Community Wealth Building and the Reconstruction of American Democracy: Can We Make American Democracy Work?

How can we create and sustain an America that never was, but should be? How can we build a truly multiracial democracy in which everyone is valued and possesses the needed political, economic and social capital so that democracy becomes a meaningful way of life, for all citizens? By critically probing these questions, the editors of Community Wealth Building and the Reconstruction of American Democracy seize the opportunity to bridge the gap between our democratic aspirations and our current reality.

  In a moment of democratic disappointment and anxiety, politicians, policy officials, scholars and citizens desire an effective response. This book assembles new voices and novel perspectives that offer a compelling vision for democracy and the prospects and possibilities afforded by community wealth building, an emerging policy paradigm focused on community-based, creative solutions to systemic problems. The contributors explore how, by cultivating the capacities of citizens, American democracy can be revived - indeed, created - as a veritable practice of everyday life.

Scholars of democracy in political science, history, sociology, public policy, economics, African-American studies and related topics as well as policy practitioners, journalists and students will appreciate the cutting-edge work by leading scholars and the contributions from impactful practitioners from the White House to City Halls, in this discussion of the challenges facing contemporary American democracy and the prospects for reform and change.

Edited by Melody C. Barnes, Co-Director of the Democracy Initiative, Dorothy Danforth Compton Professor and Professor of Practice in the Miller Center of Public Affairs, and a Distinguished Fellow in the School of Law at the University of Virginia, Corey D.B. Walker, Wake Forest Professor of the Humanities, Wake Forest University and Thad M. Williamson, Associate Professor of Leadership Studies and Philosophy, Politics, Economics and Law, University of Richmond, US