Gabriel Thompson > Quotes

“An organizer tries to turn each person she meets into a temporary organizer,” was one of Ross’s organizing axioms.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“This sweeping characterization was unfair: along with mass demonstrations, the civil rights movement had a deep tradition of grassroots organizing and local leadership development.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Ross worked with Huerta to improve her focus, and he cut her off during frequent outbursts, saying, “Dolores, you’re not thinking—you’re feeling.”23 For Huerta, Ross showed that one could channel righteous anger at injustice into a steady and relentless force that was calm and methodical, without getting exasperated at every roadblock. And while it was clear that only so much of this calm style would rub off on Huerta, it didn’t really matter: too much energy and passion was a problem Ross could work with.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“This action has been taken because of my personal and complete confidence, not only in your ability in the area of organization (which I regard as tops) but also in your character, intelligence and ideals,” Alinsky wrote. “I share your feeling that you are about to get your teeth into what might well be one of the most significant organizational programs in the nation. I believe that I am not overstating the fact.”22”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Listening to even a small sampling—which in themselves only represent a sampling of the trainings he conducted over the last two decades of his life—is to more fully appreciate Ross’s dedication to the craft of organizing. Despite having given the same workshops countless times, he brings his full attention to whatever topic is being discussed; typically, he’s reviewing the sort of thoroughly unglamorous details that are easy to overlook.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“He was also suspicious of what he termed “Twinkieland” organizers—people who had sweet intentions but little substance. He didn’t hesitate to throw such people out.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“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”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Back in Chicago, Alinsky’s office blackboard had just one line written across it: Low Overhead = High Independence.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Moses had been deeply influenced by Ella Baker, the brilliant organizer and civil rights leader. Baker shared Ross’s distrust of flashy mobilizations and spent her life encouraging strategies that put more emphasis on the development of local leaders.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“During a CSO executive board meeting in 1955, Alinsky laid out the matter in stark terms. They had one of two roads to take: continue to grow without worrying about the finances, which would cause the CSO to “destroy itself,” or launch a “consolidation” program of the existing chapters to stabilize the organization.5 Once”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“When Ross sat down, CSO members voted unanimously to accept him as organizer. During his talk, he had informed the group that they would be put to work—“this is your organization, not mine”—and he immediately made good on the promise. He formed a membership committee of five volunteers, each of whom agreed to go out with Ross one night a week to visit neighbors and talk up the CSO.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“With the grape boycott relaunched, Ross spent much of his time traveling around the country—Los Angeles, Toronto, Ohio, New York, Florida, back to California—teaching UFW volunteers how to use house meetings to expand boycott chapters.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“When I came to work with the farmworkers,” he said, “there was a whole shift after Cesar brought Fred in, to introduce us to the fact that, ‘Hey, this isn’t just like being cool and going around talking to people.’ There is a real craft here. Numbers matter. You had to count things. You had to engage in ongoing learning. Strategy was not something you had, but something you did. That whole disciplined focus, learning-oriented approach was just extraordinarily important.”4”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“This is the identical critique that Ross made of groups like the League of United Latin American Citizens that he had found when he first began organizing in the Citrus Belt. The longtime leader of the Fresno chapter brought in people from the professional class—doctors, policemen, lawyers—who were happy to, as Ross once described, “meet, seat, eat, and repeat (or retreat).”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“The strike soon turned into a boycott, and the boycott into something that felt like the stirrings of a movement.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“He also made a point of popping into the office of the local newspaper, introducing the project in the most innocuous way and laying out the many supporters—including the church—that the CSO enjoyed.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“As Alinsky told Harper’s in an interview that summer, echoing Ross’s thoughts, “The problem with those kids is that they always want the third act—the resolution, the big drama. They want to skip the first act, the second act, the tediousness, the listening. Actually, you do more organizing with your ears than with your tongue.”27”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Ross was known for his methodical cross-examinations—“Well, why did you do that?” he loved to ask—and he stressed the need to treat everyone equally, a trait he had learned under Robert Hardie at the Visalia migrant labor camp.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“The other important lesson was this: look for the women. At Bell Town the ringleaders were women;”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Carrying signs that read “Peregrinación, Penitencia, Revolución”—Pilgrimage, Penance, Revolution—the group passed through rural communities along the way, led by a man hoisting a cloth banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Citizenship wasn’t something you received after successfully completing an exam, they stressed, it represented the process of becoming an active participant in democracy.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“While Ross hoped to expand the grassroots CSO, Sanchez sought to pull together a group of experts who could provide advice to Mexican American organizations around the country. Sanchez preferred to keep the struggle in the courtroom and was leery of the CSO’s street-level activism, once referring to the group as “trouble makers.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“So there it was. Listen. Take the time to really get to know people. Hardie had just demonstrated two fundamental skills of a good organizer.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“By the middle of 1955, the CSO had grown to eleven chapters and could legitimately be called a statewide organization.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Building stable chapters proved more difficult than Ross anticipated. Some chapters were sturdy. In Stockton and Bakersfield, leaders drove the work. But other seemed to begin to unravel the moment Ross or Cesar Chavez left town.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“So when the mood turned sour at the Mission District hall, Ross wasn’t one to let the defeat keep him down. “We didn’t win,” he later said about the moment. “So? Thousands of times we haven’t won.” One of the union’s stalwart supporters, an older woman named Betty Meredith, turned to Ross at the hall and asked, “Fred, what are we going to be doing tomorrow?” Ross would always remember her question, amid the lamentations going on around them, as the perfect response to any setback. “It isn’t for us to come through with this great blinding triumph, but to keep coming back,” he later said, speaking about an organizer’s role. “So what do we do tomorrow?”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“I began to get the idea,” Ross later said, “that this was a really good way to organize, because each meeting was linked with the last one.”23 The house meeting method was born.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“He lived out of apartments and motels, staying at each location for a few months before moving on. It was an exhausting schedule—or would have been, for most people. What comes through in Ross’s frequent reports to Saul Alinsky is not fatigue but enthusiasm.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“The historian Lawrence Goodwyn, a leading scholar of the American Populist movement, wrote that any democratic movement depends on participants who have attained “a high level of personal political self-respect” and who therefore refuse to be resigned or intimidated.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Like many, Medina was impressed by Ross’s emphasis on discipline and his high expectations for rookie organizers. But this insistence on accountability was combined with the freewheeling feel of the meetings, in which people bounced ideas off each other as they searched for solutions together.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century