Again and again social change movements--on matter s from the environment to women's rights--have been run by middle-class leaders. But in order to make real progress toward economic and social change, poor people--those most affected by social problems--must be the ones to speak up and lead. It can be done. Linda Stout herself grew up in poverty in rural North Carolina and went on to found one of this country's most successful and innovative grassroots organizations, the Piedmont Peace Project. Working for peace, jobs, health care, and basic social services in North Carolina's conservative Piedmont region, the project has attracted national attention for its success in drawing leadership from within a working-class community, actively encouraging diversity, and empowering people who have never had a voice in policy decisions to speak up for their own interests. The Piedmont Peace Project demonstrates that new ways of organizing can really work. Bridging the Class Divide tells the inspiring story of Linda Stout's life as the daughter of a tenant farmer, as a self-taught activist, and as a leader in the progressive movement. It also gives practical lessons on how to build real working relationships between people of different income levels, races, and genders. This book will inspire and enrich anyone who works for change in our society.

"Ideas of authenticity and respectability were central to the construction of black identities within black cultural and political resistance movements of the early twentieth century. Unfortunately both concepts have also been used to demonize black middle-class women whose endeavors towards racial uplift are too frequently dismissed as assimilationist and whose class status has apparently disqualified them from performing "authentic" blackness and exhibiting race pride." "Kate Dossett challenges these conceptualizations in a thorough examination of prominent black women leaders' political thought and cultural production in the years between the founding of the National Association of Colored Women in 1896 and the National Council of Negro Women in 1935. Through an analysis of black women's political activism, entrepreneurship, and literary endeavor, Dossett argues that black women made significant contributions toward the development of a black feminist tradition which enabled them to challenge the apparent dichotomy between black nationalism and integrationism."--Jacket

In a study that is original and timely, Eve Darian-Smith uses the Channel Tunnel between England and France to explore the shifting geographies of nationalism, postcolonialism, and legal autonomy in the formation of the European Union. Conducting ethnographic research in Kent, the county at the English mouth of the Tunnel, she looks at regional differences in feelings about Europe and at the vocabulary used in discussing the Tunnel. Visual representations—political cartoons, photographs, etchings—regarding the Tunnel are also examined. Two hundred years after Napoleon planned to invade England via a tunnel, the completion in 1994 of a fast rail link between Great Britain and the European mainland symbolizes the disintegration of conventional state borders. While the Tunnel precariously affirms the ideal of a united Europe, it also brings to the fore questions of boundaries between the first and third worlds, colonizers and colonized, and the "East" and the "West." Bridging Divides is about much more than an engineering feat. By exploring historical narratives, tunnel stories, and legal myths, Darian-Smith's study shows the interconnections between people's memories of the past and current history.

Renowned political scientist Terri Givens calls for ‘radical empathy’ in bridging racial divides to understand the origins of our biases, including internalized oppression. Deftly weaving together her own experiences with the political, she offers practical steps to call out racism and bring about radical social change.

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Act, setting into motion one of the great land-use experiments of modern times. The act struck a compromise between protection for one of the West's most stunning landscapes--the majestic Gorge carved by Ice Age floods, which today divides Washington and Oregon--and encouragement of compatible economic development in communities on both sides of the river. In Bridging a Great Divide, award-winning environmental journalist Kathie Durbin draws on interviews, correspondence, and extensive research to tell the story of the major shifts in the Gorge since the Act's passage. Sweeping change has altered the Gorge's landscape: upscale tourism and outdoor recreation, gentrification, the end of logging in national forests, the closing of aluminum plants, wind farms, and a population explosion in the metropolitan area to its west. Yet, to the casual observer, the Gorge looks much the same as it did twenty-five years ago. How can we measure the success of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Act? In this insightful and revealing history, Durbin suggests that the answer depends on who you are: a small business owner, an environmental watchdog group, a chamber of commerce. The story of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area is the story of the Pacific Northwest in microcosm, as the region shifts from a natural-resource-based economy to one based on recreation, technology, and quality of life.

The Sámi are a Northern indigenous people whose land, Sápmi, covers territory in Finland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden. For the Nordic Sámi, the last decades of the twentieth century saw their indigenous rights partially recognized, a cultural and linguistic revival, and the establishment of Sámi parliaments. The Russian Sámi, however, did not have the same opportunities and were isolated behind the closed border until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This book examines the following two decades and the Russian Sámi’s attempt to achieve a linguistic revival, to mend the Cold War scars, and to establish their own independent ethno-political organizations.

Over the last decade, anti-government demonstrations worldwide have brought together individuals and groups that were often assumed unlikely to unite for a common cause due to differences in ideological tendencies. They have particularly highlighted the role of youth, women, social media, and football clubs in establishing unusual alliances between far left and far right groups and/or secular and religious segments of the society. In this wide-ranging volume, the contributors question to what extent political ideologies have lost their explanatory power in contemporary politics and society. This book aims to contribute to the ongoing debates about the relationship between ideology and public protests by introducing the global context that allows the comparison of societies in different parts of the world in order to reveal the general patterns underlying the global era. Tackling a highly topical issue, this book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of international relations, social movements and globalization.