Grassroots Activism

An investigation of conflicts surrounding eight proposed U.S. trash incinerator projects.

When first proposed in this country during the 1970s, waste-to-energy (WTE) incinerators appeared to be ideal solutions to the growing mounds of trash in our "throw-away" society. Promising to convert useless garbage into electricity while saving precious landfill space, trash incinerators seemed perfectly timed to respond to a national need. Within a decade, however, a grassroots anti-incineration movement emerged as a vibrant offshoot of the environmental movement. In Don't Burn It Here, sociologists Edward Walsh, Rex Warland, and D. Clayton Smith examine this grassroots movement through detailed analyses of the struggles surrounding proposals to build eight municipal incinerators in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey.

The eight case histories that form the heart of the book are comparable to hundreds of others across the U.S. The authors' research is based on interviews, focus group discussions, extensive newspaper files, and questionnaire responses from participants on both sides of the conflicts. A final chapter examines the similarities and differences between the three successful projects and the five defeated ones. An overview of the history of the modern incinerator in the U.S. and the emergence of a major national opposition movement provides the necessary context, and throughout the book, the authors make useful comparisons to other national movements s

This is a handbook for women who want to increase their political involvement at any level. There are interviews with women who have already done so in this guide from 2 political veterans.

Organizing for Peace skillfully compares and analyzes the three major campaigns of the peace movement in the United States since World War I - the Emergency Peace Campaign (1936-1937), the Atomic Test Ban Campaign (1957-1963), and the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign (1979-1986). Kleidman shows how the campaigns organizational dynamics shaped their rise, course, fall, and impact both on public policy and on the peace movement itself. But as Kleidman points out, the three groups failed despite widespread mobilization and intense activism. Combining careful historical research with insights from contemporary social movement theory, this book sheds new light on the campaigns and the peace movement, as well as on key aspects of social movement organizations, cycles, and trends. Particularly valuable for policy and analysis is Kleidman's framework of organizational tensions. Social scientists and historians, particularly students and scholars of social movements and peace movements, will value the policy implications and analytical rigor of this book.

This book takes the reader through the process of successful action for change, from the germ of an idea to finding supporters, getting the word out, and building the critical mass of people, energy, and support to effect the desired result.

Anyone who wants to influence policy -- whether of a corporation, an institution, or government at any level -- will find the tools they need to become an effective issue advocate, and not just another frustrated citizen.

Filled with abundant practical examples and guidelines for success, the book covers such topics as:
-- how public policy issues become ripe for action;
-- how interest groups influence the issue agenda;
-- how lobbying can shape political decisions;
-- how to mobilize grassroots support;
-- how coalitions are formed;
-- how to organize an initiative or referendum.

Women' grassroots activism in Latin America combines a commitment to basic survival for women and their children with a challenge to women' subordination to men. Women activists insist that issues such as rape, battering, and reproductive control cannot be divorced from women' concerns about housing, food, land, and medical care. This innovative, comparative study explores six cases of women' grassroots activism in Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, and Chile. Lynn Stephen communicates the ideas, experiences, and perceptions of women who participate in collective action, while she explains the structural conditions and ideological discourses that set the context within which women act and interpret their experiences. She includes revealing interviews with activists, detailed histories of organizations and movements, and a theoretical discussion of gender, collective identity, and feminist anthropology and methods.