Blessed Are the Organized

Blessed Are the Organized PDF Author: Jeffrey Stout
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691156654
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
How ordinary citizens band together to bring about real change In an America where the rich and fortunate have free rein to do as they please, can the ideal of liberty and justice for all be anything but an empty slogan? Many Americans are doubtful, and have withdrawn into apathy and cynicism. But thousands of others are not ready to give up on democracy just yet. Working outside the notice of the national media, ordinary citizens across the nation are meeting in living rooms, church basements, synagogues, and schools to identify shared concerns, select and cultivate leaders, and take action. Their goal is to hold big government and big business accountable. In this important new book, Jeffrey Stout bears witness to the successes and failures of progressive grassroots organizing, and the daunting forces now arrayed against it. Stout tells vivid stories of people fighting entrenched economic and political interests around the country. From parents and teachers striving to overcome gang violence in South Central Los Angeles, to a Latino priest north of the Rio Grande who brings his parish into a citizens' organization, to the New Orleans residents who get out the vote by taking a jazz band through streets devastated by Hurricane Katrina, Stout describes how these ordinary people conceive of citizenship, how they acquire and exercise power, and how religious ideas and institutions contribute to their successes. The most important book on organizing and grassroots democracy in a generation, Blessed Are the Organized is a passionate and hopeful account of how our endangered democratic principles can be put into action.

Blessed Are the Organized

Blessed Are the Organized PDF Author: Jeffrey Stout
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691156654
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book Here

Book Description
How ordinary citizens band together to bring about real change In an America where the rich and fortunate have free rein to do as they please, can the ideal of liberty and justice for all be anything but an empty slogan? Many Americans are doubtful, and have withdrawn into apathy and cynicism. But thousands of others are not ready to give up on democracy just yet. Working outside the notice of the national media, ordinary citizens across the nation are meeting in living rooms, church basements, synagogues, and schools to identify shared concerns, select and cultivate leaders, and take action. Their goal is to hold big government and big business accountable. In this important new book, Jeffrey Stout bears witness to the successes and failures of progressive grassroots organizing, and the daunting forces now arrayed against it. Stout tells vivid stories of people fighting entrenched economic and political interests around the country. From parents and teachers striving to overcome gang violence in South Central Los Angeles, to a Latino priest north of the Rio Grande who brings his parish into a citizens' organization, to the New Orleans residents who get out the vote by taking a jazz band through streets devastated by Hurricane Katrina, Stout describes how these ordinary people conceive of citizenship, how they acquire and exercise power, and how religious ideas and institutions contribute to their successes. The most important book on organizing and grassroots democracy in a generation, Blessed Are the Organized is a passionate and hopeful account of how our endangered democratic principles can be put into action.

Community Power and Grassroots Democracy

Community Power and Grassroots Democracy PDF Author: Michael Kaufman
Publisher: International Development Research Centre Books
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The collected essays in this book provide a comparative examination of the process of grassroots mobilization and the development of community-based forms of popular democracy in Central and South America. The first part contains studies from individual countries on organizations ranging from those supported by governments and integrated into the country's political structure to groups that were organized against the existing political system. The organizations studied included those focusing on a particular concern, such as housing, and those with wide responsibility for community affairs; but all were organizations based on common interests where people lived and, in some cases, where people worked. The second part offers theme studies on men, women and differential participation; problems and meanings associated with decentralization, especially in relation to devolution of power to the local level and the construction of popular alternatives; and the competing theoretical paradigms of new social movements and resource mobilization.

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.

Reconstructing Democracy

Reconstructing Democracy PDF Author: Justin Behrend
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820340332
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Within a few short years after emancipation, freedpeople of the Natchez District created a new democracy in the Reconstruction era, replacing the oligarchic rule of slaveholders and Confederates with a grassroots democracy that transformed the South after the Civil War.

The Grassroots of Democracy

The Grassroots of Democracy PDF Author: Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Democracy
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description


Green Parties in Transition

Green Parties in Transition PDF Author: E. Gene Frankland
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9780754674290
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This volume consists of analyses by country specialists on the development of green parties in 14 countries across the world. It investigates to what extent the parties have remained true to their original identity or have been transformed, and offers clues on broader questions about party types and party change in contemporary democracies.

Democracy from the Grass Roots

Democracy from the Grass Roots PDF Author: Joseph I. Abrahams
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1425721850
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
In an historic turn, grassroots America has overcome its apathy and cyclic reversion to the ways of the past, last induced by Islamic fundamentalism. Newly cognizant of its inherent interests, grassroots America has responded to the vision of Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton, and fl ocked to the polls. The emotions of politics take front and center. In Democracy From The Grassroots: A Guide to Creative Politics, we examine in depth the political passion of the grassroots and these emergent leaders. Beginning with an inspiring historical overview of grassroots politics in America, the author then guides us through its organizational structures the political clubs, committees, councils, caucuses, and workshops wherein real people work to create real change. A chapter devoted to the analysis of issues, the systems which determine their resolution, and their role in the political campaign, serves to enlighten and motivate the ideal lead-in to an exhaustive section on training. A concise summary integrates the hypotheses set forth about the role of grassroots politics in American social development. And in a unique and compelling twist, that model is then compared to the individual's development as a person. Written by psychoanalyst, political activist and scholar Dr. Joseph Abrahams, Democracy From the Grassroots, A Guide to Creative Political Action presents the pioneering work of three decades in the grassroots trenches. At once a vibrant history lesson and a call to action, this slender volume is as lush in practical howto as it is in thoughtful refl ection and insight. The appendix is remarkable for its richly annotated bibliography and a revealing chronicle of the events and issues of American grassroots movements.

Inventing Local Democracy

Inventing Local Democracy PDF Author: Rebecca Abers
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
ISBN: 9781555878931
Category : Local government
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Abers (political science, Center for Public Policy Research, U. of Brasília, Brazil) provides a close study of innovative city government in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Led by the Workers' Party, the city implemented a participatory budget program in which residents meet in their neighborhoods to determine budget priorities. Taking place in a city long dominated by patronage politics and elite rule, the story is both a sociopolitical study of the impact that state- sponsored participatory forums can have on civil society and a contribution to the theory and practical possibilities of participatory democracy.--

Japan's Living Politics

Japan's Living Politics PDF Author: Tessa Morris-Suzuki
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108804993
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
The first two decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed a rise of populism and decline of public confidence in many of the formal institutions of democracy. This crisis of democracy has stimulated searches for alternative ways of understanding and enacting politics. Against this background, Tessa Morris-Suzuki explores the long history of informal everyday political action in the Japanese context. Despite its seemingly inflexible and monolithic formal political system, Japan has been the site of many fascinating small-scale experiments in 'informal life politics': grassroots do-it-yourself actions which seek not to lobby governments for change, but to change reality directly, from the bottom up. She explores this neglected history by examining an interlinked series of informal life politics experiments extending from the 1910s to the present day.

Grassroot Democracy in Indian Society

Grassroot Democracy in Indian Society PDF Author: G. Palanithurai
Publisher: Concept Publishing Company
ISBN: 9788170228080
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description