Igniting Justice and Progressive Power


Book Description

A progressive resurgence is happening across the United States. This book shows how long-lasting coalitions have built progressive power from the regional level on up. Anchored by the "think and act" affiliate organizations of the Partnership for Working Families (PWF) these regional power building projects are putting in place the vision, policy agenda, political savvy, and grassroots mobilization needed for progressive governance. Through six sections, the book explores how Partnership for Working Families projects are a core part of the defeat of the right-wing in states such as California; the challenge to corporate neoliberalism in traditionally "liberal" areas; and contests for power in such formally solid red states as Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado. This book considers how these PWF groups work on economic, racial and environmental justice challenges, equitable development, and other critical issues. It addresses how, at their core, they bring together labor, community, environmental, and faith-based organizations and the coalitions and campaigns that they developed have won and continue to win substantial victories for their communities. Igniting Justice and Progressive Power will be of interest to activists and concerned citizens looking to understand how lasting political change actually happens as well as all scholars and students of social work, urban geography, political sociology, community development, social movements and political science more broadly.




Democracy Unbound


Book Description

David Reynolds explains how grassroots activists are translating mass discontent into new people-driven parties in America. This is the first and only book to look beyond the superficial media coverage of Ross Perot to the real movement for fundamental change.




A New New Deal


Book Description

In A New New Deal, the labor movement leaders Amy B. Dean and David B. Reynolds offer a bold new plan to revitalize American labor activism and build a sense of common purpose between labor and community organizations. Dean and Reynolds demonstrate how alliances organized at the regional level are the most effective tool to build a voice for working people in the workplace, community, and halls of government. The authors draw on their own successes to offer in-depth, contemporary case studies of effective labor-community coalitions. They also outline a concrete strategy for building power at the regional level. This pioneering model presents the regional building blocks for national change. A diverse audience—both within the labor movement and among its allies—will welcome this clear, detailed, and inspiring presentation of regional power-building tactics, which include deep coalition-building, leadership development, policy research, and aggressive political action. A New New Deal explores successful coalitions forged in Los Angeles, Boston, Denver, San Jose, New Haven, and Atlanta toward goals such as universal health insurance for children and sensible redevelopment efforts that benefit workers as well as businesses. The authors view partnerships between labor and grassroots organizations as a mutually beneficial strategy based on shared goals, resulting in a broadened membership base and increased organizational capacity. They make the innovative argument that the labor movement can steward both industry and community and make manifest the ways in which workplace battles are not the parochial concerns of isolated workers, but a fundamental struggle for America's future. Drawing on historical parallels, the authors illustrate how long-term collaborations between labor and community organizations are sowing the seeds of a new New Deal.




A Smarter Toronto


Book Description




The Way We Build


Book Description

The construction trades once provided unionized craftsmen a route to the middle class and a sense of pride and dignity often denied other blue-collar workers. Today, union members still earn wages and benefits that compare favorably to those of college graduates. But as union strength has declined over the last fifty years, a growing non-union sector offers lower compensation and more hazardous conditions, undermining the earlier tradition of upward mobility. Revitalization of the industry depends on unions shedding past racial and gender discriminatory practices, embracing organizing, diversity, and the new immigrant workforce, and preparing for technological changes. Mark Erlich blends long-view history with his personal experience inside the building trades to explain one of our economy’s least understood sectors. Erlich’s multifaceted account includes the dynamics of the industry, the backdrop of union policies, and powerful stories of everyday life inside the trades. He offers a much-needed overview of construction’s past and present while exploring roads to the future.




Gathering Power


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Table of contents




Momentum


Book Description

The book reveals how democratizing access to information, leveraging existing social networks, and "powering the edges" can transform social change efforts. Today's digital tools promote interactivity and connectedness by connecting us to one another in inexpensive, accessible, and massively scalable ways. Includes bibliographical references and index.




Blessed Are the Organized


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.




Divine Rebels


Book Description

In an effort to reclaim the fundamental principles of Christianity, moving it away from religious right-wing politics and towards the teachings of Jesus, the American Christian activists profiled in this book agitate for a society free from racism, patriarchy, bigotry, retribution, ecocide, torture, poverty, and militarism. These activists view their faith as a personal commitment with public implications; their world consists of people of religious faith protecting the weak and safeguarding the sacred. Recounting social justice activists on the frontlines of the Christian Left since the 1950s--including Daniel Berrigan, Roy Bourgeois, and SueZann Bosler--this book articulates their faith-based alternative to the mainstream conservative religious agenda and liberal cynicism and describes a long-standing American tradition, which began with the nation's earliest Quaker abolitionists.




Moonrise


Book Description

This Alpha's gonna take a bite out of his brother's fake fiancée. Sheltered Lucia is determined to find a new life and love. No wonder she falls for the first guy to flash her a wolfish smile her first day in the big city. After rescuing the charming shifter from certain death, she's sure he feels the same way about her, and will tell her so — just as soon as he wakes up from his coma. To stay by her instalove’s side in the hospital, Lucia pretends she's his bonded mate. This twist of the truth takes a turn when she meets her fake fiancé’s sexy older brother and wonders if she was a bit too hasty in declaring love-at-first-sight the first time. For months, Jackson has sensed that his fated mate was near. When he enters his brother's hospital room, he instantly pounces on the beautiful, curvaceous woman there. He’s ready to mark her as his own until he discovers his brother may have gotten there first. The more Jackson gets to know Lucia, the more his doubts about the engagement grow. She has nothing in common with his wayward, lone wolf brother. But she sure does check every one of Jackson's boxes. Lucia longs to explore her feelings for Jackson, but how can she turn her back on the comatose wolf she lied about being engaged to? Jackson's fighting a losing battle with his wolf to claim the woman who should be his. When he finds proof that Lucia isn't who she claims to be, can he still trust her with his heart? And what will happen when his brother, her fake-mate, wakes up? Moonrise is the first in a paranormal romance series full of alpha men and the strong, capable women that bend them to their knees. If you like a touch of magic in your romance novels, then you’ll love the witches, fairies, and wolves in the dystopian world of the moonkind. Buy Ines Johnson’s Moonrise today and find yourself caught in the moonglow of this paranormal romance filled with instalove gone hilariously wrong, overbearing families who’ll warm your heart, and the sensuous heat that only happens between fated mates.