The Citizen Rising

While growing up within a loving African American family, a little boy develops a deep understanding of right and wrong and the responsibility that accompanies his choices. Some forty years later, Rohillio Jabel recognizes that it is only through Gods grace and mercy that he has been successful in life. Buoyed by his ideals, innovative ideas, and commitment to helping those less fortunate than himself, Rohillio begins to rise in his south New Jersey community. Rohillio, now known as the Citizen, is disenchanted about the biases that plague the American justice system and tired of belonging to a powerless race. Determined to change the black experience for the better, Rohillio recruits eight peopleincluding ministers, a college professor, a teacher, a banker, a beautician, and drug dealersto help him in his mission to start a new political movement that he hopes will transform their town. But as the eclectic group attempts to fulfill Rohillios mission, it soon becomes evident that their road to success will be lined with many more challenges than they ever imagined. The Citizen Rising shares the tale of one mans journey to change the mind-set of a city with the help of a group of black citizens determined to help him realize his dream.

The 2006 elections will be remembered as the year when the center of power in American politics shifted from traditional top-down central broadcasters to new bottom-up decentralized activists in the blogosphere and netroots. The authors give firsthand accounts of the burgeoning power of the netroots to determine the outcome of political contests, most notably as when the national balance of power was tipped by Jim Webb's rag-tag army of bloggers and netroots activists. They assess the prospects for Netroots 2.0: whether the netroots hordes will crash the party or work out an uneasy cohabitation with the traditional party power elite. The 2006 elections will be remembered as the year when the center of power in American politics shifted from traditional top-down central broadcasters to new bottom-up decentralized activists in the blogosphere and netroots. The authors give firsthand accounts of the burgeoning power of the netroots to determine the outcome of political contests, most notably as when the national balance of power was tipped by Jim Webb's rag-tag army of bloggers and netroots activists who provoked and exposed the gaffe that proved fatal to George Allen's senatorial bid. Veteran online campaigners Feld and Wilcox recount and analyze many other political campaigns in which netroots activism was decisive or instructive, including:* U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's downfall. *Tim Kaine's election as Virginia govenor. *Howard Dean's and Wes Clark's presidential campaigns. *Ned Lamont's primary victory over Joe Lieberman. The authors conclude with an assessment of the prospects for Netroots 2.0: Will the netroots hordes crash the party or will they work out an uneasy cohabitation with the traditional party power elite? The foreword is written by Markos (Kos) Moulitsas Zuniga, founding editor of the world's biggest political blog, Daily Kos.

The idea of workers owning the businesses where they work is not new. In America’s early years, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison believed that the best economic plan for the Republic was for citizens to have some ownership stake in the land, which was the main form of productive capital. This book traces the development of that share idea in American history and brings its message to today's economy, where business capital has replaced land as the source of wealth creation.div /DIVdivBased on a ten-year study of profit sharing and employee ownership at small and large corporations, this important and insightful work makes the case that the Founders’ original vision of sharing ownership and profits offers a viable path toward restoring the middle class. Blasi, Freeman, and Kruse show that an ownership stake in a corporation inspires and increases worker loyalty, productivity, and innovation. Their book offers history-, economics-, and evidence-based policy ideas at their best./DIV

This text argues that modern liberalism in the United States is not only still alive, but is actually thriving, using evidence from the past four decades.

“More than ever before, this is the book our economy needs.” – Dr. Rajiv Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation “Unwilling to settle for easy answers or superficial changes, O’Leary and Valdmanis push us all to ask more of our economic system.” – Senator Michael F. Bennet This provocative book takes us inside the fight to save capitalism from itself. Corporations are broken, reflecting no purpose deeper than profit. But the tools we are relying on to fix them—corporate social responsibility, divestment, impact investing, and government control—risk making our problems worse. With lively storytelling and careful analysis, O’Leary and Valdmanis cut through the tired dogma of current economic thinking to reveal a hopeful truth: If we can make our corporations accountable to a deeper purpose, we can make capitalism both prosperous and good. What happens when the sustainability-driven CEO of Unilever takes on the efficiency-obsessed Warren Buffett? Does Kellogg’s—a company founded to serve a healthy breakfast—have a sacred duty to sell sugary cereal if that’s what maximizes profit? For decades, government has tried to curb CEO pay but failed. Why? Can Harvard students force the university to divest from oil and gas? Does it even matter if they do? O’Leary and Valdmanis, two iconoclastic investors, take us on a fast-paced insider’s journey that will change the way we look at corporations. Likely to spark controversy among cynics and dreamers alike, this book is essential reading for anyone with a stake in reforming capitalism—which means all of us.

Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression.

Focusing on children's citizenship, participation and rights, this edited collection draws on the work of a number of leading scholars in the sociology of childhood. The contributors explore a range of themes including: tensions between pragmatism and grand theory; revisiting agency/structure debates in the light of children; the challenging of binary thought prevalent in studies around 'generations' and other aspects of sociology; the manifestation of power in time and space; the application of theories into the 'real' world through NGOs, practitioners, policy makers, politicians and empirical research. The collection will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including childhood studies, sociology, politics and social policy, as well as policy makers and practitioners interested in the citizenship, rights and participation of children.

In the decades after the United States formally declared its independence in 1776, Americans struggled to gain recognition of their new republic and their rights as citizens. None had to fight harder than the nation’s seamen, whose labor took them far from home and deep into the Atlantic world. Citizen Sailors tells the story of how their efforts to become American at sea in the midst of war and revolution created the first national, racially inclusive model of United States citizenship. Nathan Perl-Rosenthal immerses us in sailors’ pursuit of safe passage through the ocean world during the turbulent age of revolution. Challenged by British press-gangs and French privateersmen, who considered them Britons and rejected their citizenship claims, American seamen demanded that the U.S. government take action to protect them. In response, federal leaders created a system of national identification documents for sailors and issued them to tens of thousands of mariners of all races—nearly a century before such credentials came into wider use. Citizenship for American sailors was strikingly ahead of its time: it marked the federal government’s most extensive foray into defining the boundaries of national belonging until the Civil War era, and the government’s most explicit recognition of black Americans’ equal membership as well. This remarkable system succeeded in safeguarding seafarers, but it fell victim to rising racism and nativism after 1815. Not until the twentieth century would the United States again embrace such an inclusive vision of American nationhood.

Are you a good citizen? Read about how to be a good citizen everywhere you go.

Thirty-five years after this landmark of urban history first captured the rise, fall, and rebirth of a once-thriving New York City borough—ravaged in the 1970s and ’80s by disinvestment and fires, then heroically revived and rebuilt in the 1990s by community activists—Jill Jonnes returns to chronicle the ongoing revival of the South Bronx. Though now globally renowned as the birthplace of hip-hop, the South Bronx remains America’s poorest urban congressional district. In this new edition, we meet the present generation of activists who are transforming their communities with the arts and greening, notably the restoration of the Bronx River. For better or worse, real estate investors have noticed, setting off new gentrification struggles.