Mike McCready Quotes

Real, sustainable community change requires the initiative and engagement of community members.

My style is a little bit different than most conventional Republican Party chairmen. My style is more grass roots-oriented. I'm much more of a street guy. I love hanging out in boardrooms, but I prefer to be in neighborhoods and communities.

In any grass-roots campaign, building an ongoing base of support is as important as winning the ultimate goal.

In December of 2001, after September 11th, my wife, Jane Rosenthal, and Robert DeNiro asked me if I would help them create the Tribeca Film Festival. The idea was to revitalize lower Manhattan. We would show films on piers, in high schools. It was all about the community. We wanted it to be accessible to everybody.

Your job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out.

What the Bernie campaign showed us was that you could out-raise a well-funded opponent with grassroots donations, and you could out-voter-contact them, too.

We need to reshape the movement as one of grassroots activists, and not 'professional activists' who populate the seemingly endless number of national animal rights groups. For many people, activism has become writing a check to a national group that is very pleased to have you leave it to them. Although it is important to give financial support to worthy efforts only, giving money is not enough and giving to the wrong groups can actually do more harm than good.

An activist is one who is actively involved in creating community, whether that is locally in their neighborhood or internationally. It is an admirable quality.

My greatest work comes in the community.

I don't believe in elitism. I don't think the audience is this dumb person lower than me. I am the audience.

I spend a lot of time visiting local organisations.

My town hall meetings are with friends and neighbors, fellow Americans. We engage.

The problem is not in the office: the problem is out there. Every day I go to the people, go to the street. I can ask the people what they want, what they need.

If our society is to address social issues, it will be done at the local level or not at all.

Lobby? That's certainly not what the position is all about.

I don’t poll. I go out into the communities and talk to regular people. That’s the poll.

Trying to learn from communities and engage with policy makers and community organizers all across the country is really important to me.

Government requires bringing people together and genuinely hearing their issues. It requires the establishment and strengthening of community.

Be informed, ask questions, band together with your community, and fight at the local level. And make sure you take your local elections as seriously as the national ones.

The people who care the most about the folks in your community are living in the community. They don't live in Washington, D.C.

Public service and community organizing and movement building is such a part of my DNA that it's really hard to separate it.

Grass-roots work is not flashy, and rarely celebrated on the national media level, but that is where change begins.

I want to work on reaching out to people, through my music, at the grass-roots level.

In my four years as a state legislator, I went to dozens of nontraditional events - everything from bird watchings to tree giveaways, neighborhood cleanups to self-defense clinics for women - going where people are instead of asking them to come to me. It's how I learned about their struggles and how legislative decisions affected their lives.

I feel like so many girls are too intimidated to walk into their local Boys & Girls Club or YMCA - places that have equipment and offer a lot of opportunities to be active for little-to-no-money but are usually more boy-focused.