Download or read book The Front Porch Revolution written by Robert H. Lengel and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2018-06-07 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A piece of music is more than the sum and sequence of its notes. The spaces between the notes, the rests or silences, are just as essential. Without those spaces, the notes do not properly relate to each other and even the most profound composition degrades into mere noise. Front porches metaphorically represent those rest-spaces in our lives and they are vanishing. Without them we are denying ourselves access to our music and possibility – and the evidence is clear at all levels of interaction. The social and political discourse in this country has, of late, eroded into noise and acrimony, dialogue having been abandoned for weaponized partisan monologues. Diatribes and rhetoric are gleefully accelerated like charged particles online, and on competing TV news and talk radio shows. In fact, this dynamic is experienced in meetings of any scale where diverse perspectives clash around topics we care about. But ask yourself, what is being accomplished beyond gridlock, frayed relationships and destructive polarization. We need to meet in new ways. The Front Porch Revolution is about the need to reassert true conversation and dialogue and reaffirm an earnest commitment to genuine communication. If anything is to be accomplished (and there is much that needs to be accomplished) we must be able to hear ourselves think and be present with our personal stories that give context to that thinking. This is more likely to happen on front porches than on the floor of Congress, in board rooms, in classrooms or on Facebook or Twitter. Viewing the world from the front porch invites a new way of thinking about our communication challenges, leadership and what we have become in the absence of front porches. Based on decades of research and first-hand experience at the Center for Professional Excellence at the University of Texas at San Antonio, The Front Porch Revolution maps out a lucid thoughtful and hopeful path forward to possibility.
Download or read book Front Porch Politics written by Michael S. Foley and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An on-the-ground history of ordinary Americans who took to the streets when political issues became personal. It is widely believed that Americans of the 1970s and '80s were exhausted by the upheavals of the '60s and eager to retreat to the private realm. When they did take action, it was mainly to express their disillusionment with government by supporting the right. In fact, as Michael Stewart Foley shows, neither of these assumptions is correct. On the community level, the 1970s and '80s saw vibrant new forms of political activity emerge. Tenants challenged landlords, farmers practiced civil disobedience to protect their land, and laid-off workers asserted a right to own their idled factories. Activists fought to defend the traditional family or to expand the rights of women, while entire towns organized to protest the toxic sludge in their basements. In all these arenas, Americans were propelled by their own experiences into the public sphere. Disregarding conventional ideas of "left" and "right," they turned to political action when they perceived an immediate threat to the safety and security of their families, homes, or dreams. Front Porch Politics is a people's history told through on-the-ground experiences. Recalling crusades famous and forgotten, Foley shows how Americans followed their outrage into the streets. Their distinctive style of visceral, local, and highly personal activism remains a vital resource for the renewal of American democracy"--
Download or read book Want to Start a Revolution written by Dayo F. Gore and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2009-12 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the black freedom struggle in America has been overwhelmingly male-centric, starring leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Huey Newton. With few exceptions, black women have been perceived as supporting actresses; as behind-the-scenes or peripheral activists, or rank and file party members. But what about Vicki Garvin, a Brooklyn-born activist who became a leader of the National Negro Labor Council and guide to Malcolm X on his travels through Africa? What about Shirley Chisholm, the first black Congresswoman? From Rosa Parks and Esther Cooper Jackson, to Shirley Graham DuBois and Assata Shakur, a host of women demonstrated a lifelong commitment to radical change, embracing multiple roles to sustain the movement, founding numerous groups and mentoring younger activists. Helping to create the groundwork and continuity for the movement by operating as local organizers, international mobilizers, and charismatic leaders, the stories of the women profiled in Want to Start a Revolution? help shatter the pervasive and imbalanced image of women on the sidelines of the black freedom struggle. Contributors: Margo Natalie Crawford, Prudence Cumberbatch, Johanna Fernández, Diane C. Fujino, Dayo F. Gore, Joshua Guild, Gerald Horne, Ericka Huggins, Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Joy James, Erik McDuffie, Premilla Nadasen, Sherie M. Randolph, James Smethurst, Margaret Stevens, and Jeanne Theoharis.
Download or read book From Front Porch to Back Seat written by Beth L. Bailey and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1989-08-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From gentleman callers to big men on campus, from Coke dates to "parking," From Front Porch to Back Seat is the vivid history of dating in America. In chronicling a dramatic shift in patterns of courtship between the 1920s and the 1960s, Beth Bailey offers a provocative view of how we sought out mates-and of what accounted for our behavior. More than a quarter-century has passed since the dating system Bailey describes here lost its coherence and dominance. Yet the legacy of the system remains a strong part of our culture's attempt to define female and male roles alike.
Download or read book Development Arrested written by Clyde Woods and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new edition of a classic history of the Mississippi River Delta Development Arrested is a major reinterpretation of the 200-year-old conflict between African American workers and the planters of the Mississippi Delta. The book measures the impact of the plantation system on those who suffered its depredations firsthand, while tracing the decline and resurrection of plantation ideology in national public policy debate. Despite countless defeats under the planter regime, African Americans in the Delta continued to push forward their agenda for social and economic justice. Throughout this remarkably interdisciplinary book, ranging across fields as diverse as rural studies, musicology, development studies, and anthropology, Woods demonstrates the role of music—including jazz, rock and roll, soul, rap and, above all, the blues—in sustaining a radical vision of social change.
Download or read book Demonic Grounds written by Katherine McKittrick and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a long overdue contribution to geography and social theory, Katherine McKittrick offers a new and powerful interpretation of black women’s geographic thought. In Canada, the Caribbean, and the United States, black women inhabit diasporic locations marked by the legacy of violence and slavery. Analyzing diverse literatures and material geographies, McKittrick reveals how human geographies are a result of racialized connections, and how spaces that are fraught with limitation are underacknowledged but meaningful sites of political opposition. Demonic Grounds moves between past and present, archives and fiction, theory and everyday, to focus on places negotiated by black women during and after the transatlantic slave trade. Specifically, the author addresses the geographic implications of slave auction blocks, Harriet Jacobs’s attic, black Canada and New France, as well as the conceptual spaces of feminism and Sylvia Wynter’s philosophies. Central to McKittrick’s argument are the ways in which black women are not passive recipients of their surroundings and how a sense of place relates to the struggle against domination. Ultimately, McKittrick argues, these complex black geographies are alterable and may provide the opportunity for social and cultural change. Katherine McKittrick is assistant professor of women’s studies at Queen’s University.
Download or read book Durable Trades written by Rory Groves and published by Front Porch Republic Books. This book was released on 2020-11-12 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With over thirty thousand occupations currently in existence, workers today face a bewildering array of careers from which to choose, and upon which to center their lives. But there is more at stake than just a paycheck. For too long, work has driven a wedge between families, dividing husband from wife, father from son, mother from daughter, and family from home. Building something that will last requires a radically different approach than is common or encouraged today. In Durable Trades, Groves uncovers family-centered professions that have endured the worst upheavals in history--including the Industrial Revolution--and continue to thrive today. Through careful research and thoughtful commentary, Groves offers another way forward to those looking for a more durable future.
Download or read book The American Porch written by Michael Dolan and published by Lyons Press. This book was released on 2004-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating look at an American institution-a place where public life meets private.
Download or read book The Wake written by Paul Kingsnorth and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A work that is as disturbing as it is empathetic, as beautiful as it is riveting." —Eimear McBride, New Statesman In the aftermath of the Norman Invasion of 1066, William the Conqueror was uncompromising and brutal. English society was broken apart, its systems turned on their head. What is little known is that a fractured network of guerrilla fighters took up arms against the French occupiers. In The Wake, a postapocalyptic novel set a thousand years in the past, Paul Kingsnorth brings this dire scenario back to us through the eyes of the unforgettable Buccmaster, a proud landowner bearing witness to the end of his world. Accompanied by a band of like-minded men, Buccmaster is determined to seek revenge on the invaders. But as the men travel across the scorched English landscape, Buccmaster becomes increasingly unhinged by the immensity of his loss, and their path forward becomes increasingly unclear. Written in what the author describes as "a shadow tongue"—a version of Old English updated so as to be understandable to the modern reader—The Wake renders the inner life of an Anglo-Saxon man with an accuracy and immediacy rare in historical fiction. To enter Buccmaster's world is to feel powerfully the sheer strangeness of the past. A tale of lost gods and haunted visions, The Wake is both a sensational, gripping story and a major literary achievement.
Download or read book After the Revolution written by Robert Evans and published by AK Press. This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What will the fracturing of the United States look like? After the Revolution is an edge-of-your-seat answer to that question. In the year 2070, twenty years after a civil war and societal collapse of the "old" United States, extremist militias battle in the crumbling Republic of Texas. As the violence spreads like wildfire and threatens the Free City of Austin, three unlikely allies will have to work together in an act of resistance to stop the advance of the forces of the white Christian ethnostate known as the "Heavenly Kingdom." Out three protagonists include Manny, a fixer that shuttles journalists in and out of war zones and provides footage for outside news agencies. Sasha is a teenage woman that joins the Heavenly Kingdom before she discovers the ugly truths behind their movement. Finally, we have Roland: A US Army vet kitted out with cyberware (including blood that heals major trauma wounds and a brain that can handle enough LSD to kill an elephant), tormented by broken memories, and 12,000 career kills under his belt. In the not-so-distant world Evans conjures we find advanced technology, a gender expansive culture, and a roving Burning Man-like city fueled by hedonistic excess. This powerful debut novel from Robert Evans is based on his investigative reporting from international conflict zones and on increasingly polarized domestic struggles. It is a vision of our very possible future.
Download or read book Preserving Porches written by Renee Kahn and published by Owl Books. This book was released on 1990 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identifies different porch styles, explains how to determine the original design of a porch, and provides step-by-step instructions for repair and maintenance.
Download or read book A Revolution in Eating written by James E. McWilliams and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History of food in the United States.
Download or read book Born Red written by Yuan Gao and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1987-06-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born Red is an artistically wrought personal account, written very much from inside the experience, of the years 1966-1969, when the author was a young teenager at middle school. It was in the middle schools that much of the fury of the Cultural Revolution and Red Guard movement was spent, and Gao was caught up in very dramatic events, which he recounts as he understood them at the time. Gao's father was a county political official who was in and out of trouble during those years, and the intense interplay between father and son and the differing perceptions and impact of the Cultural Revolution for the two generations provide both an unusual perspective and some extraordinary moving moments. He also makes deft use of traditional mythology and proverbial wisdom to link, sometimes ironically, past and present. Gao relates in vivid fashion how students-turned-Red Guards held mass rallies against 'capitalist roader' teachers and administrators, marching them through the streets to the accompaniment of chants and jeers and driving some of them to suicide. Eventually the students divided into two factions, and school and town became armed camps. Gao tells of the exhilaration that he and his comrades experienced at their initial victories, of their deepening disillusionment as they utter defeat as the tumultuous first phase of the Cultural Revolution came to a close. The portraits of the persons to whom Gao introduces us - classmates, teachers, family members - gain weight and density as the story unfolds, so that in the end we see how they all became victims of the dynamics of a mass movement out of control.
Download or read book Divine Revolution written by Dean Brackley and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2004-09-27 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling exploration of one of the central issues - if not 'the' central issue - facing theology in our time: the relation between transcendent salvation and temporal liberation. What does the salvation that the church proclaims mean for the poor of the world? In 'Divine Revolution', Dean Brackley presents in a comprehensive yet manageable way what Catholic theology has to say about this complex and urgent topic. He addresses the historical as well as the systematic dimensions of the question, providing insights that point toward an understanding of the issues that challenge conservative and liberal interpretations alike. In a work of great daring and clarity, Brackley surveys the confusion surrounding the social-historical dimension of salvation in Catholic thought. He shows the irony of the fact that, after 2,000 years, what salvation means for the poor in relationship to their concrete plight remains a 'quaestio disputata' for official, Magisterial teaching. Going deeply into the relationship of salvation and liberation, Brackley explores the thought of Maritain, Rahner, and Gutierrez to demonstrate how the 'synbolon' of the Reign of God that Jesus announces transcends the tired theological distinctions of all sides in the debate. Drawing from developments in feminist and Protestant theology, as well as contemporary social theory, 'Divine Revolution' offers a fresh understanding of what it means to participate in God's revolutionary reign. Catholic tradition, Brackley argues, has great potential to articulate a hope which responds to the suffering of the poor in our time. When conventional wisdom says compassion-fatigued Americans are tired of hearing about the poor, Brackley responds, The poor are far more tired of being poor. They, too, would like to move on to other things, but they cannot.
Download or read book Localism in the Mass Age written by Mark T. Mitchell and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2018-04-02 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States the conventional left/right distinction has become increasingly irrelevant, if not harmful. The reigning political, cultural, and economic visions of both the Democrats and the Republicans have reached obvious dead ends. Liberalism, with its hostility to any limits, is collapsing. So-called Conservatism has abandoned all pretense of conserving anything at all. Both dominant parties seem fundamentally incapable of offering coherent solutions for the problems that beset us. In light of this intellectual, cultural, and political stalemate, there is a need for a new vision. Localism in the Mass Age: A Front Porch Republic Manifesto assembles thirty-one essays by a variety of scholars and practitioners--associated with Front Porch Republic--seeking to articulate a new vision for a better future. The writers are convinced that human apprehension of the true, the good, and the beautiful is best realized within a dense web of meaningful family, neighborhood, and community relationships. These writers seek to advance human flourishing through the promotion of political decentralism, economic localism, and cultural regionalism. In short, Front Porch Republic is dedicated to renewing American culture by fostering the ideals necessary for strong communities.
Download or read book The Good Food Revolution written by Will Allen and published by Avery. This book was released on 2013-07-02 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Previously published as a Gotham Books hardcover edition.
Download or read book Righteous Lives written by Kim Lacy Rogers and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An emotionally evocative, richly textured history based on autobiographical accounts of those who lived and shaped the struggle. The importance of many of Rogers' subjects and the uniqueness of New Orleans make this must reading for anyone interested in the history of the movement. But those interested in oral history and African-American autobiography will find riches aplenty as well. A welcome addition to a number of literatures --Doug McAdam, author of Freedom Summer Righteous Lives skillfully blends oral history with a perceptive analysis of three generations of civil rights leadership in New Orleans. Rogers has revealed not only what people did, but what they remember, and how their assessments of their activism have changed over time. --Donald A. Ritchie, U.S. Senate Historical Office "Rogers paints a slightly less rosy picture, one in which the Louisiana un-American Activities Committee staged a raid on the offices of the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF), and the City Council passed laws prohibiting the right to peaceful assembly, paving the way to jailing protesters." —Gambit Weekly This important study provides fresh insights into the lives of both black and white civil rights leaders, documents the diversity of individuals and motivations, and traces movement history in a major southern city. Well written and well researched, this book is highly recommended for readers at all levels. --Choice Charts the distinctly different experiences and memories of 25 black and white civil rights activists of three 'generations' in New Orleans, opening with a deft sketch of the city's unusual racial background with its black Creole caste. --Publishers Weekly An important study, full of valuable information, profoundly moving testimony, and provocative insights. --The Journal of Southern History A major contribution to our understanding of the civil rights movement. RIGHTEOUS LIVES illustrates the complexity of movements for social change, the long history of seemingly spontaneous conflicts, and the personal consequences of political activism. Rogers reveals how issues of caste and class, of gender and generation divided the black community in New Orleans, while her in-depth interviews and observations bring to the surface previously unexamined contradictions within the white southern experience as well. RIGHTEOUS LIVES also offers perceptive and thought-provoking insights into broader issues of collective and individual memory, life history, and autobiography. It evokes the struggle for African-American self-determination in the Crescent City with clarity and conviction, and it stands as a fitting testimonial to the courageous men and women whose voices provide so much of the book's fascinating narratives and textures. -- George Lipsitz, University of California, San Diego When former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke campaigned for governor in late 1991, race relations in Louisiana were thrust dramatically into the national spotlight. New Orleans, the political and economic hub of the state, is in many ways representative of Louisiana's unique racial mix, a fusion of African-American, Caribbean, European, and white Southern cultures. An old, colorful port famous for its French and Spanish heritage, distinctive architecture, and jazz, New Orleans was a peculiarly segregated city in the 1950s and 1960s. Yet, despite its complicated racial and ethnic identity and heated desegregation battles, New Orleans, unlike other Southern cities such as Birmingham, did not explode. In this moving work, Kim Rogers tells the stories, in their own words, of the New Orleans' civil rights workers who fought to deter the racial terrorism that scarred much of the South in the 1950s and 1960s. Spanning three generations of activists, RIGHTEOUS LIVES traces the risks, triumphs, and disappointments that characterized the lives of New Orleans activists. Chronicling watershed moments in the movement, Rogers' compelling narrative illustrates how blacks and whites worked together to decompress the tensions that accompanied desegregation in the ethnic mosaic of New Orleans.
