When “Grassroots” Groups Aren’t Grassroots at All

“Grassroots originally meant a movement with roots in local concerns and suggested the notion of a local group democratically controlled by some local community and the people involved in it,” writes US socialist activist Dan La Botz. But over the last decade, starting with MoveOn.org, a number of major organizations have been created in the US which claim to be “grassroots” but are really controlled from above from Washington DC. These “organizations, now propelled by the internet and social networking, are changing the landscape of social and political life.”

Because this phenomenon is already having an impact north of the border, people in Canada should read La Botz’s article “From the Tea Party to the Coffee Party, How Political Parties Grow the Grass and Mow the Lawn.”

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