Yes We Can

For years, psychologists have studied the “bystander effect”. The textbook example of this psychological phenomenon is a case where a woman is violently murdered in front of a crowd without any of the eyewitnesses intervening or calling for help. Studying this case, psychologists suggest that when people are in a crowd or group, they shy away from taking action or responsibility. We have the mindset that someone else will take care of the problem and it ends up that no one solves the problem at all.

If we want to see our society overcome its many problems, we cannot fall victim to the “bystander effect”. We can point to the money that we donate to NPOs, or the taxes that we pay for social welfare programs, but money has not been able to solve our nation’s problems so far and may not ever be able to. We must take individual, grassroots level action.

In the 2008 presidential elections, then Senator Barack Obama was able to harness a never before seen level of grassroots involvement to push his campaign to victory. Most recent elections have been fought out with and won with money, but Senator Obama’s campaign relied on the volunteer effort and involvement of millions of Americans at the grassroots level. The nation and the world saw that even without money and funding, grassroots organizations were able to do amazing things for the Obama campaign. Grassroots organizations provided the Obama campaign with a resource more valuable than money: passionate and driven people working for a cause. The pros of having grassroots workers over money are many in number. Grassroots workers work for free, are passionate, and often are harder workers than workers and services paid for by taxes or donations. Grassroots workers can influence their peers to join the cause and can grow the grassroots organizations. Moreover, working in a grassroots organization can provide a positive, fulfilling experience for the volunteer and can nurture a spirit of community between workers of different backgrounds from all across the country.

If we learned one thing from the 2008 election cycle, it is that passionate and active individuals can do amazing things. Critics point to the lack of discipline and formal training of many grassroots workers and say that grassroots organizations cannot solve our nation’s problems. However, if we all, as Americans, commit to working together actively at the grassroots level, I believe that we can respond to those critics with the immortal words of our 44^th President: Yes we can.