Grassroots Campaign Quotes

The Democrats, fearful of his grassroots campaign, blamed him for the election of George W. Bush, an absurdity that found fertile ground among those who had abandoned rational inquiry for the thought-terminating clichés of television.

Do an overwhelming number of respected scientists believe that human actions are changing the Earth's climate? Yes. OK, that being the case, let's undermine that by finding and funding those few contrarians who believe otherwise. Promote their message widely and it will accumulate in the mental environment, just as toxic mercury accumulates in a biological ecosystem. Once enough of the toxin has been dispersed, the balance of public understanding will shift. Fund a low level campaign to suggest any threat to the car is an attack on personal freedoms. Create a "grassroots" group to defend the right to drive. Portray anticar activists as prudes who long for the days of the horse and buggy. Then sit back, watch the infotoxins spread - and get ready to sell bigger, better cars for years to come.

In his history, Rich People’s Movements: Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent, Martin notes that the passage of the income tax in 1913 was regarded as calamitous by many wealthy citizens, setting off a century-long tug-of-war in which they fought repeatedly to repeal or roll back progressive forms of taxation. Over the next century, wealthy conservatives developed many sophisticated and appealing ways to wrap their antitax views in public-spirited rationales. As they waged this battle, they rarely mentioned self-interest, but they consistently opposed high taxes that fell most heavily on themselves.

Winning the vote required seventy-two years of ceaseless agitation by three generations of dedicated, fearless suffragists, who sought to overturn centuries of law and millennia of tradition concerning gender roles. The women who launched the movement were dead by the time it was completed; the women who secured its final success weren’t born when it began. It took more than nine hundred local, state, and national campaigns, involving tens of thousands of grassroots volunteers, financed by millions of dollars of mostly small (and a few large) donations by women across the country.

Launching more drone strikes than Bush ever did and compiling a secret “kill list,” President Obama’s administration took the view that al-Qaeda was like an organized crime gang—disrupt the hierarchy, destroy the gang. Theirs was a concerted and dogmatic attempt at pretending that al-Qaeda was nothing but a fringe criminal group, and not a concrete realization of an ideological phenomenon with grassroots sympathy. They took this view in part because of how successful Islamist “fellow-traveler” lobbies had been in influencing Obama’s campaign after the mistakes of the Bush years. For Islamists and their allies, the problem was “al-Qaeda inspired extremism,” and not the extremism that had inspired al-Qaeda.

That road to a remedy of Nigeria’s political problems will not come easily. The key, as I see it, lies in the manner in which the leadership of the country is selected. When I refer to leadership I am really talking about leaders at every level of government and sphere of society, from the local government council and governors right up to the presidency. What I am calling for is for Nigeria to develop a version of campaign election and campaign finance reform, so that the country can transform its political system from the grassroots level right through to the national party structures at the federal level. Nigerians will have to find a way to do away with the present system of godfatherism—an archaic, corrupt practice in which individuals with lots of money and time to spare (many of them half-baked, poorly educated thugs) sponsor their chosen candidates and push them right through to the desired political position, bribing, threatening, and, on occasion, murdering any opposition in the process.

The impulse of Westerners to hold conferences and change laws has, on one issue after another, proved remarkably ineffective. One exception: Successful public health initiatives have sometimes been directed from the treetops. Examples include the eradication of smallpox, vaccination campaigns, and battles against river blindness and guinea worm disease. They are exceptional because they depend on research, materials, and knowledge that do not exist at the grassroots.

TIME FOR MORE TEA He does not keep the wicked alive but gives the afflicted their rights. Job 36:6 We the people. That’s what so many Americans have rallied around since the unstoppable Tea Party grassroots movement emerged. It resonates deeply with our Founders’ vision for an America created by the people and for the people, while it fights to ensure our lives are not ruled by the elites in Washington. And where do these convictions originate? We believe we’re created in God’s image and thus have God-given rights that we must protect from the destructive forces of the federal government. Even as the liberal media mock our ideals and our leaders, and even dare to mock our God, we have continued to stand for what is right. We stand because our hope comes from above, not from our TV screens and from Washington. Liberal elites put patriots down and mock them because they’re scared of conscientious, independent citizens. They look around and realize there are more of us than there are of them. They’re scared, because they see how people flock to a message of truth and hope. Patriots will keep winning because when the true biblical hope that the Founders enshrined in our Constitution is held up next to the façade of hope that this world offers, hope rooted in Christ always wins. SWEET FREEDOM IN Action Today, support those in your community who are truly fighting to uphold our one nation under God! Get involved in a local campaign for a candidate who stands for these principles.

(As Deborah Cameron once said, “It’s no good petitioning the King. . . . The struggle for meaning is a grassroots campaign.”)

He had handed out relief checks and food, counseled people behind barbed wire, sat across the desk from racist employers and convinced them to hire Japanese Americans. But the problems to be confronted were immense, and thus far he had largely acted alone. The Lakewood Experiment showed that Ross was beginning to sense the limitations of such an approach. He was growing impatient, ready to bite off a new challenge, taken with the idea of creating a snowball of people who could transform their community. Ross the social worker was receding, soon to disappear. The outlines of Ross the campaigner, Ross the organizer, were beginning to take shape.

FOR GOD AND COUNTRY: TIME FOR MORE TEA PARTIES! Strike them with terror, Lord; let the nations know they are only mortal. Psalm 9:20 Ronald Reagan promised to restore America as a shining city on a hill. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to “fundamentally transform” our nation. He wanted to fundamentally change America—and alarm bells went off all across our nation, and patriotic folks rose up and found their voices. The great grassroots movement known as the Tea Party was born. The Tea Partiers have taken a lot of media flack. I guess you could say I know something about that too. But for all the media hubbub, all the Tea Partiers want is for America’s government to follow American law; they want a return to constitutional principles, inspired by biblical wisdom. Who can forget Benjamin Franklin’s eloquent request for prayer before each session of the Constitutional Convention? In part, it read: “I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing Proofs I see of this Truth, that God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a Sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without His Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without His Aid?” At the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention, a lady approached Benjamin Franklin with a question. Had a monarchy been born, or a republic? “A republic,” he told her, “if you can keep it.” This profound statement reflects the heart of the Tea Party. SWEET FREEDOM IN Action Our Founding Fathers knew that battles are won with reliance on God. Meditate on Scripture daily. Pray for our nation and her leaders. Defend constitutionalists when you see them besmirched. We serve a faithful God who hears and answers prayer!

In 1999, one attempt to ban readings of the Harry Potter books resulted in a civil student revolt. The fourth-graders in Zeeland, Michigan, who were subject to the ban wrote letters to the superintendent, asking him to repeal the restriction. When they learned how many other children from other locations shared their outrage, they formed Muggles for Harry Potter, an anticensorship group that almost immediately saw thousands of adolescent members grow from a grassroots campaign of Internet postings and paper petitions. The

Back in 2008, Hillary Clinton was the most formidable primary candidate in modern history who was not an incumbent president. As with Dewhurst, the conventional wisdom was that she was unbeatable. But Obama ran a scrappy, grassroots, guerrilla campaign—phenomenal in the annals of politics—and beat her. He was the David to her Goliath.

Why did it get such a big grassroots response? We were the first campaign to really understand the power of parasocial relationships between supporters and the candidate and

America is the land of boot-strapping individualism, and that mindset has extended to expectations that good American citizens look out for their own health (think about the media campaigns you see to go get mammograms or to know the signs of a stroke). Ironically, this grassroots method of trying to keep a large population healthy through self-management and self-monitoring leads to a predicament in which we suddenly need everyone to do the same thing for public health reasons. First, we're asking a population steeped in individualistic culture to concern itself with the public good-for public rights to supersede individual rights, that is. But second and just as important, we're asking individuals to believe in a publicly defined reality and not in a personally informed one. In short, we're asking Americans to suddenly stop doing everything that we generally ask them to do in regard to public health (look after your own body, monitor your own symptoms) and instead urging an about-face (do things to protect other people's bodies, and stop assuming you know what your own body is 'telling you.) That's a tall order, to say the least.

Not surprisingly, as civil rights advocates converted a grassroots movement into a legal campaign, and as civil rights leaders became political insiders, many civil rights organizations became top-heavy with lawyers. This development enhanced their ability to wage legal battles but impeded their ability to acknowledge or respond to the emergence of a new caste system.

Her biggest clients were transportation companies. She helped plan their PR campaigns, write white papers, and set up “Astroturf” organizations to give corporate messaging the appearance of grassroots support. A

The general’s greater reliance on a grassroots presidential campaign in 1824, a real break with Early Republic presidential politics, pointed toward future standard practice in presidential mass politics.

Having survived what he called the “public colonoscopy” of almost a year of campaigning, he could finally focus on the two dimensions of the contest that he had a real knack for: grassroots organizing—and winning.

Ross’s team, mostly farmworkers, was highly motivated but untested. Ross turned the campaign into a boot camp of sorts: many of the graduates went on to become among the union’s most skilled organizers. They fine-tuned their raps and role-played interactions, searching for messages that best resonated with workers.

These one-off campaigns had never penetrated the country’s consciousness. But the new lettuce strike had galvanized the public—at least in the Bay Area—once again. “It was like going from an old bicycle to a motorcycle,” said Brown. “You hit the gas and took off.”23 In August, Ross and Brown coordinated a small twelve-day march led by Chavez from San Francisco to Salinas, where they were joined by another march, thousands strong, of farmworkers. A massive rally was held the following day. “Go out and win,” Governor Jerry Brown told the cheering crowd. “The victory is yours.”24