At a time when participation in democratic governance exhibits a decrease among the less well-off and an increase of power among the elite, one big question concerns how to reverse this trend. Wood and Fulton have devoted this book to finding ways to build democratic participation by low-income and working families, and to create cross-racial alliances. Here s where faith-based organizations enter the picture. These organizations have been significant players in shaping health-care reform, financial reform, and immigration reform at higher levels of government, aimed at benefitting working families. It is a movement which directly addresses economic inequality, policy paralysis, and racial injustice in the United States. Faith-based organizing, the authors show, offers important lessons for an American public struggling to combine universalist democratic ideals with an increasingly multicultural reality in what will soon be a thoroughly multicultural society, as new immigrant arrivals and demographic diffusion spread diversity into settings that were once bastions of white subculture. Models for community organizing have been supplied over time by Saul Alinsky, Cesar Chavez, and Martin Luther King, Jr. "A Shared Future" has a distinctly empirical focus on one of the most important sponsoring networks for faith-based organizations: PICO (Pacific Institute for Community Organizations), which shifted neighborhood-based organizations to congregation-based organizations. They achieved a high profile during the formation of health care policy that found its way into Obamacare legislation, and have also been an important agent for addressing racial equity. Wood and Fulton here address a new generation of faith-based community organizers, seeking to ground the movement in what they call ethical democracy, and fleshing out an approach to addressing economic inequality and political paralysis.
“A hopeful testimony to how racial injustice can begin to be addressed constructively within one form of democratic practice.” —Sociology of Religion Faith-based community organizers have spent decades working for greater equality in American society, and more recently have become significant players in shaping at the highest levels of government. In A Shared Future, Richard L. Wood and Brad R. Fulton draw on a national study of community organizing coalitions and in-depth interviews of key leaders to show how faith-based organizing is creatively navigating the competing aspirations of America’s universalist and multiculturalist democratic ideals, even as it confronts three demons bedeviling American politics: economic inequality, federal policy paralysis, and racial inequity. With a broad view of the entire field and a distinct empirical focus on the PICO National Network, Wood and Fulton’s analysis illuminates the tensions, struggles, and deep rewards that come with pursuing racial equity within a social change organization and in society. Ultimately, A Shared Future offers a vision for how we might build a future that embodies the ethical democracy of the best American dreams. “A critically important book.” —Mark R. Warren—author of A Match on Dry Grass: Community Organizing as a Catalyst for School Reform “Loaded with firsthand accounts, accessible critical analyses, and spirited conviction, this book exemplifies religious witness and political participation.” —Christian Century “Unabashedly promoting a liberal agenda to address issues of growing inequality, poverty, educational disparities, racial injustice, voter suppression, and policy paralysis at the national level. Highly recommended.” —Choice “A remarkable achievement. . . . Timely and relevant.” —American Journal of Sociology
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