From the Ground Up - Essays on Grassroots Democracy

Should today’s activists aim for more than reformist changes in the policies and personnel of giant corporations and the government? In this collection of classic essays, C. George Benello persuasively argues that modern so cial movements need to rise to the challenge of spearheading a radical re organization of society based on the principles of decentralization, community control, and participatory democracy.

Integrating some of the best of New Left thought and practice with more recent populist and Green perspectives, Benello’s essays and the commentaries of Harry Boyte, Steve Chase, Walda Katz-Fishman, Jane Mansbridge, Chuck Turner, and other major activists from the 1960’s offer important insights for today’s new generation of practical utopians. Originally published in 1993, this revised and updated edition also includes The New Movement and its Theory of Organization, a discussion by David Wieck, Todd Gitlin, George Woodcock, J. F. Conway, and Joan Renold.