User:Dylanhq/sandbox

Sandbox General Description: I will be adding more examples to the History and Current Examples Sections. Further, I will expand on the definition provided in the Movement in Politics and Activism section. I will give more examples of what political actions are considered "grassroots". Lastly, I will provide examples of astroturfing in the AstroTurf Section.

Lead

Change title to "grassroots movements"

Definition: Grassroots Movements, as defined by Webster's Third International Dictionary, are those which use the people in a given district as the basis for a political or economic movement. Grassroots movements and organizations which utilize collective action from the local level to affect change at the local, regional, national, or international level. Grassroots movements are associated with bottom-up, rather than top-down decision making, and are sometimes considered more natural or spontaneous than more traditional power structures. Grassroots movements utilize a variety of strategies from fundraising and registering voters, to simply encouraging political conversation. Goals of specific movements vary, but the movements are consistent in their focus on increasing mass participation in politics.

The idea of grassroots is often conflated with participatory democracy. The Port Huron Statement, a manifesto seeking a more democratic society, says that to create a more equitable society, "the grass roots of American Society" need to be the basis of civil rights and economic reform movements. The terms can be distinguished in that grassroots often refers to a specific movement or organization, whereas participatory democracy refers to the larger system of governance.

Movement in Politics and Activism

Definition and explanation: Strategies: define based on activist sources Purpose of those strategies

Grassroots movements use tactics that build power from local and community movements. Grassroots Campaigns, a non-profit organization dedicated to creating and supporting grassroots movements in America says that grassroots movements aim to raise money, build organizations, raise awareness, build name recognition, to win campaigns, and to deepen political participation. Grassroots movements work toward these and other goals via strategies focusing on local participation in either local or national politics.

Grassroots organizations derive their power from the people, thus their strategies seek to engage ordinary people in political discourse to the greatest extent possible. Below is a list of strategies considered to be grassroots because of their focus on engaging the populous.

History

Find early examples of use of techniques. Detail sorts of movements that use word throughout history: I will give examples from "The Handbook of Community Movements and Local Organization"

Since the early 1900s, grassroots movements have been widespread both in the United States and in other countries. Major examples include parts of the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s and the German peace movement of the 1980s.

A particular instantiation of grassroots politics in the American Civil Rights Movement was the 1951 case of William Van Til working on integration of the Nashville Public Schools. Van Til worked to create a grassroots movement focused on discussing race relations at the local level. To that end, he founded the Nashville Community Relations Conference, which brought together leadership from various communities in Nashville to discuss the possibility of integration. In response to his attempts to network with leadership in the black community, residents of Nashville responded with violence and scare tactics. However, Van Til was still able to bring blacks and whites together to discuss the potential for changing race relations, and he was ultimately instrumental in integrating the Peabody College of Education in Nashville. Furthermore, the desegregation plan proposed by Van Til's Conference was implemented by Nashville schools in 1957. This movement is characterized as grassroots because it focused on changing a norm at the local level using local power. Van Til worked with local organizations to foster political dialogue, and was ultimately successful.

Another instance of a historical grassroots movement was the 1980s German peace movement. The movement traces its roots to the 1950s movement opposing nuclear armament, or the "Ban the Bomb" Movement. In the 1980s, the movement became far bigger. In 1981, 800 organizations pushed the government to reduce the military size. The push culminated in a protest by 300,000 people in the German capital Bonn. The movement was successful in producing a grassroots organization, the Coordination Committee, which directed the efforts of the peace movements in the following years. The committee ultimately failed to decrease the size of the German military, but it layed the groundwork for protests of the Iraq war in the 2000s. Further, the movement started public dialogue about policy directed at peace and security. Like the Civil Rights movement, the German Peace movement is considered grassroots because it focused political change starting at the local level.

ROUND 2: Grassroots Politics in Brazil: Increased participation by poor people in budgetary planning. Focus on increased economic well-being. Collective action/mobilization

Grassroots Politics in Brazil: fighting for land equality. Movement maintains independence from government. Sparked by violence. Has become international organization. Success in budgetary reform (getting budgets to reflect problem). Also in getting presidents to work with them. The Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) was founded in the 1970s and has grown into an international organization. The MST focused on organizing young farmers and their children in fighting for a variety of rights, most notably the right to access land. The movement sought organic leaders, and used strategies of direct action such as land occupations. It largely maintained autonomy from the Brazilian government. The MST traces its roots to discontent arising from large land inequalities in Brazil in the 1960s. Such discontent gained traction, particularly after Brazil became a democracy in 1985. The movement focused especially on occupying land that was considered unproductive, thus showing that it was seeking overall social benefit. In the 1990s the influence of the MST grew tremendously following two mass killings of protestors. Successful protests were marked by the families of those occupying properties receiving plots of land. It is worth noting that although the grassroots efforts of the MST were successful in Brazil, when they were tried by the South African Landless People's Movement (LPM) in 2001 they were not nearly as successful. Land occupations in South Africa were politically contentious and did not achieve the positive results seen by the MST.

Grassroots change in authoritarian China: The National People's Congress came out of state-sanctioned grassroots democracy reforms in 1987. It encouraged grassroots elections in villages all around China with the express purpose of bringing democracy to the local level of government. Reforms took the form of self governing village committees that were elected in a competitive, democratic process. Xu Wang from Princeton University called the Congress mutually empowering for the state and the peasantry in that the state was given a renewed level of legitimacy by the democratic reforms, and the peasantry was given far more political power. This manifested itself in increased voting rate, particularly for the poor, and increased levels of political awareness according Wang's research. One example of the increased accountability from the new institutions was a province in which villagers gave 99,000 suggestions to the local government. Ultimately, 78,000 of which were adopted indicating a high rate of governmental responsiveness. This movement is considered grassroots because it focuses on systematically empowering the people. This focus manifested itself in the democratic institutions that focused on engaging the poor and in reform efforts that sought to make the government more responsive to the will of the people.

Environmental movement of 1980s: Citizens Clearinghouse for Natural Waste: unites communities and grassroots groups in America. Focus on African American communities and other minorities. Use grassroots strategy to convince communities they are being affected. Move from "not in my backyard" to larger look at impact based on class and race. Use grassroots strategy in North Carolina, African American men and women lay down in front of dump trucks as protest. Power outside traditional means. After 1980s these disparate movements largely united. Successes remain to be seen.

A further example of grassroots in the 1980s was the Citizens Clearinghouse for Natural Waste, an organization that united communities and various grassroots groups in America in support of more environmentally friendly methods of dealing with natural waste. The movement focused especially on African American communities and other minorities. It sought to bring awareness to those communities, and alter the focus from moving problematic waste to changing the system that produced such waste. The movement is considered grassroots because it utilized strategies that derived their power from the affected communities. For example, in North Carolina, African American communities lay down in from of dump trucks to protest their environment impact. The success of these movements largely remains to be seen.

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=yVr9lhrrTVwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=grassroots&ots=3Pae2hl3xX&sig=wu31KIIr-sXUijYAqyVxD32fPEU#v=onepage&q=grassroots&f=false

Astroturfing

Astroturfing refers to political action that is meant to appear to be grassroots, that is spontaneous or coming from the local level, when in fact it comes from an outside organization.

An example of astroturfing was the ExxonMobil Corporation's push to create think tanks to disseminate false information about climate change. ExxonMobil was largely successful both in disseminating the information and in disguising the true nature of the think tanks.

More controversial examples of astroturfing often exhibit some characteristics of a real grassroots organization, but also characteristics of astroturf. Many of President Obama's efforts, for example, have been deemed grassroots because of their focus on involving the electorate at large. Critics of Obama have argued that some of these methods are in fact astroturfing because they believe that Obama faked the grassroots support. For example, the Reason Foundation has accused Obama of planting astroturf supporters in town hall meetings. Many movements and organizations must be placed on a continuum between grassroots and astroturf instead of labeled entirely as one or the other. For example, Australia's Convoy of No Confidence, a movement seeking to force an early election in 2011, incorporated elements of grassroots infrastructure in its reliance on the anger and discontentment of the participants. It also had elements of astroturf, namely the large extent to which it relied on support from political elites in the opposition party.

Tea Party: The Tea Party, a conservative force in American politics that began in 2010, is a more controversial example of Astroturfing. Democrats, notably President Barack Obama and Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, have accused the Tea Party of Astroturfing. They say that the movement purports to represent large swaths of America when in reality it comes a select few billionaires seeking policies favorable to themselves. The Tea Party has defended itself, arguing that it comes out of broad popular support and widespread anger at the Democratic Party and disenchantment with the GOP. Defenders of the Tea Party cite polls that find substantial support, indicating that the movement has some basis in grassroots politics. Critics point to the corporate influence on the Tea Party, which they believe indicates that the movement is more top-down than the grassroots rhetoric would suggest. The Tea Party can be considered grassroots to the extent that it comes from the people, but it is considered astroturfing to the extent that it is shaped by corporations and particularly wealthy individuals.

Current examples

2008 Election: controversy over whether constitutes grassroots Study by Panagropoulos and Costas found that mobilization for the 2008 election was largely responsible for boosting turnout by 14.5 million votes. The Obama campaign focused on expanding the base by focusing on independent voters, instead of just focusing the campaign on getting voters from one's own political party out. Use of small donors: 90% of Obama's donations were less than $100 in the 2008 campaign

Grassroots Campaigns: is a self-styled organization focused on supporting grassroots organizations for elections. Recently, they have worked on the Obama Campaign of 2012, and on the senate races in Iowa, Colorado, and Kansas for the 2014 election cycle.

Bernie Sanders 2016 Presidential Run: this as been deemed by some a grassroots campaign because of its focus on small donations, massive rallies, and other politicking methods.

Dylanhq (talk) 18:01, 6 October 2015 (UTC) Dylanhq (talk) 18:39, 13 October 2015 (UTC) Dylanhq (talk) 20:50, 16 November 2015 (UTC)