Grassroots Liberals

Grassroots Liberals PDF Author: Royce Koop
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774821000
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
The Liberal Party has fallen on hard times since 2006. Once Canada’s natural governing party but now confined to the opposition benches, it struggles to renew itself – presumably without the support of the provincial-level Liberal parties. Drawing on interviews and personal observations in cross-country ridings, Royce Koop reveals that although the Liberal Party, like other parties, disassociated itself from its provincial cousins to rebuild itself in the mid-twentieth century, grassroots Liberals and other partisans continue to build bridges between the national party and the provinces. This insider’s view of Liberal party politics not only challenges the idea that Canada has two distinct political spheres – the provincial and the national – it suggests that national parties can overcome the challenges of multi-level politics, strengthen their ties to provincial politics, and deepen their legitimacy by tapping the activism, energy, and support of constituency associations and local campaigns.

Grassroots Liberals

Grassroots Liberals PDF Author: Royce Koop
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774821000
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
The Liberal Party has fallen on hard times since 2006. Once Canada’s natural governing party but now confined to the opposition benches, it struggles to renew itself – presumably without the support of the provincial-level Liberal parties. Drawing on interviews and personal observations in cross-country ridings, Royce Koop reveals that although the Liberal Party, like other parties, disassociated itself from its provincial cousins to rebuild itself in the mid-twentieth century, grassroots Liberals and other partisans continue to build bridges between the national party and the provinces. This insider’s view of Liberal party politics not only challenges the idea that Canada has two distinct political spheres – the provincial and the national – it suggests that national parties can overcome the challenges of multi-level politics, strengthen their ties to provincial politics, and deepen their legitimacy by tapping the activism, energy, and support of constituency associations and local campaigns.

Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism

Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism PDF Author: Donald T. Critchlow
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691136246
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
Based on access to Schlafly's papers and sixty other archival collections, offers a look at the private life and public convictions of the arch-conservative and determined opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment, gay rights, and reproductive freedom.

Grassroots Politicians

Grassroots Politicians PDF Author: Donald E. Blake
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774842946
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
Grassroots Politicians is the first systematic account of party activists at the provincial level in Canada. To understand the pattern of political polarization in British Columbia, the authors examine the values and beliefs of those at the party cores -- the people behind the party images who elect leaders, nominate candidates, and work in electoral campaigns. In the New Democratic Party they play a crucial role in determining policy, in the Social Credit they help to shape party direction and governing style by their choice of leader, and, among the Liberals, they form the small band that keeps the party alive in the province. The authors challenge the view that Social Credit is a homogeneously right-wing party and that the New Democrats have clearly opted for the political centre. They record how party profiles have changed over the years -- Social Credit activists becoming better educated, wealthier, and less diverse in terms of ties to national parties, while the NDP is now more middle-class, white collar, and professional. They explore such questions as why individuals stay in a weak party like the B.C. Liberals, how the New Democrats interpret successive Social Credit victories, and to what extent B.C. activists are similar to those in other provinces or in national parties. They offer an analysis of the leadership selection process in each party and a detailed account of the convention that chose Bill Vander Zalm. By examining the attitudes and ideologies of party activists, they are able to pinpoint their locations on the left/right spectrum, identify internal divisions, and assess the problems and opportunities they pose for party leaders and election strategies. As the British Columbia case illustrates, party militants carry distinctive subcultures which have a significant impact on the ongoing dynamics and immediate outcomes in competitive party systems. The study also shows that the partisan involvement of activists in national political parties is one of the major forces that links the otherwise separate provincial and federal political worlds inhabited by British Columbians.

Populism's Power

Populism's Power PDF Author: Laura Grattan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190277645
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Uprisings such as the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street signal a resurgence of populist politics in America, pitting the people against the establishment in a struggle over control of democracy. In the wake of its conservative capture during the Nixon and Reagan eras, and given its increasing ubiquity as a mainstream buzzword of politicians and pundits, democratic theorists and activists have been eager to abandon populism to right-wing demagogues and mega-media spin-doctors. Decades of liberal scholarship have reinforced this shift, turning the term "populism" into a pejorative in academic and public discourse. At best, they conclude that populism encourages an "empty" wish to express a unified popular will beyond the mediating institutions of government; at worst, it has been described as an antidemocratic temperament prone to fomenting backlash against elites and marginalized groups. Populism's Power argues that such routine dismissals of populism reinforce liberalism as the end of democracy. Yet, as long as democracy remains true to its meaning, that is, "rule by the people," democratic theorists and activists must be able to give an account of the people as collective actors. Without such an account of the people's power, democracy's future seems fixed by the institutions of today's neoliberal, managerial states, and not by the always changing demographics of those who live within and across their borders. Laura Grattan looks at how populism cultivates the aspirations of ordinary people to exercise power over their everyday lives and their collective fate. In evaluating competing theories of populism she looks at a range of populist moments, from cultural phenomena such as the Chevrolet ad campaign for "Our Country, Our Truck," to the music of Leonard Cohen, and historical and contemporary populist movements, including nineteenth-century Populism, the Tea Party, broad-based community organizing, and Occupy Wall Street. While she ultimately expresses ambivalence about both populism and democracy, she reopens the idea that grassroots movements--like the insurgent farmers and laborers, New Deal agitators, and Civil Rights and New Left actors of US history--can play a key role in democratizing power and politics in America.

Renewal

Renewal PDF Author: Mark Wild
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022660523X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
In the decades following World War II, a movement of clergy and laity sought to restore liberal Protestantism to the center of American urban life. Chastened by their failure to avert war and the Holocaust, and troubled by missionaries’ complicity with colonial regimes, they redirected their energies back home. Renewal explores the rise and fall of this movement, which began as an effort to restore the church’s standing but wound up as nothing less than an openhearted crusade to remake our nation’s cities. These campaigns reached beyond church walls to build or lend a hand to scores of organizations fighting for welfare, social justice, and community empowerment among the increasingly nonwhite urban working class. Church leaders extended their efforts far beyond traditional evangelicalism, often dovetailing with many of the contemporaneous social currents coursing through the nation, including black freedom movements and the War on Poverty. Renewal illuminates the overlooked story of how religious institutions both shaped and were shaped by postwar urban America.

Cultural Dilemmas of Progressive Politics

Cultural Dilemmas of Progressive Politics PDF Author: Stephen Hart
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226318172
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Why have conservatives fared so much better than progressives in recent decades, even though polls show no significant move to the right in public opinion? Cultural Dilemmas of Progressive Politics highlights one reason: that progressives often adopt impoverished modes of discourse, ceding the moral high ground to their conservative rivals. Stephen Hart also shows that some progressive groups are pioneering more robust ways of talking about their issues and values, providing examples other progressives could emulate. Through case studies of grassroots movements—particularly the economic justice work carried on by congregation-based community organizing and the pursuit of human rights by local members of Amnesty International—Hart shows how these groups develop distinctive ways of talking about politics and create characteristic stories, ceremonies, and practices. According to Hart, the way people engage in politics matters just as much as the content of their ideas: when activists make the moral basis for their activism clear, engage issues with passion, and articulate a unified social vision, they challenge the recent ascendancy of conservative discourse. On the basis of these case studies, Hart addresses currently debated topics such as individualism in America and whether strains of political thought strongly informed by religion and moral values are compatible with tolerance and liberty.

Thank the Liberals For Saving America

Thank the Liberals For Saving America PDF Author: Alan Colmes
Publisher: Hay House, Inc
ISBN: 1401940560
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
In Thank the Liberals, political commentator and Fox News radio host Alan Colmes explains how people who fight for liberal ideals help our country move forward. With his trademark humor and wit, Colmes walks readers through the founding of our nation and shows how America was based on a liberal idea. Our very founders were progressives, and it’s progressives who have led America to be the country it is today. Through legislation, constitutional amendments, Supreme Court decisions, and the actions of grassroots Americans, we see that it is liberal efforts that are responsible for programs intrinsic to our American DNA—programs like Social Security, Medicare, assistance for the needy, and the government safety nets that have saved us during the recent economic downturn. Colmes’s goal is to show not only where we are today, but also where we as a nation are going and how it is liberals who will get us there. The divide between conservative and progressive aims has gotten ever more stark, and it seems that many conservatives are trying to take us backward, revoking or rolling back hard-won rights and impeding progress, which at best keeps us stranded in the status quo. This continual push to the right is something liberals must fight, and fight they do. On everything from preserving the separation of church and state, to climate change, regulating immigration, caring for the poor, and making peace, not war, Colmes shows how liberals are leading the way. Thank the Liberals will open readers’ eyes to some of the battles that will help define our nation as we move forward. Colmes boldly shows that as America progresses, it will become more liberal—just as it has done throughout history—and that this will enable us to continue to stand out as a beacon of freedom and democracy for the rest of the world.

From the Grassroots to the Supreme Court

From the Grassroots to the Supreme Court PDF Author: Peter F. Lau
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822386100
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
Perhaps more than any other Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 decision declaring the segregation of public schools unconstitutional, highlighted both the possibilities and the limitations of American democracy. This collection of sixteen original essays by historians and legal scholars takes the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Brown to reconsider the history and legacy of that landmark decision. From the Grassroots to the Supreme Court juxtaposes oral histories and legal analysis to provide a nuanced look at how men and women understood Brown and sought to make the decision meaningful in their own lives. The contributors illuminate the breadth of developments that led to Brown, from the parallel struggles for social justice among African Americans in the South and Mexican, Asian, and Native Americans in the West during the late nineteenth century to the political and legal strategies implemented by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (naacp) in the twentieth century. Describing the decision’s impact on local communities, essayists explore the conflict among African Americans over the implementation of Brown in Atlanta’s public schools as well as understandings of the ruling and its relevance among Puerto Rican migrants in New York City. Assessing the legacy of Brown today, contributors analyze its influence on contemporary law, African American thought, and educational opportunities for minority children. Contributors Tomiko Brown-Nagin Davison M. Douglas Raymond Gavins Laurie B. Green Christina Greene Blair L. M. Kelley Michael J. Klarman Peter F. Lau Madeleine E. Lopez Waldo E. Martin Jr. Vicki L. Ruiz Christopher Schmidt Larissa M. Smith Patricia Sullivan Kara Miles Turner Mark V. Tushnet

Those Who Know Don't Say

Those Who Know Don't Say PDF Author: Garrett Felber
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469653834
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Challenging incarceration and policing was central to the postwar Black Freedom Movement. In this bold new political and intellectual history of the Nation of Islam, Garrett Felber centers the Nation in the Civil Rights Era and the making of the modern carceral state. In doing so, he reveals a multifaceted freedom struggle that focused as much on policing and prisons as on school desegregation and voting rights. The book examines efforts to build broad-based grassroots coalitions among liberals, radicals, and nationalists to oppose the carceral state and struggle for local Black self-determination. It captures the ambiguous place of the Nation of Islam specifically, and Black nationalist organizing more broadly, during an era which has come to be defined by nonviolent resistance, desegregation campaigns, and racial liberalism. By provocatively documenting the interplay between law enforcement and Muslim communities, Felber decisively shows how state repression and Muslim organizing laid the groundwork for the modern carceral state and the contemporary prison abolition movement which opposes it. Exhaustively researched, the book illuminates new sites and forms of political struggle as Muslims prayed under surveillance in prison yards and used courtroom political theater to put the state on trial. This history captures familiar figures in new ways--Malcolm X the courtroom lawyer and A. Philip Randolph the Harlem coalition builder--while highlighting the forgotten organizing of rank-and-file activists in prisons such as Martin Sostre. This definitive account is an urgent reminder that Islamophobia, state surveillance, and police violence have deep roots in the state repression of Black communities during the mid-20th century.

The Fight for America's Schools

The Fight for America's Schools PDF Author: Barbara Ferman
Publisher: Education Politics and Policy
ISBN: 9781682530955
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book investigates new developments in community organizing around education - the reconfiguration of historical alliances, the mobilization of new organizations, and the potential for new coalitions--Provided by publisher.