But in order to make real progress toward economic and social change, poor people--those most affected by social problems--must be the ones to speak up and lead.It can be done. Linda Stout herself grew up in poverty in rural North Carolina and went on to found one of this country's most successful and innovative grassroots organizations, the Piedmont Peace Project. Working for peace, jobs, health care, and basic social services in North Carolina's conservative Piedmont region, the project has attracted national attention for its success in drawing leadership from within a working-class community, actively encouraging diversity, and empowering people who have never had a voice in policy decisions to speak up for their own interests. The Piedmont Peace Project demonstrates that new ways of organizing can really work.Bridging the Class Divide tells the inspiring story of Linda Stout's life as the daughter of a tenant farmer, as a self-taught activist, and as a leader in the progressive movement. It also gives practical lessons on how to build real working relationships between people of different income levels, races, and genders. This book will inspire and enrich anyone who works for change in our society.

    Each chapter contains 'Questions to frame your reading'.

    It was a turbulent time, marked by revolutionary developments in culture and religion, social conflict, political upheaval, and civil war. It was also an age of passionate debate and radical innovation in political theory and practice. Many contemporary political ideologies and concepts--ideas of the state, civil society, property, and individual rights, to name a few--can trace their ancestry to this era.Illuminating the roots of contemporary Western political thought, A Trumpet of Sedition surveys canonical texts by prominent thinkers such as Thomas More, Richard Hooker, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, radicals like the Levellers and Gerrard Winstanley and other less well known but important figures. In clear and lively prose, while situating them in their social and political context in new and original ways and contrasting the English case to others in Europe. By examining political ideas not merely as free-floating abstractions but as living encounters with the historical experience--the formation of the English state and the rise of agrarian capitalism--A Trumpet of Sedition illuminates the roots of contemporary Western political thought.

    Drawing on oral histories and archival materials, Halpern explores the experiences of and relationship between black and white workers in a fifty-year period that included labor actions during World War I, Armour's violent reaction to union drives in the late 1930s, and organizations like the Stockyards Labor Council and the United Packinghouse Workers of America.