DiGiorgio Corporation.

The corporations were eventually pressured to renegotiate their farmers' contracts, raising their wages, giving them access to health care, and bringing an end to "labor contracting," a system wherein jobs could be assigned by favoritism and bribery.

Huerta and Chavez knew that relentless persistence was one of their greatest allies in the fight for farmers' rights, and that the best way to go about obtaining those rights would be to hit their oppressors where it hurt them the most: their wallets.

If there was ever an accomplishment that called for a celebratory glass of wine, it was this one.

2. Ralph Nader helps start a revolution of the American auto industry.

The 1960s was one of the most innovative and just plain awesome decades that the American auto industry has ever seen. The Big Three (aka GM, Ford, and Chrysler), the Mustang, the GTO, "American muscle" — life was like a tattoo of a bald eagle wrapped in barbed wire back then.

Image via iStock.

Of course, there was a downside to all this coolness: safety. With little regulation to guide them and even fewer laws to govern them, many automobile manufacturers opted to cut corners in their production process in order to meet growing demand as quickly (and as cheaply) as possible.

That was until safety-conscious rebel Ralph Nader published "Unsafe at Any Speed" in 1965, a revolutionary book that called out the Big Three (among other automakers) for the dangers their negligence was placing upon the public.

Ralph Nader aka "The Nadester." Image by Sage Ross/Flickr.

The book became an instant bestseller, and The Big Three's subsequent efforts to blackmail and drag Nader's name through the mud only further spurred the public to action.

When faced with Nader's cold, hard data and increasing demand for accountability, Congress soon passed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in 1966, which not only established the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, but also implemented several safety regulations — chiefly, seat belts, front head restraints, and stronger windshields — that have saved over 250,000 lives in the past 40 years alone.

One man taking on a booming industry in a time when it could do no wrong, and winning. Sometimes the pen truly is mightier than the sword.

Speaking of automobile safety...

3. MADD changes how we think about drinking and driving.

Founded in 1980 by Candace Lightner, the mother of a 13-year-old girl who was tragically killed by a drunk driver, MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) has been instrumental in implementing many of the modern laws and safety features on vehicles related to drunk driving over the years.

The organization was a crucial part of Congress' decision to lower the national legal blood-alcohol content limit of a driver from 0.10 to 0.08 in 2000, campaigned for breath alcohol ignition interlock devices to be installed in the vehicles of drunk driving offenders, and helped develop a dedicated National Traffic Safety Fund.


Alcohol ignition interlock system. Say that five times fast. Image via iStock.

The punishments for drunk drivers weren't all that severe — or even defined before MADD came to be — and the results the organization has engendered in the time since have been nothing short of astounding.

Thanks in large part to the awareness MADD brought to the issue of drunk driving, alcohol-related vehicle fatalities have decreased 52% since 1982.

In states where ignition interlock devices have become mandatory for all drunk driving offenders, fatalities have been reduced by over 30%.

Even advocates for decriminalizing drunk driving like Radley Balko cannot deny the effect MADD has had on society.

"In fairness, MADD deserves credit for raising awareness of the dangers of driving while intoxicated," Balko wrote in a 2010 article. "It was almost certainly MADD's dogged efforts to spark public debate that affected the drop in fatalities."

Those "dogged efforts" were part of Lightner's quest to turn a personal tragedy into a means of educating the world about the dangers of drunk driving. The massive public awareness campaign included press conferences and candlelight vigils, protesting at state capitols, tying red ribbons onto cars, and popularizing the term "designated driver," to name a few.

MADD was able to create an immense change by simply shining a light on an issue that many people didn't realize was an issue in the first place. And now, there is at least one MADD office in every U.S. state, as well as each province in Canada.

I guess you could say that if you really want to get things done ... (*removes sunglasses*) ... you gotta get mad.

It's easy to feel powerless when looking over the average day's headlines. But change is possible.

It's disheartening to see our government locked in seemingly endless squabbles that garner little to no results. We see the same haunting reminders of centuries-old hatred and bigotry being revived on our streets. For every step we take toward a brighter world, it sometimes seems as if we take two steps back.

But as Winston Churchill once famously declared, "To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often."

Change is something we're all capable of, no matter how insurmountable the odds, and one step toward it is recognizing how it has been achieved before.

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She worked with the civil rights movement in 1964. Here's her truth now.

I reached out to a civil rights movement veteran expecting to get some nice quotes about hope; what I got was so much better.

Shaun King, a professor and leader in the modern movement for racial justice, said in a Facebook post:

"If you EVER wondered who you would be or what you would do if you lived during the Civil Rights Movement, stop. You are living in that time, RIGHT NOW."


Image of Black Lives Matter protest in Missouri via Jarred Gastreich, used with permission.

I have definitely wondered that. Who would I be if I had been born then? I needed to get some advice for how to move forward today, as the civil rights movement continues.

I found Jane Adams of Carbondale, Illinois, on the website Civil Rights Movement Veterans.

White mob marching in Little Rock, Arkansas. Photo by John T. Bledsoe/Library of Congress/Flickr.

The site is a magical treasure trove of our country's wisdom. Each person on the site — and there are hundreds — has written a letter, a testimonial about their time fighting in the civil rights movement. Jane Adams was at the very top of the list on the front page of the site.

Jane participated in the Freedom Summer of 1964 and '65.

Jane was a white teenager who saw injustice, didn't like it, and tried to help. I'm not a teenager, but I am white. I'm in that boat, too, so her story stuck out to me.

Her parents were back-to-the-land folks from Chicago. Her dad bought a farm in the 1950s and worked for the unemployment office in Carbondale — a part of Illinois that's closer to Kentucky than Chicago. Despite her parents' more Bohemian origins (at least by the standards of Southern Illinois), she was mostly raised on a farm there, one of the only homes to have running water at the time it was built.

The Freedom Summer was a tactical moment in the civil rights movement that recruited hundreds of white students from the North to come to Mississippi for a summer, and Jane was part of that group.

Jane's story was fascinating to me for many reasons.

First, here is an excerpt of what she said about her time in Mississippi on the Civil Rights Movement Veteran website:

"I went to Mississippi with Freedom Summer and was assigned to Harmony Community in Leake County, working on Federal Programs. ...

The work changed my life. It was far more important to me than anything I — a naive youngster — contributed. As Bernice Reagon said, 'I was reborn in the Civil Rights Movement.' I learned, more than anything, that people make history. I saw heroism that I could never have imagined, and a sense of hope that infused people who had lived all their lives with the degradation of white supremacy. I also saw what is probably the most important kind of leadership — that at the level of communities, where people have to confront and deal with the people who make their day-to-day lives possible."

I was intrigued, so I called Jane to learn more.

As it turns out, she had a lot to say about growing up, her civil rights work and the work of today's civil rights leaders.

She told me that her summer in Mississippi was a violent summer. Three participants were killed. But that was part of the deal.

"We were shipped in. We all knew, if a white person got beat up, a white person from a good family with connections to legislators, that had a lot more impact than a black field hand who didn't know anyone connected to power," she said. "We were brought down because we could awaken the consciousness of a nation ... hopefully and get Congress to act."

Civil rights activist Priscilla Stephens being arrested in 1961, in Florida. Image via State Archives of Florida/Florida Memory/Flickr.

"As Bernice Reagon said, 'I was reborn in the Civil Rights Movement.'"

I asked Jane what she thought of all that's happening today with Black Lives Matter and with just "the world today" in general.

I was expecting some encouraging, hopeful quotes. But what I got instead was a challenge.

Civil rights movement boycott and picketing of downtown Tallahassee in 1960. Image via State Archives of Florida/Florida Memory/Flickr.

She challenged me, and anyone interested in participating in social change, to watch out for what she called "the politics of grievance" — a fight for political change based solely upon the hardships a group has faced — and to always find something to fight for, even when you're fighting against so much.

"There was a positive thing that people were fighting for," she said, "that people were willing to risk their lives for. Fighting for the right to vote, the right to hold jobs, the right to go to school ... the right to be treated like an equal person."

Jane reminded me there's a wonderful banality to the dream of equality.

Humans just want to be treated like humans. Black lives should matter. It's almost boring because it's so obvious — it's often not shiny, but it is important.

The 1963 march on Washington. Photo by Rowland Scherman/U.S. National Archives/Flickr.

The last story Jane told me really captured the delightful banality of living in a just world:

While wandering around a protest in Ferguson, Missouri, she says a young guy asked her husband to take a photo. Jane's husband did, and that was that. She told me it was a normal, everyday moment, but for Jane, a white person in a predominantly black crowd, it was really significant.

For her, it was a moment where everyone, in a crowd supposedly fraught with racial tensions, was just treating each other as humans. Unremarkable humans.

"We got giddy over it!" she remembers. "Like 'Wow, this is what we fought for. This is what we put our lives on the line for. To be in a place where we could just be.' That's what we were fighting for."

A Black Lives Matter protestor in Brooklyn in July 2016. Image via lolololori/Instagram.

Jane reminded me that I can't just be mad if I really want to inspire others and even myself.

Instead, I have to find something worth fighting FOR, not just against. Yeah, it's kind of obvious, but it also cracked my mind open in the best way.

I hope that y'all can find someone to talk to when America's path to justice gets bumpy (tragically bumpy), like it has lately. For me the Civil Rights Movement Veterans website was the perfect place to start finding inspiration about how to take steps forward.