Igniting Justice and Progressive Power : The Partnership for Working Families Cities

A progressive resurgence is happening across the United States. This book shows how long-lasting coalitions have built progressive power from the regional level on up. Anchored by the "think and act" affiliate organizations of the Partnership for Working Families (PWF) these regional power building projects are putting in place the vision, policy agenda, political savvy, and grassroots mobilization needed for progressive governance.

Through six sections, the book explores how Partnership for Working Families projects are a core part of the defeat of the right-wing in states such as California; the challenge to corporate neoliberalism in traditionally "liberal" areas; and contests for power in such formally solid red states as Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado. This book considers how these PWF groups work on economic, racial and environmental justice challenges, equitable development, and other critical issues. It addresses how, at their core, they bring together labor, community, environmental, and faith-based organizations and the coalitions and campaigns that they developed have won and continue to win substantial victories for their communities.

Igniting Justice and Progressive Power will be of interest to activists and concerned citizens looking to understand how lasting political change actually happens as well as all scholars and students of social work, urban geography, political sociology, community development, social movements and political science more broadly.

David Reynolds has a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. He works at the Center for Labor and Community Studies at the University of Michigan and teaches State and Local Government at Eastern Michigan University. For almost twenty years he has led a research network based in the United Association for Labor Education’s Central Labor Council Working Group that documents regional and state labor movement innovations that, among other things, have produced many of the PWF affiliates.

Louise Simmons is Professor of Social Work at the University of Connecticut and author or editor of several books and articles on community-labor coalitions and other economic justice issues. She is co-editor with Scott Harding of Economic Justice, Labor and Community Practice (2010, Taylor and Francis). She has a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Studies from MIT and is a long-time activist in Hartford, Connecticut, including serving on the Hartford City Council in the early 1990s.