Reclaiming July 4th: Grassroots Revolution Then and Now

How America’s First Grassroots Network Offers a Blueprint for Resisting Authoritarianism and Funding Social Change Today

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The Fourth of July marks more than a day of fireworks and barbecues. At its heart, Independence Day commemorates an act of radical, grassroots unity against tyranny. In 1776, that unity didn’t emerge fully-formed from lofty declarations alone—it was built from the ground up, neighbor to neighbor, through a decentralized resistance network known as the Committees of Correspondence.

This 18th-century innovation in communication and organizing was arguably the Revolution’s most vital lesson, and it carries profound relevance today. As we face what many view as creeping authoritarianism in the United States—a federal government veering toward one-party dominance, emboldened by a demagogic president and rubber-stamped by a compliant Congress and Supreme Court—the spirit of those Committees offers both inspiration and a model for action.

The Committees of Correspondence: America’s First Grassroots Network.

In an era long before social media (or even nationwide newspapers), American patriots devised a way to share information, coordinate protests, and rally support across distant towns. Starting in Boston in late 1772 under the guidance of Samuel Adams, James Otis, Joseph Warren and others, citizens formed a standing committee to “state the rights of the colonists…and to communicate and publish the same to the several towns in this province and to the world.”

This Boston Committee of Correspondence drafted a bold statement of rights and grievances (quickly dubbed the “Boston Pamphlet”) and sent it with a request for “a free communication of your sentiments…of our common danger” to every town in Massachusetts. The response was electric: within six months, over one hundred Massachusetts towns — even tiny villages — had formed their own committees.

By the end of 1773, eight other colonies had followed suit, including Virginia, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire and South Carolina. By 1775, an estimated 7,000–8,000 patriots served on local or colony-level committees, a vast grass-roots leadership that spearheaded American resistance. These committees became the connective tissue of the Revolution, “setting up the network” that would later enable the Continental Congress and coordinate the war effort.

What made the Committees of Correspondence revolutionary wasn’t armed might—it was information and solidarity. They proved that ordinary citizens, without a central authority, could educate and mobilize their neighbors on shared principles. The committees agreed on fundamental values (like no taxation without representation and natural rights) and used those as rallying points.

Each town then adapted the cause to its local context. This clarity of purpose created a powerful unity. “We [Boston]… apprehending there is abundant reason to be alarmed that the plan of Despotism…is rapidly hastening to a completion, can no longer conceal our impatience under a constant, unremitted, uniform aim to enslave us,” declared the Boston Pamphlet, calling out the British administration’s authoritarian designs.

The patriots knew they had to draw a line.

“Such being the critical State of this Province, we think it our Duty…to ask you, What can withstand the Attacks of mere Power? What can preserve the Liberties of the Subject, when the Barriers of the Constitution are taken away?” they wrote in a circular letter to other towns. The answer they implied was: only the united action of the people themselves. And indeed, united they stood. The Boston committee urged every community to speak up and “explicitly declare” its opposition to oppression, lest the British dismiss resistance as the work of “a few factious…disaffected Men.”

In stirring words, they pleaded that “the sense of the People should be explicitly declared—A free Communication of your Sentiments to this Town of our common Danger is earnestly solicited,” insisting that “if you concur with us…you will doubtless think it of the utmost Importance that we stand firm as one Man to recover and support [our rights]…and…rescue from impending Ruin our happy and glorious Constitution.” This was grassroots democracy in action: ordinary colonists creating their own media, their own leadership structure, and even providing mutual aid across colonies. (When Boston later faced economic punishment under Britain’s Port Act, towns from South Carolina to Pennsylvania sent food and supplies, a “proto-crowdfunding ethos” where people pooled resources to support a community under attack.)

Authoritarianism on Our Doorstep.

Fast forward to today. The threats we face are different in form but chillingly similar in principle. We no longer answer to King George III—instead, we wrestle with anti-democratic forces within our own republic. In recent years, scholars and watchdogs have rung alarm bells about the U.S. sliding towards authoritarianism.

Consider the extraordinary events and power grabs of the past decade: a President who openly challenged election results and sought to overturn the popular will, who undermined independent oversight and referred to the free press as “the enemy of the people.” A Congress that, due to partisan loyalties, largely abdicated its role as a check on executive overreach. A Supreme Court whose conservative majority often appears more eager to entrench power than to restrain abuses of it.

As one report described in early 2025, “Donald Trump’s spate of executive orders…pose threats to the rule of law and democratic norms,” including firing inspectors general, defying constitutional citizenship rights, and pardoning insurrectionists. How did Congress respond? “Congressional Republicans have offered scant criticism of Trump’s power plays,” essentially enabling his blitz to expand presidential authority. Meanwhile, the White House signaled it would rely on sympathetic judges—and indeed hoped the conservative Supreme Court majority would bless its expansive view of unchecked executive power. This scenario—an authoritarian-minded leader, a complicit legislature, and a judiciary in ideological alignment—is exactly what the framers feared. It’s a far cry from the checks and balances we celebrate on paper.

For those of us who cherish democracy, it’s a sobering moment. We’re reminded of the patriots’ question in 1772: What can preserve liberty when the “barriers of the Constitution” are taken away? When institutions fail us, the answer must be “We the People.” If federal power is abused and traditional avenues of accountability falter, then, like our revolutionary forebears, we have to build our own channels to resist and to rebuild. The Committees of Correspondence offer a template: decentralized, grassroots organizing that doesn’t wait for permission from any high office. They taught us to trust in collective action from below, to network with like-minded communities, and to keep the flame of true patriotism alive when officials snuff it out.

Today’s equivalents may not meet in taverns or send letters by horseback, but they exist in our activist coalitions, community groups, and yes, in our online networks. Modern technology gives us instant connection, but it’s the same human traits of courage, solidarity, and shared purpose that determine success. The American Revolution’s unsung heroes were essentially community organizers. Their spirit lives on whenever citizens coordinate across state lines to defend voting rights, or scientists and activists link arms to fight climate change despite federal rollbacks. As colonists once did, we must “stand firm as one” in common cause.

Impact Crowdfunding: Grassroots Capital for Modern Challenges.

Political resistance is one side of the coin. The other is economic empowerment. This is where a novel tool of our time comes into play: regulated investment crowdfunding, or what we often call impact crowdfunding. Just as the Committees of Correspondence created a people-powered information network, impact crowdfunding creates a people-powered financial network. It allows ordinary Americans to invest as little as $10 or $100 in startups and small businesses that align with their values and address social challenges.

In other words, anyone can become a mini venture capitalist for good–no need to be a Silicon Valley tycoon or get blessing from Wall Street. Impact crowdfunding allows anyone to invest in startups and small businesses. It doesn't rely on permission from Wall Street, Washington, or Fortune 500 executives. It's grassroots capital. It's democracy in action. Instead of waiting for Congress or big corporations to solve problems, we as citizens can vote with our dollars and fuel the solutions we want to see.

This isn’t theoretical—it’s already happening.

In the past few years, I’ve been privileged to meet dozens of changemakers using impact crowdfunding to tackle issues from climate change to racial inequity to public health. Their stories echo that same revolutionary ethic: frustration with the status quo leads them to blaze a new path. One young entrepreneur, Will Wiseman, told me about witnessing over 100,000 people marching for climate action and feeling a “sad realization that traditional activism lacked the tangible change necessary to solve this macro problem.” Rather than despair, he founded Climatize, a crowdfunding platform that lets anyone invest as little as $5 in renewable energy projects.

In just its first year, Climatize mobilized nearly $3.5 million from everyday people, funding 11 solar installations across seven states—projects estimated to offset the equivalent of 65 million car miles of emissions. “Climate change is an all-hands-on-deck problem,” Will told me, “we need everybody…to become a participant.” By combining the passion of protest with the mechanism of investment, he empowered thousands of ordinary citizens to become stakeholders in clean energy solutions—to literally own a piece of the change they demanded.

Climate is just one arena.

Impact crowdfunding has opened doors for women entrepreneurs, founders of color, rural and indigenous innovators, and others long shut out of capital access. While politicians wage cynical battles over “wokeness” and corporate diversity programs waver, we can directly back the businesses and communities we believe in. “Quiet DEI supporters can…invest in founders who reflect their values. Women-led businesses. Black-owned startups. Queer entrepreneurs. Founders from small towns and underserved communities,” as one impact investor guide notes. This is economic activism at its finest. After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, for instance, many pledged support for Black-owned businesses—and indeed, platforms like Wefunder and Kickstarter saw spikes in crowdfunding campaigns by Black founders, with investors rallying to support them when traditional banks would not.

In the public health space, even a corporate giant like Johnson & Johnson recognized the power of crowdfunding: it launched CaringCrowd, a platform dedicated to raising funds for frontline health projects around the world. “A considerable portion of the world does not have access to health care…these organizations face a critical challenge: funding,” explained Derek Fetzer, CaringCrowd’s director. “We developed CaringCrowd…to enable collaboration on global public health challenges, foster innovation, and support funding that can help get needed resources to people faster.”

The platform screened and hosted numerous grassroots health initiatives, many of which would never attract venture capital but could thrive with modest contributions from caring individuals. Even small projects—a $5,000 clean water effort here, a $20,000 maternal health clinic there—can have outsized impact on lives, Derek noted, and “a little can go so very far in many parts of the world!”

The beauty of regulated impact crowdfunding is that it’s not charity—it’s investment with purpose. It builds sustainable momentum. If the businesses we back succeed, we as investors can reap financial returns alongside social returns, which in turn gives us more resources to reinvest in the next wave of change. In that way, we create a virtuous cycle: a grassroots economy of resistance and renewal.

Think of it as an updated Committees of Correspondence, but instead of exchanging letters and pamphlets, we’re exchanging capital and equity to support the ideas that can reshape our future. The Committees once advised Americans to boycott British luxuries and support homegrown goods as an act of patriotism. Today, impact investors similarly channel funds away from exploitative industries and toward ethical, inclusive ventures. Both are strategies of economic self-determination in the face of systems that perpetuate injustice.

Facing Our Founding’s Flaws—and Finishing the Revolution.

Of course, any celebration of the American Revolution’s ideals must grapple with an uncomfortable truth: the founding documents enshrined liberty rhetorically, but in practice, they excluded entire classes of people. The Declaration of Independence’s soaring phrase “all men are created equal” pointedly did not include the enslaved African Americans held in bondage by many signers. The “consent of the governed” did not come from women, who had no voice, nor from Indigenous nations, whose sovereignty the new republic trampled. It’s an inescapable hypocrisy: America’s birth announced universal rights while denying them to millions.

As a modern American, I openly acknowledge this hypocrisy—and I take heart from how, generation after generation, reformers and revolutionaries have used those very founding ideals as tools to expand freedom. The words of the Declaration and Constitution were a promise that went unfulfilled in 1776. It has been the task of each era to hold America to that promise. Abolitionists, early feminists, civil rights activists—all drew on the founding creed to demand change. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.”

For Black Americans, that check had long come back marked “insufficient funds,” but King refused to believe the “bank of justice” was bankrupt. In the same spirit, civil rights leaders forced the nation to cash that promissory note through the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments (ending slavery and guaranteeing equal protection and voting rights), and later the 19th Amendment (women’s suffrage), and ongoing struggles today.

As one historian noted, Jefferson’s lofty ideal that all are created equal was an “expression of an ideal” he himself violated as a slaveholder, yet the ideal “came to take on a life of its own” as the most perfect embodiment of the American creed. It took a Civil War to begin to fulfill that ideal, and many movements since to extend it. Our founding documents were flawed and incomplete by design, but they set a North Star by which the ship of state could be righted over time.

Now it falls to us, in 2025, to continue that work.

The founders’ vision will only be truly realized when all people enjoy liberty, equality, and the chance to pursue happiness without oppression. In our age, that mission translates into fighting climate change so our children can live and breathe freely; tackling systemic racism and inequality so that opportunity is not just the birthright of a privileged few; ensuring public health, education, and justice are accessible to all. These are colossal challenges—some might say as daunting as winning independence from the British Empire. But we have something powerful on our side: the precedent of ordinary Americans changing the course of history through collective action.

Every time a community organizes to resist an unjust law or policy, every time a group of neighbors pools funds to support a socially-minded startup, every time we use our voice or our wallet to uphold the values of freedom and justice, we are finishing the revolution the founders began. The Committees of Correspondence were, in essence, shadow governments of the people, born because official institutions had failed to represent them. Today, through activism and impact investing, we are building the “shadow” or parallel infrastructure to carry forward democracy’s promise, especially when formal power structures grow hostile to that promise. We’re asserting that the true sovereign of this nation is its people, not any president or party or court.

Aligning capital with conscience isn’t just altruism—it’s a strategy to create lasting change. Money, like information, is a form of power. During the Revolution, patriots seized the narrative from the Crown and organized material support for each other when Parliament shut its coffers. Today, we can seize both narrative and capital from those who misuse them. Impact crowdfunding and grassroots organizing are complementary tools in this effort. One builds the community, the other builds the capacity. One spreads the word; the other spreads the wealth.

As we celebrate Independence Day, let’s do so with clear eyes and full hearts. We can cheer the founders’ ideals, but we should cheer louder for the generations of unsung Americans who have carried those ideals forward against all odds—from the Committees of Correspondence to Selma’s marchers to today’s impact investors funding climate justice. The lesson of July 4, 1776, is not a frozen tableau of powdered wigs and parchment; it’s an ongoing story of radical, rebellious citizenship. It’s the knowledge that democracy is not a gift granted by leaders—it’s a project powered by regular people.

Two and a half centuries ago, Samuel Adams said, “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.” Those brush fires lit the way to independence. Today, our tireless minority might be the innovators, activists, and investors lighting brush fires for a sustainable, equitable future. We don’t need 100% of people on board to start making progress—we need a passionate enough coalition willing to act. Each of us can be a committee of one, corresponding with our neighbors, investing in our values, refusing to sit quietly when our rights or our planet are at stake.

In 1774, faced with draconian new laws, the Boston Committee of Correspondence defiantly told the colonists, “If the halls of power won’t listen, maybe it’s time to build new rooms.” They proceeded to do just that—building a new nation founded on principles of liberty (however imperfectly realized at first). In 2025, we must likewise build new rooms: new forums to organize, new enterprises to solve problems, new alliances across communities. We the People are still the ultimate check and balance. By organizing in our communities and by leveraging tools like impact crowdfunding, we can create a powerful one-two punch: people power + economic power in service of justice.

This Independence Day, let’s honor the revolutionaries not by lighting fuses on fireworks, but by lighting fuses of change. Let’s form our own “committees of correspondence”—be it local civics groups or online networks—to share truth and support one another against authoritarian threats. Let’s deploy our capital to uplift those solutions and entrepreneurs that embody America’s highest ideals. In doing so, we answer the call of our forebears and push our country closer to the “more perfect Union” it was always meant to become.

You don’t have to march in the streets to stand for justice (though that helps, too). You can vote with your dollars and build a better economy, one investment at a time. Impact crowdfunding is more than investing—it’s advocacy. It’s empowerment. It’s protest—quiet, steady, and incredibly powerful. By embracing both resistance and regeneration, we ensure that government of, by, and for the people shall not perish, but rather, flourish anew in our time. The patriots of 1772 handed us the blueprint. The rest is up to us. Happy Fourth—and onward, together, in the revolutionary spirit of liberty and justice for all.

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Upcoming SuperCrowd Event Calendar

If a location is not noted, the events below are virtual.

• Impact Cherub Club Meeting hosted by The Super Crowd, Inc., a public benefit corporation, on July 15, 2025, at 1:00 PM Eastern. Each month, the Club meets to review new offerings for investment consideration and to conduct due diligence on previously screened deals. To join the Impact Cherub Club, become an Impact Member of the SuperCrowd.

• SuperCrowdHour, July 16, 2025, at 1:00 PM Eastern. Devin Thorpe, CEO and Founder of The Super Crowd, Inc., will lead a session on "Balance Sheets & Beyond: The Impact Investor’s Guide to Financials." If terms like “income statement” and “cash flow” make your eyes glaze over, this session is for you. Devin will break down the fundamentals of financial statements in clear, simple language—perfect for beginners who want to better understand the numbers behind the businesses they support. Whether you're a new investor, a founder navigating financials, or simply curious about how money moves through mission-driven companies, you'll leave this session more confident and informed. Don’t miss it!

• SuperCrowd25, August 21st and 22nd: This two-day virtual event is an annual tradition, but with big upgrades for 2025! We’ll be streaming live across the web and on TV via e360tv. VIP’s get access to our better-than-in-person networking! Get your VIP access for just $25. A select group of affordable sponsorship opportunities is still available. Learn more here.

Community Event Calendar

• Successful Funding with Karl Dakin, Tuesdays at 10:00 AM ET - Click on Events.

• Devin Thorpe is featured in a free virtual masterclass series hosted by Irina Portnova titled Break Free, Elevate Your Money Mindset & Call In Overflow, focused on transforming your relationship with money through personal stories and practical insights. June 8-21, 2025.

• Join Dorian Dickinson, founder & CEO of FundingHope, for Startup.com’s monthly crowdfunding workshop, where he'll dive into strategies for successfully raising capital through investment crowdfunding. June 24 at noon Eastern.

• Future Forward Summit: San Francisco, Wednesday, June 25 · 3:30 - 8:30 pm PDT.

• Regulated Investment Crowdfunding Summit 2025, Crowdfunding Professional Association, Washington DC, October 21-22, 2025.

• Impact Accelerator Summit is a live in-person event taking place in Austin, Texas, from October 23–25, 2025. This exclusive gathering brings together 100 heart-centered, conscious entrepreneurs generating $1M+ in revenue with 20–30 family offices and venture funds actively seeking to invest in world-changing businesses. Referred by Michael Dash, participants can expect an inspiring, high-impact experience focused on capital connection, growth, and global impact.

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