I spent last night volunteering at a grassroots phone bank in the offices of Progressive Maryland, the organization that is leading the fight to pass a Clean Money/Clean Elections measure through the Maryland legislature. The callers were dedicated and relentless, working through list upon list of members, mobilizing people in key State Senate districts. The response was terrific!  We asked their members to do one simple thing – place a call into their state lawmaker’s office and ask that they support Senator Paul Pinsky’s public financing measure. I found the people I called to be very receptive. The more they learned about the “Clean” system the more they wanted to register their support for it with their own state senator.We should never forget to importance of grassroots work in our battles to win these laws at the state and federal level. In Connecticut, their landmark law depended on the willingness of ordinary people to push their legislators again and again and again to support publicly financed elections. The tens of thousands of contacts that ordinary people had with their elected officials put that measure over the top. Looking ahead to the campaign to win Clean Elections for Congress, it will require a similar effort, magnified many times over.