The Backyard Revolution - Understanding the New Citizen Movement

by Harry C. Boyte

For some time, the American public seemed generally unconcerned and passive when it came to political affairs whether local or national in scope. It was commonly felt that the average citizen was preoccupied only with private matters. By the mid- and late 1970s, however, an identifiable citizen movement was beginning to grow out of spaces as personal and immediate as one's own backyard or block. This book offers the first comprehensive, in-depth look at the origins, development, and themes of the new citizen movement. It draws on dozens of interviews with local activists and national leaders of the movement to make the new forms of grassroots organizing come here is what it feels like for a middle-aged housewife to face down a local city council; for a secretary to fight for a wider voice in office decision-making; for a campus radical to begin working among blue-collar ethnics; for a desperately poor Hispanic ghetto community to gain a sense of power and hope.Harry C. Boyte examines the new movement in American politics known variously as the neighborhood movement, the citizen revolt, grassroots politics, or democracy in action. Whatever it may be called, it has been characterized recently by innumerable forms of protest, self-help, and community-building that have flourished at the neighborhood level. Coupled with this new citizen activism is a new generation of populist politicians championing the interests of ordinary people against unresponsive corporate and governmental bureaucracy. Author Harry C. Boyte is a prominent political activist and theorist. His writings on organizing and political theory have appeared in "The New York Times", "Social Policy", "The Progressive", "In These Times", "Democracy", and many other publications. He now directs the Citizen Heritage Center.

271 pages, Paperback

Published June 15, 1981

About the author

Harry Boyte is founder and co-director of the Institute's Center for Democracy and Citizenship, and founder of Public Achievement, a theory-based practice of citizen organizing to do public work for the common good which is being used in schools, universities and communities across the United States and in more than a dozen countries.

He has worked with a variety of foundations, nonprofit, educational, neighborhood and citizen organizations concerned with community development, citizenship education, and civic renewal. In the 1960s, Boyte worked for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as a field secretary with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the southern civil rights movement.

Reviews

[Kevin Carson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great overview of the hopeful New Citizens Movement milieu of the late 70s -- the same broad movement that spawned The People's Bicentennial Commission and Common Sense II, along with a lot of populist/decentralist initiatives against corporate and state power. Unfortunately it was either supplanted or coopted by the New Right's money and direct mail campaigns by the early 80s for the most part.

[David Moss · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an historical relic that focused on community organizing in the 70's, it's not bad. Without an additional source explaining what happened in the following 3 decades, it simply reads as anachronistic. How should I feel about McGovern to understand the author's issues regarding his campaign? I have no idea.