In the first case study of its kind, Tweton explores the New Deal in one Minnesota county: how programs operated, what impact they had on communities and people, and how people responded. The story he tells is based on oral history interviews, township and village records, files of government papers, and county newspapers.

Grassroots Rising is a passionate call to action for the global body politic, providing practical solutions for how to survive--and thrive--in catastrophic times. Author Ronnie Cummins aims to educate and inspire citizens worldwide to organize and become active participants in preventing ecological collapse. This book offers a blueprint for building and supercharging a grassroots Regeneration Movement based on consumer activism, farmer innovation, political change, and regenerative finance--embodied most recently by the proposed Green New Deal in the US. Cummins asserts that the solution lies right beneath our feet and at the end of our forks through the transformation of our broken food system. Using regenerative agriculture practices that restore our agricultural and grazing lands, we can sequester massive amounts of carbon in the soil. Coupled with an aggressive transition toward renewables, he argues that we have the power to not only mitigate and slow down climate change, but actually reverse global warming. In synergy with the Sunrise Movement and the growing support of a Green New Deal, Grassroots Rising will impact millions of conscious consumers, farmers, and the general public during the crucial 2020 election year and beyond. This book shows that a properly organized and executed Regeneration Revolution can indeed offer realistic climate solutions while also meeting our everyday needs. If you're wondering what you can do to help address the global climate crisis, joining the Regeneration Revolution might be the best first step. " Grassroots Rising] is a 'good news' instructional book for Regeneration, a practical, shovel-ready plan of action for the United States and the world to transition to climate stability, peace, justice, health, prosperity, cooperation, and participatory democracy." --Ronnie Cummins

Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty has long been portrayed as the most potent symbol of all that is wrong with big government. Conservatives deride the War on Poverty for corruption and the creation of "poverty pimps," and even liberals carefully distance themselves from it. Examining the long War on Poverty from the 1960s onward, this book makes a controversial argument that the programs were in many ways a success, reducing poverty rates and weaving a social safety net that has proven as enduring as programs that came out of the New Deal. The War on Poverty also transformed American politics from the grass roots up, mobilizing poor people across the nation. Blacks in crumbling cities, rural whites in Appalachia, Cherokees in Oklahoma, Puerto Ricans in the Bronx, migrant Mexican farmworkers, and Chinese immigrants from New York to California built social programs based on Johnson's vision of a greater, more just society. Contributors to this volume chronicle these vibrant and largely unknown histories while not shying away from the flaws and failings of the movement--including inadequate funding, co-optation by local political elites, and blindness to the reality that mothers and their children made up most of the poor. In the twenty-first century, when one in seven Americans receives food stamps and community health centers are the largest primary care system in the nation, the War on Poverty is as relevant as ever. This book helps us to understand the turbulent era out of which it emerged and why it remains so controversial to this day.

In tackling America's worst depression the New Deal brought the federal government into unprecedented contact with most Americans and shaped the political economy of the contemporary United States. This major new study incorporates the results of many recent case studies of the New Deal and provides a detailed assessment of the impact of the depression and New Deal programmes on businessmen, industrial workers, farmers and the unemployed. In his thematic analysis of the implementation of particular programmes, rather than in a narrative of policymaking, Dr Badger explains the political and ideological constraints which limited the changes wrought by the New Deal.

This book offers a chronological introduction to the New Deal, incorporating details of events and developments outside as well as within Washington, D.C., and examining American and foreign reaction to the policies. The main emphasis of the book is on policy formation and implementation and on the context in which the New Deal evolved. A detailed chronology of events is provided, and The New Deal ends with notes on further reading and an extensive index.

How earnest hippies, frightened parents, suffering patients, and other ordinary Americans went to war over marijuana In the last five years, eight states have legalized recreational marijuana. To many, continued progress seems certain. But pot was on a similar trajectory forty years ago, only to encounter a fierce backlash. In Grass Roots, historian Emily Dufton tells the remarkable story of marijuana's crooked path from acceptance to demonization and back again, and of the thousands of grassroots activists who made changing marijuana laws their life's work. During the 1970s, pro-pot campaigners with roots in the counterculture secured the drug's decriminalization in a dozen states. Soon, though, concerned parents began to mobilize; finding a champion in Nancy Reagan, they transformed pot into a national scourge and helped to pave the way for an aggressive war on drugs. Chastened marijuana advocates retooled their message, promoting pot as a medical necessity and eventually declaring legalization a matter of racial justice. For the moment, these activists are succeeding -- but marijuana's history suggests how swiftly another counterrevolution could unfold.

In an historic turn, grassroots America has overcome its apathy and cyclic reversion to the ways of the past, last induced by Islamic fundamentalism. Newly cognizant of its inherent interests, grassroots America has responded to the vision of Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton, and fl ocked to the polls. The emotions of politics take front and center. In Democracy From The Grassroots: A Guide to Creative Politics, we examine in depth the political passion of the grassroots and these emergent leaders. Beginning with an inspiring historical overview of grassroots politics in America, the author then guides us through its organizational structures the political clubs, committees, councils, caucuses, and workshops wherein real people work to create real change. A chapter devoted to the analysis of issues, the systems which determine their resolution, and their role in the political campaign, serves to enlighten and motivate the ideal lead-in to an exhaustive section on training. A concise summary integrates the hypotheses set forth about the role of grassroots politics in American social development. And in a unique and compelling twist, that model is then compared to the individual's development as a person. Written by psychoanalyst, political activist and scholar Dr. Joseph Abrahams, Democracy From the Grassroots, A Guide to Creative Political Action presents the pioneering work of three decades in the grassroots trenches. At once a vibrant history lesson and a call to action, this slender volume is as lush in practical howto as it is in thoughtful refl ection and insight. The appendix is remarkable for its richly annotated bibliography and a revealing chronicle of the events and issues of American grassroots movements.