America's Social Arsonist Quotes

“Fred taught me in organizing never to go to the so-called leadership, but to go right down to the grass roots and develop leaders there,” Chavez had once said.29”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“These one-off campaigns had never penetrated the country’s consciousness. But the new lettuce strike had galvanized the public—at least in the Bay Area—once again. “It was like going from an old bicycle to a motorcycle,” said Brown. “You hit the gas and took off.”23 In August, Ross and Brown coordinated a small twelve-day march led by Chavez from San Francisco to Salinas, where they were joined by another march, thousands strong, of farmworkers. A massive rally was held the following day. “Go out and win,” Governor Jerry Brown told the cheering crowd. “The victory is yours.”24”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Ross was an agnostic and in spiritual matters more aligned with Saul Alinsky, content with the earthbound glories of organizing: leaders developed, legislation passed, politicians held accountable. Ross’s idea of a “model” community was one in which poor people were organized and powerful.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Disruption is the lowest form of organizational life.” That was one of Ross’s favorite lines, and he repeated it in the aftermath of the Prop 14 firings, which he characterized as principally targeting “disrupters.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Ross was known for his methodical cross-examinations—“Well, why did you do that?” he loved to ask—and he stressed the need to treat everyone equally, a trait he had learned under Robert Hardie at the Visalia migrant labor camp.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“So when the mood turned sour at the Mission District hall, Ross wasn’t one to let the defeat keep him down. “We didn’t win,” he later said about the moment. “So? Thousands of times we haven’t won.” One of the union’s stalwart supporters, an older woman named Betty Meredith, turned to Ross at the hall and asked, “Fred, what are we going to be doing tomorrow?” Ross would always remember her question, amid the lamentations going on around them, as the perfect response to any setback. “It isn’t for us to come through with this great blinding triumph, but to keep coming back,” he later said, speaking about an organizer’s role. “So what do we do tomorrow?”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“The Man Who Taught Chavez How to Organize,” finds Ross training a group of volunteers in Sacramento, where he goes over the finer points of handing out pro–Prop 14 bumper stickers: make the pitch to passersby in nine seconds, deal with any questions in forty-five seconds, and move along, avoiding what Ross calls “verbal diarrhea,” which a farmworker volunteer likens to a worker staying on a grape vine too long.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Listening to even a small sampling—which in themselves only represent a sampling of the trainings he conducted over the last two decades of his life—is to more fully appreciate Ross’s dedication to the craft of organizing. Despite having given the same workshops countless times, he brings his full attention to whatever topic is being discussed; typically, he’s reviewing the sort of thoroughly unglamorous details that are easy to overlook.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Ross typically began his trainings by reviewing the history of agriculture in California, explaining the many failed efforts to organize farmworkers and then Chavez’s rise from the dusty barrio of Sal Si Puedes to helm a movement that finally challenged the power of growers. For Ross, mastery of this history was critical. Organizers were storytellers, and the story they told needed to be compelling and urgent, with the long history of oppression and struggle flowing into the point of the present moment, when the support of outsiders would decide whether farmworkers would live with dignity or once again suffer at the hands of greedy growers.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“With the grape boycott relaunched, Ross spent much of his time traveling around the country—Los Angeles, Toronto, Ohio, New York, Florida, back to California—teaching UFW volunteers how to use house meetings to expand boycott chapters.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“He was also suspicious of what he termed “Twinkieland” organizers—people who had sweet intentions but little substance. He didn’t hesitate to throw such people out.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“In the coming years, Chavez would continue to call on Ross for special projects, but the trip to Los Angeles represented a significant shift: for the rest of his working life, Ross’s time would largely be dedicated to training new organizers—first with the UFW and later, once Chavez abandoned organizing, with a variety of peace and social-justice groups. It was in these trainings, which could last for more than a month, that thousands of people were introduced to Ross’s rigorous method of organizing, in sessions he dubbed the “battle of the butcher paper.”5”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“to do the work. It wasn’t just canvassing—it was organizing.”12”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“That has always been my basic point of reference for how you do grassroots political work. Not by sending in a ton of canvassers, but by recruiting people from the community”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“An organizer tries to turn each person she meets into a temporary organizer,” was one of Ross’s organizing axioms.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“One of the greatest challenges in organizing is getting through the inevitable flat points, those moments when momentum stalls and victories are forgotten. Sensing that such a moment had arrived, and taking a page from Mohandas Gandhi, Chavez gathered his supporters and announced that he had begun fasting as a means to recommit the union to nonviolence.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“When I came to work with the farmworkers,” he said, “there was a whole shift after Cesar brought Fred in, to introduce us to the fact that, ‘Hey, this isn’t just like being cool and going around talking to people.’ There is a real craft here. Numbers matter. You had to count things. You had to engage in ongoing learning. Strategy was not something you had, but something you did. That whole disciplined focus, learning-oriented approach was just extraordinarily important.”4”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“One of the lines Ross drilled into people’s heads was “If you can’t count it, it didn’t happen.” How many people came to the meeting? How many walked the picket line? Organizing could encompass many activities, but at bottom it depended on getting people in motion, which took a lot of work—and a system.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Like many, Medina was impressed by Ross’s emphasis on discipline and his high expectations for rookie organizers. But this insistence on accountability was combined with the freewheeling feel of the meetings, in which people bounced ideas off each other as they searched for solutions together.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Ross’s team, mostly farmworkers, was highly motivated but untested. Ross turned the campaign into a boot camp of sorts: many of the graduates went on to become among the union’s most skilled organizers. They fine-tuned their raps and role-played interactions, searching for messages that best resonated with workers.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Ross worked the group hard. The first meeting of the day was at eight o’clock in the morning; the last often wrapped up after midnight. If anyone had anticipated that organizing would be a laid-back affair, he or she quickly learned otherwise. Ross went around the circle, demanding detailed reports from each organizer, his clear voice cutting through the buzz of the room. Whom had they met with? What did the worker say? What did they say in response to the worker? Why did they say that? What might they say next time? Along with his unrelenting attention to detail, Ross stressed the need to be honest.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Ross worked the group hard. The first meeting of the day was at eight o’clock in the morning; the last often wrapped up after midnight. If anyone had anticipated that organizing would be a laid-back affair, he or she quickly learned”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Ross’s first task was to establish order and discipline in an environment that was bubbling over with enthusiastic but unfocused energy. His team met three to four times a day in the Pink House, a small bungalow on Delano’s west side that had become the union’s headquarters.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Carrying signs that read “Peregrinación, Penitencia, Revolución”—Pilgrimage, Penance, Revolution—the group passed through rural communities along the way, led by a man hoisting a cloth banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“The strike soon turned into a boycott, and the boycott into something that felt like the stirrings of a movement.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“Moses had been deeply influenced by Ella Baker, the brilliant organizer and civil rights leader. Baker shared Ross’s distrust of flashy mobilizations and spent her life encouraging strategies that put more emphasis on the development of local leaders.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“This sweeping characterization was unfair: along with mass demonstrations, the civil rights movement had a deep tradition of grassroots organizing and local leadership development.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“For Ross, the purpose of the organizer was to build stable organizations that could advocate for change, typically in an orderly and respectable fashion. He did not share the New Left’s alienation, nor their sense that something was “sick” in the country. If he “fought the system,” he did so by encouraging people to make demands on that system, not by burning it down. Having organized during the height of the Red Scare, Ross was constantly alert as to how actions might appear to ordinary people, and he had little patience for what he considered New Left theatrics. Thirty years had passed since he had been a wide-eyed college student, and he was unable to see the world through their eyes, if only to better reach them.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“As Alinsky told Harper’s in an interview that summer, echoing Ross’s thoughts, “The problem with those kids is that they always want the third act—the resolution, the big drama. They want to skip the first act, the second act, the tediousness, the listening. Actually, you do more organizing with your ears than with your tongue.”27”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century

“These were the headliners—but behind such individuals were the thousands more men and women who remained largely anonymous but who were crucial in building the strongest Mexican American organization of its period.”
― Gabriel Thompson, America's Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century