Grassroots Leadership Quotes

Leadership is happening, but it's not coming from the leaders of the old institutions. Everywhere you look, you see these extraordinary, sparkling new initiatives that are under way.

One thing I noticed working in the Bronx is that leaders come in the craziest places. They don't always show up at community board meetings. Sometimes it's just the guys on the corner that the boys on the block respect.

I decided to become a community organizer ... Change won't come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.

Whatever position we may rise to, be it of MP, CM or PM, nothing can teach us the way villages can.

I call for the need of world leaders to address climate change and reduce the increasing risk of disasters- and world leaders must include mayors, townships and community leaders.

A social group can, indeed must, already exercise 'leadership' before winning governmental power (this is indeed one of the principal conditions for the winning of such power); it subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power, but even if it holds it firmly in its grasp, it must continue to 'lead' as well.

I have been inspired by Martin Luther King and how he inspired a movement. I have learned that a cause must be organic; if it is to have an impact it must belong to those who join the movement and not those who lead it.

[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.

I'm not a grassroots organizer; that is clear. I believe in a division of labor. I'm not trained to organize the grassroots, and grassroots has to come from the grassroots.

When it comes to our public services, decentralisation means giving power back to those on the front line - our doctors, nurses, teachers and physiotherapists, and our locally elected officials.

I'm not their leader really. They don't do what I tell them. I do what they tell me.

When you are in local government, you are on the ground, and you are looking into the eyes and hearts of the people you are there to serve. It teaches you to listen; it teaches you to be expansive in the people with whom you talk to, and I think that that engagement gives you political judgment.

Every form of organization that does not allow the masses to rule and to guide for themselves, must need be counter-revolutionary and harmful

If the resistance is going to bring Trump down, it will require Democrats to follow the people, not the other way around. My hope is that the Democrats will realize where their power lies, and will start taking their cues from the people on the ground and not the other way.

I like the grass roots people the most.

It's the people who are doing the nonviolent organizing at the grassroots that make me think there's still hope.

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.

Leadership means making sure that people are adequately skilled, making sure people are earning a living wage, making sure people have access to resources. That's not sexy, it doesn't sound great at a rally or a forum, but that is actually the work that it will take to change cities. We know that.

I have lived with the people, and I, too, know their pulse; I am the people's CM.

There has been a change in heroes within the working-class community

There is a lack of leadership outside the Beltway, outside of politics.

I was very fortunate to have known Fred Ross Sr., who was organizing the Community Service Organization (CSO) way back in the late 50's and early 60's. I was able to work with him.

As you're building a country, you have to be thinking about what works at the ground level. And women have their fingers on the pulse of the community. They know what is critical to have in the treaty to stop the war.