That's true for the short tail of big issues, but for the vast majority of smaller issues it's completely false. There are many issues where the government is willing to listen to grassroots activists, but there just aren't enough of them. A good example of this is drug law reform. State politicians have been generally willing to implement well written medical marijuana laws from grass roots organizations, but the problem is that there are probably less than 100 competent people working on this full time. Over 60% of Americans support legalizing medical marijuana, but all of the drug law reform organizations combined get only 10k or so donations per year, and the vast majority of these donations are for only five dollars. (Despite the fact that roughly 85% of Americans under age 55 have smoked weed.) And this is an issue that's harder than most because of all the interference from the federal government. Anyway my point is that for most issues you actually can get the law rewritten in your state if you're actually willing to go out and put in the effort.