I'm not posting this to extol the virtues of Ron Paul. I'm posting it to encourage people to watch the movie, "For Liberty: How the Ron Paul Revolution Watered the Withered Tree of Liberty", be inspired, and think about how this grassroots upwelling happened and what we can learn from it. I have yet to finish watching the entire film myself, but I've copied below some quotes I found instructive, most of which come in a section a little past 30 minutes into the film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIcIkoOwp7s&feature=related
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
“Ron Paul is completely uninterested in telling other people what to do or being told what to do. And there are very few people in politics like that anywhere ever. Because politics is of course about amassing the power in order to tell other people what to do, and Ron Paul rejects that.”
-Tucker Carlson, political commentator
“I was told early on, when I first got in politics, you develop your logo, and you stay uniform, and everybody does this, and you put this on every piece of literature, and your TV, bumper stickers, everything else (but) the characteristic of our campaign was there was no characteristic. It was miscellaneous, spontaneous, homemade, all shapes, sizes and colors. It was not uniform, and everybody knew it, but it didn’t seem to hurt us.”
-Ron Paul
"The sign-bombing culture that developed, as a means of spreading awareness... you know, climbing up on overpasses, putting up signs with zip-ties."
-Adam Kokesh, Iraq Veterans Against The War
“These are all things that the grassroots thought of, because their man wasn’t getting the attention. So they basically they had creative tantrums.”
-Rachel McIntosh, Rhode Island activist, commenting on "freeway blogging", etc.
“Young people are… natural-born activists. It’s in their blood, they’re rebellious, they rebel against their parents, their teachers, so it’s in them not to be fearful, and to stand up.”
-Deb Robinet, California activist
“Don’t just play by the rules, think of ways to do unique things, to break through.”
-Thomas Woods, historian/author “Meltdown”
“All these young people -- ‘You got a permit to put that sign up?’ It never even crossed their mind… that they were going to seek some kind of permission from The Man, to challenge The Man.”
-Ernest Hancock, FreedomsPhoenix.com
“Campaigns are very leery about (this type) volunteers. They want people to come in and volunteer for the campaign, and they want you to do exactly what you’re told. Come in and stuff envelopes, or do this. What they don’t want is anybody who’ll have any kind of loose connection with the campaign, but also some initiative, who’s sort of freelancing, because those people can end up violating the law, because they’re not consulting the lawyers, and that gets the campaign in trouble. And so we’ve seen this sort of death of this type of spontaneous campaigning. And we’ve seen the centralization of campaigns. Campaigns become more and more centralized, especially presidential campaigns.” [mirroring the centralization in government in society at large, the centralization within the LP, etc. -Starchild]
-Bradley Smith, FEC Chairman, 2004-2005
“Many, many people got very passionate and gave their time or their money, or just rose, in a way, above those regulations you were talking about, and said we’re not going to do things the normal way.”
-Katherine Memole, Pennsylvania activist
“I thought it was emblematic of the campaign. It was, like you know what, screw the mainstream media, screw traditional means of advertising, this is a grassroots movement, and we’re going to take it upon ourselves to get our message out any way we can.”
-Adam Kokesh
“I think that’s why the Ron Paul campaign was successful, and why people who’ve tried to imitate it haven’t done very well, because they’ve tried to plan it. You can’t plan it. You have to inspire people, and let them do what they do best.”
-Dr. Mary Ruwart, author “Healing Our World”