grass roots

1. People or society at a local level rather than at the center of major political activity. Often used with the.
2. The groundwork or source of something.

Americans have been on the cutting edge of business and politics in the twentieth century. We were the first to get down not only to brass tacks (1897) but also to grass roots. The latter we originally talked about in regard to mining. An 1876 book about the Black Hills says that "gold is found almost everywhere, in the bars, in the gravel and sand of the beds, even in the 'grass roots,'" that is, the soil just below the surface. But by the turn of the century we thought of grass roots as more than just a place to dig. Beneath the visible blades of grass, keeping the grass alive and making it grow, are the simple roots. Getting down to grass roots meant looking at the "underlying principles or basic facts of a matter," in the words of Charles Earle Funk, the lexicographer, who remembered the phrase from his Ohio boyhood in the late 1800s. It was in the grass roots where you could truly understand a situation and effectively respond to it.

Politicians often presented themselves as getting down to grass roots. They also talked about themselves, and the measures they favored, having support from the grass roots, that is, from their constituents--ordinary people, the salt of the earth. Grass roots lobbying takes the form of letters, phone calls, and visits from these constituents.

Politicians occasionally being unscrupulous, it has sometimes chanced that an artificial grass roots movement has been planned and put into action by the very politician or interest group that it seems to spontaneously support. In the 1990s, fake grass roots were labeled by their opponents with the trademarked name for artificial and rootless grass, Astro Turf.

The noun has 2 meanings:

Meaning #1: the essential foundation or source

Meaning #2: the common people at a local level (as distinguished from the centers of political activity)

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Grassroots democracy is a tendency towards designing political processes where as much decision-making authority as practical is shifted to the organization's lowest geographic level of organization: principle of subsidiarity.^{[clarification needed]}

To cite a specific hypothetical example, a national grassroots organization, would place as much decision-making power as possible in the hands of a local chapter instead of the head office. The principle is that for democratic power to be best exercised it must be vested in a local community instead of isolated, atomized individuals, essentially making it the opposite of national supremacy. As such, grassroots organizations exist in contrast to so-called participatory systems, which tend to allow individuals equal access to decision-making irrespective of their standing in a local community, or which particular community they reside in. As well, grassroots systems also differ from representative systems that allow local communities or national memberships to elect representatives who then go on to make decisions.

The difference between the three systems comes down to where they rest on two different axes: the rootedness in a community (i.e. grassroots versus national or international); and the ability of all individuals to participate in the decision-making process (i.e. participatory versus representative.)

Contemporary Movements Built Around Grassroots Democracy

• Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa
• The Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee in India
• The EZLN in Mexico
• Fanmi Lavalas in Haiti
• The Homeless Workers' Movement in Brazil
• The Landless Peoples Movement in South Africa
• The Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil
• Movement for Justice en el Barrio in the United States of America
• Narmada Bachao Andolan in India
• The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign in South Africa
• The Green Party of the United States

See also

• Barangay
• Cell church
• Decentralisation
• Decommercialization
• EcoCommunalism
• Green party
• International Simultaneous Policy Organization
• List of politics-related topics
• Open source governance
• Subsidiarity

External links

• Big Picture TV Vandana Shiva on Earth Democracy
• Big Picture TV Frances Moore Lappe on Living Democracy
• Green Change shares news, art and culture about grassroots democracy

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