What Can We Learn From Grassroots Organizing?

Abstract

Truly substantive progressive transformations that stand the test of time require organized pressure from below, especially from groups who demand that our institutions act in more responsive ways around what Nancy Fraser calls the politics of distribution, recognition, and representation. The Fight for America’s Schools is guided by exactly this insight. It presents us with detailed descriptions and analyses of grassroots organizing that acts back against a number of the largely neoliberal educational policies that are having all too many negative effects in education. The book’s investigation of grassroots movements focuses on Philadelphia and its suburbs and on Camden, Newark, and other places in New Jersey. In this essay review, I discuss the power and contradictions of populist mobilizations and point to the ways this book offers a valuable resource in understanding progressive ones.