Year Left Volume 3, Reshaping the US Left : Popular Struggles in the 1980s

This is the first chronicle of the other side of the Reagan era: the surprising renaissance of the popular left across the United States. Challenging political conservatism and possessive individualism, a vigorous spectrum of community-based oppositions and insurgent subcultures has flourished.<br><br>This book puts the different experiences together in a common perspective. Participants recount the history of the radical struggles of our time: the Central America solidarity campaigns, the Sanctuary movement, the 'Freeze', the women's peace movement, the new eco-socialism, and more. Union activists analyze a trio of seminal community-supported labor struggles - P-9, Watsonville and GM Van Nuys - that have shown ways to resist concessions and plant closure. There is a fascinating comparison with the experience of Canadian labor against the New Right: Solidarity in British Columbia. A final section reconsiders the language of class in American history and offers fresh perspectives on racism and the representation of white working-class experience.<br><br>Together with previous volumes of <i>The Year Left</i> on socialists and the Democratic Party (volume 1) and the Rainbow Coalition and popular cultures of color (volume 2), this is intended to be a fundamental contribution to discussion of the future of the American left.