Blessed Are the Organized

Jeffrey Stout is professor of religion at Princeton University. His books include Ethics After Babel and Democracy and Tradition (both Princeton). He is past president of the American Academy of Religion and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

"Blessed Are the Organized should be required reading for anyone who cares about the future of democracy in the United States, and anyone who cares about the making of politics."--Lauren F. Winner, Soujorners Magazine "Blessed Are the Organized has a good chance for mass appeal because of the timeliness and the timelessness of the subject. The book is about the little fighting back in big numbers to get the attention of the powerful. Jeffrey Stout shows how it is done in a number of situations. It works."--John Presta, New York Journal of Books "Stout offers a penetrating tour of the organizing efforts of Southwest IAF affiliates, from the devastated neighborhoods of post-Katrina New Orleans, to the shantytown colonias of the Rio Grande valley in Texas, to the crime-ridden neighborhoods of southeast Los Angeles, to a meeting of more affluent democrats in a Marin County synagogue. He gives us a kind of thick ethnographic description of grassroots, face-to-face democracy, seeking in the stories he hears and the events he witnesses to discern the governing principles and practices of a democratic counterculture that has developed largely under the radar of the media spectacles that pass for American public life... The bulk of Stout's book is devoted to a full, often moving, account of these organizing practices at work--not only successfully but unsuccessfully... Incisive as his theoretical abstractions from these stories are, Stout's greater gift to democrats may lie in bringing to light the struggles, and especially the victories, of the largely obscure men and women who populate his narrative... One can only wish for this heartening book a large, wide, and diverse audience. Few will welcome it more than those democrats who, as Stout once did, find themselves stammering for some answers in the face of the skepticism and despair over democracy's future that grip our faded republic."--Robert Westbrook, Commonweal "Stout's book is a must-read for an understanding of citizen participation at all levels of organized problem solving in U.S. government and politics."--Choice "Stout provides useful wisdom for those who will not settle for less than a genuine democratic transformation of our society."--Tikkun "Blessed Are the Organized is a crucially important work that ... analyses our political system through the eyes of the underdogs. This perspective of the periphery is a rare sight in a world dominated by the elite agenda of the mainstream media."--E@sy Yo1k blog "Written in a dynamic style and insisting on characters' profiles, Stout's book is a useful supplement, with data specific to contemporary society, to the political anthropology studies whose main theme is how democratic communities function."--Daniel Sandru, CEU Political Science Journal

• List of Maps xi Preface xiii Chapter One: The Responsibilities of a Citizen 1 Chapter Two: A Power Analysis 21 Chapter Three: Organizing for the Common Good 34 Chapter Four: Rites of Solidarity, Commitment, and Mourning 45 Chapter Five: Domination, Anger, and Grief 53 Chapter Six: Public Address 70 Chapter Seven: Ain't It Awful? 85 Chapter Eight: The Authority to Lead 93 Chapter Nine: On the Treatment of Opponents 114 Chapter Ten: Organize, Reflect, and Reorganize 125 Chapter Eleven: The Compelling Force of the Ideal 134 Chapter Twelve: Face-to-Face Meetings 148 Chapter Thirteen: The Passion of St. Rose 165 Chapter Fourteen: Blood and Harmony 181 Chapter Fifteen: Fathers and Sisters for Life 186 Chapter Sixteen: Pastors and Flocks 196 Chapter Seventeen: The Contested Sacred 210 Chapter Eighteen: Across Great Scars of Wrong 235 Chapter Nineteen: The Organizer President 260 Chapter Twenty: Walking in Our Sleep 278 Acknowledgments 291 Notes 295 Index 329