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Grassroots Quotes

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Grassroots Quotes

“Over the years of grassroots advocacy, I have learned: People want help, but they don’t want structure. People want leadership, but they resent authority. People want information, but they don’t understand it. People want strategy, but they panic when shown the reality. Most groups have at least one person who wants the glory, not the change. Most groups have a lot of sheep wandering without a true shepherd. This is why so many initiatives fail. Remember, chaos is what killed the dinosaurs.”

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Book:The Spirit of Sedona By San Dan Yi: 13 Month Engagement Planner and Journal
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“James Ed smiled. “We should start a cuddling movement. Cuddling would solve most of the world’s problems. I can just see our bumper stickers. Have you cuddled today?”

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Book:James Ed Hoskins and the One-Room Schoolhouse: The Unprosecuted Crime Against Children
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“Creative activity at the grassroots is the basic factor of the new public life. Let the workers set up workers' control at their factories. Let them supply the villages with manufactures in exchange for grain […] Socialism cannot be decreed from above. Its spirit rejects the mechanical bureaucratic approach: living creative socialism is the product of the masses themselves.”

SocialismCommunismGrassrootsSovietsWorkers CouncilsEarly Soviet Russia
Book:Collected Works, Volume 26: September 1917-February 1918
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“Despite my deep unease about animal advocates working for things we don't want and asking for changes we don't believe in, I am not an "abolitionist." First, the abolition of animal slavery will no more end speciesism by itself than the abolition of American slavery ended racism. To change the world, I think we should aim higher. Second, I'm increasingly convinced that no matter who uses the term, it hides a slur. When used to refer to others, it connotes zealotry and obstructionism, and when taken as self-definition, it is seen as an attack by anyone who does not apply it to herself. Yes, it's a highly defensible moral philosophy, right up there with Peter Singer's application of Utilitarianism to animal liberation, and Tom Regan's Theory of Rights, but like those other intellectual concepts, it's useful only so far as it engenders right action.”

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Book:Confronting Animal Exploitation: Grassroots Essays on Liberation and Veganism
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“I've learned the importance of changing people's minds at the grassroots level so that whoever does run will have a much better chance of encountering public opinion that reaches a critical mass and brings about a change not only in White House policies but in the Congress and in the state legislatures and all around the world.”

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Author:Al Gore
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“This is one way that wealthy Americans could really contribute. They could put hundreds of millions of dollars into the infrastructure bank, be a good investment for them, for their children, for their grandchildren, and they would directly contribute to revitalizing a big sector of middle-class wages in America and making our country more productive, so that we could create more opportunity. But I think that we could get a lot of grassroots support from, like, local chambers of commerce and other things if they understood exactly how this infrastructure bank would work.”

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Author:William J. Clinton
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“As much as I can, as much as I can afford, I keep ticket prices down. Rock 'n' roll was developed as the people's voice, the people's art, it was grassroots. I don't believe that the people should be estranged from their rock stars. They're not kings and queens - all rock stars are those who are able to give back a bit of culture to other people. It's people's heritage.”

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Author:Patti Smith
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“Organizational Development: The New Christian Right of the 1980s was dominated by paper organizations that were essentially the mailing lists of a handful of politicized ministers. Such organizations were better at issuing press releases than doing the hard work of political mobilization and advocacy. By contrast, the movement of the 1990s has generated a plethora of grass-roots organizations that allocate meaningful responsibilities to individual members. The goal is to create an army of grassroots activists who know how to stimulate political change.”

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Author:Kenneth D. Wald
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“[Fighting Climate Change] is important for every single person on the planet, which is why it has to be the greatest grassroots movement of all time. This is the battle of our lives. We're fighting for our children.”

ChildrenPersonsImportantWisdomRealityPoliticalFightingPoliticsNatureCommunityLeadershipPartyFamilyHistoryOur LivesGenerationsHuman NaturePolicyMovementPlanetsBattleOur ChildrenStrategyUnityClimateClimate ChangeHuman RightsAll TimeIdeologyPolitical PartiesCivilitySingle PersonGrassrootsGrassroots Movements
Author:Emma Thompson
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“There are sharply different, competing models of what trans advocacy looks like - those that seek to follow the path laid out by the most visible and well-funded lesbian and gay rights organizations in the US and those that seek to use grassroots strategies, center issues of race and poverty, and aim to dismantle harmful institutions and conditions to redistribute life chances.”

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Author:Dean Spade
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“I'm asked that a lot: 'James, is there really a continuing spiritual renaissance occurring on this planet? Look at all the conflict, look at the wars.' And I believe, yes, we're still moving toward a deeper spirituality. It's personal. It's grassroots. It's everybody trying to get their own connection made, and from there it grows out.”

TryingBelieveLooksMadeStillsWarSpiritualMovingSpiritualityI BelieveGrowsPlanetsConflictConnectionsDeeperContinuingRenaissanceGrassroots
Author:James Redfield
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“I define democracy as control by the people. Slaves are those who allow others to control their lives. Insofar as people succeed in solving their problems fairly and efficiently at a grassroots level, they retain control over their lives. Insofar as they delegate their problem solving to a higher authority, they lose control over their lives.”

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Book:Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words
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“I work with Kick G.A.M.E., the grassroots artist movement. Not to tell people we have the best union plan in the world, but to show people that if some activists, if some revolutionaries, if some street organizers from the hood can come together and put together a preliminary program to give health care to independent artists.”

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Author:Immortal Technique
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“We're the end of the baby boomers, and we participated in many social changes. Who would of thought, for example, when the AIDS epidemic came along that so many would die, because it was gay people dying. And what emerged was a grassroots movement that developed, and succeeded in getting things done. The pinpointing of that movement evolved into the changes that we have today.”

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Author:Todd Haynes
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“For a lot of women who don't go to college, or for a lot of women who aren't in New York or D.C. or someplace where there's like a large feminist organization they can get involved in, they may be doing feminist work, right, like locally or with a grassroots organization or in their own lives, but if they don't have that support system and if they don't have that availability to feminist language, I think we're missing out on something.”

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Author:Jessica Valenti
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“We have to build movements in the face of trade retaliation on the basis of people's democratic rights, on the basis of an ancient heritage of collective innovation. We work from the grassroots all the way to the national government and the World Trade Organization. It basically means being very multidimensional in our campaigns. And that is where part of the fun is. It involves both resistance and creativity. It involves constructive action, while at the same time saying "no."”

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Author:Vandana Shiva
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“Rwanda is a very open and free country. Key to our recovery as a nation has a range of grassroots, citizen-centered polices we call "homegrown solutions." The idea that Rwanda is highly controlled from the center belies the reality, which is that citizens in every village have a powerful say in how things get done. We prize accountability and Rwandans are quickly adapting themselves to the possibilities of a digital economy.”

IdeasCountryDoneRealityNationsPowerfulEconomyPossibilityKeysCitizensSolutionsRecoveryRangeDigitalPrizeAccountabilityVillageControlledAdaptingGrassrootsRwandaFree CountryHomegrown
Author:Paul Kagame
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“Through that organization [Community Service Organization], I met Cesar Chavez. We had this common interest about farm workers. We ultimately left CSO to start the National Farm Workers Organization, which became the United Farm Workers. I was very blessed to have learned some of the skills of basic grassroots organizing from Mr. Ross and then be able to put that into practice in both CSO and the United Farm Workers.”

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Author:Dolores Huerta
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