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The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington Hardcover – May 27, 2008
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Insurrection Brewing Across the Country
Job outsourcing. Perpetual busy signals at government agencies. Slashed paychecks. Stolen elections. A war without end, fatally mismanaged. Ordinary Americans on both the Right and Left are tired of being disenfranchised by corrupt politicians of both parties and are organizing to change the status quo. In his invigorating new book, David Sirota investigates whether this uprising can be transformed into a unified, lasting political movement.
Throughout the course of American history, uprisings like the one we are seeing now have given birth to powerful movements to end wars, protect workers, and expand civil rights, so the prospect of today’s uprising turning into a full-fledged populist movement terrifies Wall Street and Washington. In The Uprising, Sirota takes us far from the national media spotlight into the trenches where real change is happening—from the headquarters of the most powerful third party in America to the bowels of the U.S. Senate; from the auditorium of an ExxonMobil shareholder meeting to the quasi-military staging area of a vigilante force on the Mexican border. This is vital, on-the-ground reporting that immerses us in the tumultuous give-and-take of politics at its most personal.
Sirota also offers a biting critique of our politics. He shows how the uprising is, at its core, a reaction to faux “bipartisanship” in the nation’s capital—the “bipartisanship” whereby Republican and Democratic lawmakers join together in putting the agenda of corporate interests above all those of ordinary citizens.
Ultimately, Sirota reminds us that the Declaration of Independence, “America’s original uprising manifesto,” says that governments “derive their powers from the consent of the governed.” Irreverent and insightful, The Uprising shows how the governed have stopped consenting and have started taking action.
- Print length400 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCrown
- Publication dateMay 27, 2008
- Dimensions7 x 1.5 x 10.25 inches
- ISBN-100307395634
- ISBN-13978-0307395634
Editorial Reviews
Review
—Washington Post
“Audacious. . . . Sirota has a true gift for phrase-making and the pithy comment.”
—Providence Journal
"Sirota (Hostile Takeover ) chronicles how ordinary citizens on the right and the left are marshaling their frustrations with the government into uprisings across the country and analyzes the effectiveness and longevity of their efforts. Citing developments as disparate as progressive political victories in the Montana state senate and the rise of the California Minutemen militia, the author weaves entertaining case studies, keeping his tone conversational, the narrative fast-paced and the content accessible. Sirota hits numerous high notes, including a fine elucidation of continuing Democratic support for the Iraq War, a breakdown of the "echo chamber" qualities of beltway television shows like Hardball and salient observations of how and why the Democratic Party severed ties with the liberal uprising of the '60s era. According to Sirota, "The activism and energy frothing today is disconnected and atomized. The only commonality between it all is rage." It remains to be seen whether this rage will snowball into something large enough to upset entrenched political systems, but for the time being, this book presents a rousing account of the local uprisings already in effect."
—Publishers Weekly
"After so many decades of fake populism--of revolts by the wealthy, red-state fantasies, and stock-picking grandmas--could we finally be looking at the real thing? In this compelling book, rooted in history but as contemporary as this morning's newspaper, David Sirota gives us reason to hope."
—Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas? and The Wrecking Crew
"David Sirota is honest, uncompromising, passionate, and a brilliant communicator. He is the most important progressive voice we have in this country. The Uprising should be read by anyone who wants to understand exactly how the ordinary person has been sold out by the political system."
—Matt Taibbi, national political correspondent for Rolling Stone and author of The Great Derangement
"This book engages in the nearly lost art of reporting to tell us what's going on in the many places that the elite media can't be bothered to look. It chronicles just how fed up Americans have become, and nominates a few heroes for them to turn to: that great senator Bernie Sanders, or the activist nun Pat Daly, for instance. It cheered me a good deal to read how many Americans are finally starting to fight back against the rule of greed that has been our lot for too many years."
—Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy and The Bill McKibben Reader
"With a historian’s and a journalist’s storytelling gifts, David Sirota describes the populist tide that so many elites fear and ignore at all our peril: multinational corporations that rip off local communities as if they were resource colonies, a national security state that manipulates our young to bleed for that same empire, and a political elite more concerned with preserving its power than empowering citizens to become self-governing. Since leaving the Beltway behind, David Sirota has become a must-read chronicler in the populist tradition."
—Tom Hayden, author of The Tom Hayden Reader and Ending the War in Iraq
"David Sirota details with clarity the sharp knife of corporate greed pointed at the throat of our democracy--and the populist uprising that may thwart the threat if enough Americans heed his call. If you love your country, buy The Uprising, read it, and act."
—Joe Trippi, chief presidential campaign strategist for Howard Dean and John Edwards and author of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
"David Sirota is a clear-headed and principled hell-raiser for economic justice. More like him and we'll have a real uprising on our hands. "
—Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine
About the Author
Visit DavidSirota.com
Product details
- Publisher : Crown; 1st edition (May 27, 2008)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0307395634
- ISBN-13 : 978-0307395634
- Item Weight : 1.55 pounds
- Dimensions : 7 x 1.5 x 10.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #4,481,087 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,408 in Civics & Citizenship (Books)
- #4,469 in General Elections & Political Process
- #4,537 in Elections
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
David Sirota is a journalist, TV commentator and nationally syndicated weekly newspaper columnist. His weekly column is based at the San Francisco Chronicle, Portland Oregonian and The Seattle Times and now appears in newspapers with a combined daily circulation of more than 1.6 million readers. He has written three books, the latter of which became the basis for the National Geographic Channel's major miniseries on the 1980s. He has contributed to The New York Times Magazine, Harper's and The Nation. He appears regularly as a guest on MSNBC and Current TV and has been featured on The Colbert Report and NBC's Last Call with Carson Daly. Sirota received a degree in journalism and political science from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. He lives in Denver with his wife, Emily; his son Isaac; and his dog, Monty. Find his website at www.davidsirota.com.
You can schedule Sirota to appear at your book club, civic organization or local bookstore at his website at www.davidsirota.com
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I didn't like this book too much, and not only because Sirota's efforts at humor often grated. More substantively, the case that these disparate phenomena constitute an anti-corporate uprising is weak. The chapters on Lou Dobbs and the Minutemen are particularly odd. He has to prod pretty hard to get the Minutemen to offer much anti-big money rhetoric (and while he seems clear that they are small business people, he laments, in Tom Frank style, that 'working class' whites are diverted from their natural class allies). And he is much too generous to Lou Dobbs, who is a racist creep. I tuned in to Lou Dobbs last night to see what I was missing. We were told that Sarah Palin was picked on unfairly for being an 'independent'. Viewers were urged to call in to congress to stop Obama's stimulus. This is an anti-corporate uprising?
Although the book has many chapters, as outlined above, it is as striking for what it leaves out as for what is included. Citywide coalitions organized by the Industrial Areas Foundation (ironically inspired by Saul Alinsky) to fight for living wages, are nowhere to be seen. Nor are the immigrant protests of 2006, which constituted the largest protest wave the US has seen in decades, included. Underlying these exclusions is the belief that 'real' politics in the US is the provenance of white people. When a blogger makes the indisputable observation that an ever declining proportion of Americans are familiar with small town life, Sirotta dismisses this as 'bourgeois'.
The chapter on the anti-war movement is marred by poor journalism. Sirota doesn't bother to actually talk to any of the leaders of UFPJ, who could have clarified some of his many misperceptions (that they do nothing but protest, that they don't care about the image they project, that they are the same as Naderites and ANSWER). He doesn't talk to anyone from ANSWER, either. I'm sure many in the anti-war movement who have denounced UFPJ for being too close to the Democratic Party would be amused to hear his descriptions of them as thoroughly outside that structure. This sloppiness speaks to a general 'leftphobia' on Sirotta's part. Like many liberals, he probably believes that any association with an anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist left will hopelessly taint his project. And so he focuses on Lou Dobbs, rather than the far more interesting Democracy Now!, which, with no corporate network backing, has developed a very considerable following (arguably in the ballpark of Lou himself). I think trying to build an uprising by ignoring people of color and the left is doomed. The uprisings of the thirties and the sixties had genuine lefts as central components. And the struggles of people of color were the driving force behind the latter. In any case, the smattering of tax proposals, shareholder activism and modest electoral successes described by Sirota doesn't constitute an uprising. If it does come, people with his sort of exclusionary mentality will have to be pushed out of the way.
What it is, ain't exactly clear....
Stop, children, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down..."
Dave Sirota's wild ride through the world of contemporary American activism should have have, as background music, the Buffalo Springfield anthem "For What It's Worth". Seriously: play the music, then get back to this review!
Some have faulted this book for not being a well-organized technical manual for political action, nor an encyclopedic and boring analysis of a political movement. That misses the point; this book is not a Grand Theory of Everything, but a bunch of observations making a point based on facts, not theory: Just about everybody in America is mad as hell, doesn't wanna take it anymore, and does not have a realistic hope of making a difference.
So we turn to unrealistic hopes, usually consisting of finding an enemy at which to make ineffectual gestures. This keeps everybody happy: rightwingers and leftwingers can attack each other, and those who profit from the collapse of our American freedoms and economy go on their merry way.
Sirota's fact-based analysis suggests a solution, but it's painful. We need some sort of Multi-Step program starting with accepting that we've screwed up in the implementation of our deepest, most sincerely-held political beliefs. Our fun and angry finger-waving has NEVER worked; there is no substitute for the sober work of organizing and pushing through reforms such as Fusion Voting.
The people on which Sirota reports may be stuck in stage of Denial and Anger; they his lack of reverence for their hobbyhorses must be maddening. On Amazon, a leader of Minuteman group he visited wrote a hugely angry review, but I wouldd think the people who should really be p.o.'d are the members of the Permanent Protest Party (the stilt-walkers, puppeteers, tie-dyed T-shirt vendors and whatnot that clutter every protest and have had no success since the Civil Rights Movement ... in whose parades, Sirota is too polite to observe, there were no puppets or stilt-walkers.) This book may have been run through the shredder at MoveOn.org as well.
But, just as a true friend tells you the truth you don't want to hear, Sirota tells his friends others alike some stuff we really need to know. His succinct deconstruction of the futility of mass parades rings very true; the largest antiwar demonstration in history didn't even slow down the 2003 invasion of Iraq, whereas the relentless organizing and personal networking of some recent political campaigns have succeeded. (It is striking that this book came out *before* the Obama campaign won by reaching out to every community; not winning every community but making a sincere try. Take the lesson!)
The task before us is large; the road is not clear but the first steps are obvious: Enjoy the book, then go talk to a wingnut. You have something in common!