Bottom-Up Governance Quotes

Centralization as a system is inconsistent with a non-violent structure of society.

The Swaraj of my dream is the poor man's Swaraj.

Devolution [decentralization of government] cannot stop at the State House. It must go down to City Hall.

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.

Popular congresses are the only means to achieve popular democracy. Any system of government other than popular congresses is undemocratic.

Small unit democracy, I found early on, didn't work for me.

So you know what we have to do is stop looking for leadership from the top, because the least among us make their way into those positions of power... So what we have to do is knock off this fantasy of being citizens inside a democratic state, I mean, what we are, are the propagandized masses inside a fascist dictatorship.

Democracy doesn't begin at the top; it begins at the bottom, when flesh-and-blood human beings fight to rekindle what Arlo Guthrie calls 'The Patriot's Dream.

I think the fundamental apprehension is that the city's an organism of some form, rather than being governed from above.