Charles Euchner - Böcker

When dissidents and activists toppled powerful regimes across the globe in the 1980s and 1990s?from the Soviet Union to South Africa, from Nicaragua to the Philippines?how did Americans respond to challenges in their own country? The conventional wisdom is that Americans sullenly withdrew from all manner of political action. But in fact, activists

When dissidents and activists toppled powerful regimes across the globe in the 1980s and 1990s,from the Soviet Union to South Africa, from Nicaragua to the Philippines,how did Americans respond to challenges in their own country? The conventional wisdom is that Americans sullenly withdrew from all manner of political action. But in fact, activists of all backgrounds took to the streets to challenge ordinary structures of politics.These movements,their history their cyclical development their organization, strategies, and tactics,constitute what the author calls extraordinary politics." Activists have set the pace on every conceivable issue, including the environment, gay rights, feminism, abortion, states' rights, religion, and multiculturalism. The president and Congress can barely keep up, but extraordinary politics keeps evolving.With style and grace, Charles Euchner weaves together hundreds of examples drawn from movements spanning the ideological spectrum to offer both a practical and intellectual guidebook to political activism in a reputedly apathetic age, embracing with abandon the art of making a difference.

Since its founding, activists have demanded that the United States lives up to its democratic promise. Now, with Rules of Activism, Charles Euchner offers a concise "field guide" to the critical place of political and social movements in American politics.Activists have always been at the center of democratic reform in America: abolitionism and suffragism, labor and urban reform, civil rights and antiwar protest, feminism and environmentalism. They have agitated and confronted authorities to promote basic rights, economic opportunity, and community wellbeing.In this comprehensive guide, Euchner describes fifteen core rules of successful movements. In describing each rule, he offers compelling case studies of activists at work and then examines the rule’s underlying logic. Every aspect of activism is explored: recruitment, training, organizational development, leadership, strategy, tactics, and the pivot from protest to policy.In a world of growing inequality and existential crises, activist politics has never been more important. Rules of Activism offers a necessary guide for practitioners, scholars and students, and ordinary citizens seeking to understand this core political practice.