Rebuild America

Scott Myers-Lipton, Associate Professor at San Jose State University, is the author of Social Solutions to Poverty: America's Struggle to Build a Just Society (Paradigm 2006), as well as numerous scholarly articles on civic engagement, education, and racism. For the past 20 years, Myers-Lipton has helped students examine solutions to poverty by taking them to live at homeless shelters, the Navajo and Lakota nations, Kingston, Jamaica and the Gulf Coast. He is also the cofounder of the Gulf Coast Civic Works Campaign. He is the recipient of the Mover of Mountains Award from the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Association of Santa Clara County and the Manuel Vega Latino Empowerment Award. He lives with his wife, Diane, and his two children, in the Santa Cruz mountains, where they are the proprietors of the Sequoia Retreat Center, a meeting space dedicated to individual and social transformation.Catalog Author BioScott Myers-Lipton, Associate Professor at San Jose State University, is the author of Social Solutions to Poverty: America's Struggle to Build a Just Society (Paradigm 2006), as well as numerous scholarly articles on civic engagement, education, and racism.

“Progressives will applaud the call for federally run employment programs to put millions to work and rebuild America. … Policy wonks, political scientists, and New Deal fans will love this book.” —Library Journal “In Rebuild America, Scott Myers-Lipton convincingly lays out the case for a public works offensive, and also points to the civic value of engineering an economic recovery around social investment. Everyone should read this book, and one American in particular should take it to heart—Barack Obama.” —Robert Kuttner, coeditor for the American Prospect and author of Obama’s Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency “Welcome to the New Era of Progressivism! Scott Myers-Lipton offers some solutions to many of America’s most nagging problems. An important and well-written call for action. —Douglas Brinkley, author of The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast and The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America “If Obama does not show boldness, it will be up to the citizenry, as it always has been, to raise a shout that will be heard in the White House and the halls of Congress, and that cannot be ignored.” —Howard Zinn in Rebuild America “In Rebuild America: Solving the Economic Crisis through Civic Works, Scott Myers-Lipton provides a historically informed and sophisticated set of policy recommendations for our present moment. His argument—calling for local involvement, strong oversight, and equitable development—is essential reading for anyone interested in how we might achieve a sustainable economic recovery.” —Jason Scott Smith, author of Building New Deal Liberalism “Professor Myers-Lipton has quickly become a leading voice for the principle that our economy and our nation can be rebuilt only if we do it the old-fashioned way: through public works and public investments. Rebuild America is an historic blueprint to make that happen.” —Dr. J. Larry Brown, Founder of the Center on Hunger and Poverty, Harvard University “Rebuild America provides a concise and persuasive argument for a new civic works initiatives to address problems that existed in the U.S. Gulf Coast before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans as well as strategies to address lingering poverty and unemployment problems among African Americans and other people of color.” —Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D., author of Dumping in Dixie “Rebuild America makes a cogent and forceful case for a national civic works plan to address the economic and infrastructure crisis. After 25 years of free market conservative policies that left the country in shambles, there’s now a chance to make things right—along the Gulf Coast and beyond. Scott Myers-Lipton offers up a hopeful and exciting blueprint of how this can happen—by the people, of the people, and for the people.” —Tia Lessin, producer and director, Academy Award–nominated film, Trouble the Water

• Chapter 1 The Crisis in America; Chapter 2 Public Works; Chapter 3 The Improbable History of the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project; Chapter 4 Civic Works for a Twenty-First-Century New Deal; Chapter 5 The Experts Weigh in on Civic Works; Chapter 6 Economic Bill of Rights;