Mobilizing the Community : Local Politics in the Era of the Global City

In this age of global transition, contemporary grassroots mobilization is the dominant form of resistance against the state available to the individual and the community. Using empirically-based case studies as well as theoretical essays, this volume offers suggestions for strategy, ideology and leadership that will enhance the potential of grassroots mobilization.

In an era of global transition, contemporary grassroots organizing represents the dominant form of resistance available to people who seek to control their lives. It is the basis for restoring public life, empowering individuals and communities, and challenging the state and the capital. Through empirically based case studies and theoretical essays, Mobilizing the Community discusses strategies, tactics, ideology, and leadership often used in grassroots mobilization. It covers citizen initiatives, ethnic self-help organizations, community-based development and service delivery programs, political lobbying and advocacy efforts, political party building, and direct action protest groups. The empowerment of various groups--middle-class suburbanites, the poor, women, gay men, lesbian women, communists, neopopulists, workers, immigrants, hispanics, and blacks--is addressed. This comprehensive volume provides powerful suggestions to scholars, practitioners, and analysts of urban studies and political science, as well as activists. "This is a very useful volume. Its emphasis on the process of community organizing leads to a focus on tactics, strategy, resource acquisition and alliance formation. This compliments the more usual survey studies of movement participants which tend to be static and give equal weight to each individual." --Housing Studies