grassroots organizing¶

I love about the phrase "grassroots organizing" because of the evolutionary history of grass.

60 million years ago, there was no such thing as grass. Trees were everywhere, using a strategy of growing tall and capturing all the sunlight before any ground plants could get any. A breakthrough was made when a particular plant evolved to have its meristem (the part from which the rest of the plant grows) underground, protecting it from danger.

This was the beginning of the "grassroots" model: shield your means of growth and you'll do well. This meant that the grassroots were protected from predation by herbivores, unlike other shrubs and trees, so they kept reproducing while less resilient species got eaten.

However, as grass started to overtake the other low-lying plants, it came up against the massive trees. To combat these energy-sucking goliaths, grass evolved a new strategy: after spreading its seeds, grass started deliberately drying out and even releasing flammable gasses to encourage the spread of wildfires. Fires swept through grassy forests, consuming the trees and the grass tops alike. But that precious meristem of the grassroots was protected, unlike those of the trees.

After every wildfire, more and more trees were wiped out, while the grass was able to recover from its roots. Grass therefore has an evolutionary history of burning down an entrenched system of trees that tries to hoard all the life force, growing itself and starving all else. It does so literally at the grassroots level, through careful self-maintenance and spreading literal fire. We should all be like the grassroots. Don't let yourself get picked off, take whatever resources you can, use them to grow slowly, until a fire sweeps through, spurred on by all your united allies, to tear down the systems of oppression.