Author : Abdul Karim Bangura
Publisher : iUniverse
Page : 118 pages
File Size : 48,85 MB
Release : 2003
Category : Law
ISBN : 0595291414
This book seeks to fill a void in the field of American Government and Politics: i.e. law and politics at the grassroots level. The case of Prince George's County in Maryland clearly demonstrates that a number of bold initiatives in American Government and Politics started at the grassroots level and found their way to the national level. This book is one more tool that will help instructors provide a fuller picture of the American polity.
Author : Peter F. Lau
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 417 pages
File Size : 36,86 MB
Release : 2004-12-07
Category : Law
ISBN : 0822386100
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
Author : Theda Skocpol
Publisher :
Page : 385 pages
File Size : 13,60 MB
Release : 2020
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0190083522
The election of Barack Obama in 2008 was startling, as was the victory of Donald Trump eight years later. Because both presidents were unusual and gained office backed by Congresses controlled by their own parties, their elections kick-started massive counter-movements. The Tea Party starting in 2009 and the "resistance" after November 2016 transformed America's political landscape. Upending American Politics offers a fresh perspective on recent upheavals, tracking the emergence and spread of local voluntary citizens' groups, the ongoing activities of elite advocacy organizations and consortia of wealthy donors, and the impact of popular and elite efforts on the two major political parties and candidate-led political campaigns. Going well beyond national surveys, Theda Skocpol, Caroline Tervo, and their contributors use organizational documents, interviews, and local visits to probe changing organizational configurations at the national level and in swing states. This volume analyzes conservative politics in the first section and progressive responses in the second to provide a clear overview of US politics as a whole. By highlighting evidence from the state level, it also reveals the important interplay of local and national trends.
Author : Norman W. Provizer
Publisher :
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 49,73 MB
Release : 1988
Category : Civil rights
ISBN :
This volume reflects the spirit of the 200th anniversary of the drafting of the constitution, with an added twist. The authors look at the constitution and the constitutional system through the lenses of a particular community. The study emphasizes the two-way flow that exists between local situations and constitutional decision making at the national level. Along with studies examining the community impact of court rulings, other essays explore local events that have turned into constitutional issues for the nation, in particular The Herold School-prayer case, the Shreveport Rate case, the post-traumatic stress disorder case, and the Grosjean freedom of press decision. While Part III deals with such cases and policies, Part II looks at the judges who combine national and local perspectives and who serve the connectors in this two-way system. Part I and IV, in turn, provide a variety of articles that are aimed at fleshing out the constitutional connection along both specific and general lines. This framework could be applied, with value, to any number of the communities. In each case, this view from the grassroots offers the opportunity to develop fresh insights into old subjects and to provide a closer sense of community involvement with the constitutional system that the nation justly celebrates.
Author : Jennifer Baumgardner
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 45,62 MB
Release : 2005-01-12
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1466814829
From the authors of Manifesta, an activism handbook that illustrates how to truly make the personal political. Grassroots is an activism handbook for social justice. Aimed at everyone from students to professionals, stay-at-home moms to artists, Grassroots answers the perennial question: What can I do? Whether you are concerned about the environment, human rights violations in Tibet, campus sexual assault policies, sweatshop labor, gay marriage, or the ongoing repercussions from 9-11, Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards believe that we all have something to offer in the fight against injustice. Based on the authors' own experiences, and the stories of both the large number of activists they work with as well as the countless everyday people they have encountered over the years, Grassroots encourages people to move beyond the "generic three" (check writing, calling congresspeople, and volunteering) and make a difference with clear guidelines and models for activism. The authors draw heavily on individual stories as examples, inspiring readers to recognize the tools right in front of them--be it the office copier or the family living room--in order to make change. Activism is accessible to all, and Grassroots shows how anyone, no matter how much or little time they have to offer, can create a world that more clearly reflects their values.
Author : Elizabeth J. Perry
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 415 pages
File Size : 50,52 MB
Release : 2009-07-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0674042050
Observers often note the glaring contrast between China's stunning economic progress and stalled political reforms. Although sustained growth in GNP has not brought democratization at the national level, this does not mean that the Chinese political system has remained unchanged. At the grassroots level, a number of important reforms have been implemented in the last two decades. This volume, written by scholars who have undertaken substantial fieldwork in China, explores a range of grassroots efforts--initiated by the state and society alike--intended to restrain arbitrary and corrupt official behavior and enhance the accountability of local authorities. Topics include village and township elections, fiscal reforms, legal aid, media supervision, informal associations, and popular protests. While the authors offer varying assessments of the larger significance of these developments, their case studies point to a more dynamic Chinese political system than is often acknowledged. When placed in historical context--as in the Introduction--we see that reforms in local governance are hardly a new feature of Chinese political statecraft and that the future of these experiments is anything but certain.
Author : Clarence Lang
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Page : 345 pages
File Size : 47,56 MB
Release : 2010-04-23
Category : History
ISBN : 0472026542
"This is a theoretically sophisticated and thoroughly documented historical case study of the movements for African American liberation in St. Louis. Through detailed analysis of black working class mobilization from the depression years to the advent of Black Power, award-winning historian Clarence Lang describes how the advances made in earlier decades were undermined by a black middle class agenda that focused on the narrow aims of black capitalists and politicians. The book is a major contribution to our understanding of the black working class insurgency that underpinned the civil rights and Black Power campaigns of the twentieth century." ---V. P. Franklin, University of California, Riverside "A major work of scholarship that will transform historical understanding of the pivotal role that class politics played in both civil rights and Black Power activism in the United States. Clarence Lang's insightful, engagingly written, and well-researched study will prove indispensable to scholars and students of postwar American history." ---Peniel Joseph, Brandeis University Breaking new ground in the field of Black Freedom Studies, Grassroots at the Gateway reveals how urban black working-class communities, cultures, and institutions propelled the major African American social movements in the period between the Great Depression and the end of the Great Society. Using the city of St. Louis in the border state of Missouri as a case study, author Clarence Lang undermines the notion that a unified "black community" engaged in the push for equality, justice, and respect. Instead, black social movements of the working class were distinct from---and at times in conflict with---those of the middle class. This richly researched book delves into African American oral histories, records of activist individuals and organizations, archives of the black advocacy press, and even the records of the St. Louis' economic power brokers whom local black freedom fighters challenged. Grassroots at the Gateway charts the development of this race-class divide, offering an uncommon reading of not only the civil rights movement but also the emergence and consolidation of a black working class. Clarence Lang is Assistant Professor in African American Studies and History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Photo courtesy Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri, St. Louis
Author : Kristin Conner Doughty
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 39,22 MB
Release : 2016-03-08
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0812292391
Kristin Conner Doughty examines how Rwandans navigated the combination of harmony and punishment in grassroots courts purportedly designed to rebuild the social fabric in the wake of the 1994 genocide. Postgenocide Rwandan officials developed new local courts ostensibly modeled on traditional practices of dispute resolution as part of a broader national policy of unity and reconciliation. The three legal forums at the heart of Remediation in Rwanda—genocide courts called inkiko gacaca, mediation committees called comite y'abunzi, and a legal aid clinic—all emphasized mediation based on principles of compromise and unity, brokered by third parties with the authority to administer punishment. Doughty demonstrates how exhortations to unity in legal forums served as a form of cultural control, even as people rebuilt moral community and conceived alternative futures through debates there. Investigating a broad range of disputes, she connects the grave disputes about genocide to the ordinary frictions people endured living in its aftermath. Remediation in Rwanda is therefore about not only national reconstruction but also a broader narrative of how the embrace of law, particularly in postconflict contexts, influences people's lives. Though law-based mediation is framed as benign—and is often justified as a purer form of culturally rooted dispute resolution, both by national governments such as Rwanda's, and in the transitional justice movement more broadly—its implementation, as Doughty reveals, involves coercion and accompanying resistance. Yet in grassroots legal forums that are deeply contextualized, law-based mediation can open up spaces in which people negotiate the micropolitics of reconciliation.
Author : Laura Grattan
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 35,6 MB
Release : 2016-01-06
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0190277645
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.
Author : Christopher C. Hull
Publisher : Stanford Law & Politics
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 12,47 MB
Release : 2008
Category : Political Science
ISBN :
"Why Iowa? After all, in the lead-up to the 2008 presidential primary, both Iowa and New Hampshire have come under significant fire - as usual. Critics such as Sen. Carl Levin [D-Mich] have charged that these early contests dominate the nomination process, yet are badly out of step with the ideology and demographics of the party and the country writ large. However, white New Hampshire has suffered a serious setback, Iowa has once again emerged as the first presidential primary contest, in part by arguing that its Precinct Caucus is a time-honored tradition that helped winnow the field with good old retail politicking and grassroots activism.".
