The JBS leads the way: the organization created by Robert Welch is still in capable hands, accomplishing the seemingly impossible and providing hope that America can be saved

New American, The, Oct 20, 2003 by Gary Benoit

* Getting the U.S. out of the UN: The JBS has campaigned to "Get US out!" of the United Nations for decades--erecting billboards, informing the public, and (during the 1970s and '80s) collecting over 11 million signatures on petitions to Congress to terminate our UN membership. But the campaign entered a new phase in 2001, when the JBS launched its Get US out! committees, making it easier for JBS members and nonmembers alike to work together on the specific objective of getting the U.S. out of the sovereignty-destroying UN.

The massive, grass-roots campaign is having a positive effect on Congress. On July 15th of this year, 74 congressmen voted for Ron Paul's amendment to prohibit using any funds in the State Department authorization bill for the United Nations.

* Calling it conspiracy: JBS members continue to expose conspiracy, recognizing that informed Americans will oppose what the would-be rulers of the world have planned for them. Reader activists have pushed the total distribution of this magazine's special "Conspiracy for Global Control" issue to over 600,000 copies. In addition, members have distributed large quantities of other magazines, books, articles, pamphlets, videotapes, etc. Of course, members do not merely purchase these materials for themselves; they also place them in the hands of fellow citizens, request that they read (or view) them, and then follow up for a reaction. They also regularly invite fellow citizens to group video presentations, where the important message of the video, including the solution to the problem, may be discussed.

Because all of these materials are distributed, read, and used as part of a concerted action program to awaken Americans to the conspiratorial threat to their freedoms, and then to mobilize them in a program of concerted action, the cumulative effect of many years of Birch activism has been tremendous. In 1996 a University of Virginia poll conducted by Gallup detected this cumulative effect when it found, without mentioning the Birch Society, that "three out of four Americans (77 percent) agree with the statement that 'the government is pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves.'" Moreover: "[O]ne quarter of the population do repeatedly express the conviction that the government is run by a conspiracy; and one in ten Americans strongly subscribes to this view."

Member-based Organization

The success of these and future efforts depends on a member-based organization. Birchers recognize that freedom is everybody's business, and that a majority of congressmen will only do what is needed to restore constitutional government if they receive sufficient pressure to do the right thing from informed voters in their districts. The most fundamental unit of The John Birch Society is the local chapter, and it is through local chapters in towns, hamlets, and cities across the country that the fight for America must be won. Those chapters receive direction from both a professional field staff and headquarters, but it is the organized, concerted action of informed Americans from all walks of life that ultimately will make the difference. Put simply, if America is to be saved, it is informed and involved citizens who will do the saving.