Grassroots Organizing Quotes

“First of all, nobody gave us anything. It makes me furious when I hear that they gave us suffrage. Excuse me? It took 72 years of unrelenting, unbroken organizing grassroots effort to get women's suffrage. It took 113 years to get rid of child labor by law. It took similarly long periods of organized effort to accomplish any advance in social policy.”
― Gerda Lerner

“[Ella Baker]'s second defining characteristic was her dislike of top-down leadership... 'She felt leaders were not appointed but the rose up. Someone will rise. Someone will emerge'. It was an attitude Baker shared with some of the older women in the movement.”
― Gail Collins, When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present

“It's daughters playing soccer with the children of the rival group, sons marrying outsiders, aunts trading with longstanding enemies, and individuals of all backgrounds sharing a market, hospital, school, or art center with the people they've been told to hate. In their day-to-day lives, ordinary people often engage in actions that observers view as banal and unimportant, when in fact these everyday acts help establish relationships that can prevent local outbreaks of violence and, at times, serve as the basis to deal with conflict.”
― Severine Autesserre, The Frontlines of Peace: An Insider's Guide to Changing the World

“Not all good things come together, and we can't have it all tomorrow. Remarkable interveners understand that building peace sometimes requires baby steps, and they look to local people as a guide for which foot to start on.”
― Severine Autesserre, The Frontlines of Peace: An Insider's Guide to Changing the World

“Many domestic activists focus their efforts on top-down changes such as national elections and state policies--and despair when they fail to reach their goals....Bottom-up activism can help address the racial, ethnic, religious, and political issues that divide not just places like Congo or Colombia, but also the societies of non-war countries.”
― Severine Autesserre, The Frontlines of Peace: An Insider's Guide to Changing the World

“In fact, every major State reform has come in response to the strength and power of grassroots movements.”
― Roy San Filippo, A New World In Our Hearts: 8 Years of Writings from the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation

“The establishment is in crisis. Popular opinion is on our side. But we have to step out of our comfortable clubhouse and into the terrain of politics. The little clubhouse called "activism" is moldy and decaying. We no longer fit inside of its self-defeating walls. We have to walk away from the sideshow if we want to seize the main stage. This is not about "selling out" or "watering down" our politics or becoming "less radical". There is nothing "radical" about an atachment to outsiderness and marginality. And what is more radical than believing that everyday people can come together and organize a collective vehicle powerful enough to remake the world?”
― Jonathan Smucker, Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals

“Dismantling a dictatorship is not easy, but it is a lot easier than holding one together.”
― Heather Marsh, How to Dismantle a Dictatorship

“In reality, the way to topple a dictator is found within ourselves.”
― Heather Marsh, How to Dismantle a Dictatorship