The People Rising; The Campaign Against The Bork Nomination

[4], xi, [1], 317, [3] pages. Illustrations. Minor cover wear and soiling. A unique association copy to a key player in the anti-Bork coalition. Inscribed on the half title page by both authors, To: Jennifer Bartz[?], with best wishes, Michael Pertschuk 11/15/89; and Jennifer, No one should forget one key chronicler who singlehandedly assembled the 'Book of Bork". And thanks for sharing these files with me and pointing me to the right drawer. Best in law school. Wend S. This also appears to be signed on page [1] by Michael Pertschuk. Includes Acknowledgments, Introduction, Fears and Obstacles; Nurturing the Coalition; Propagating the "Book of Bork"; The Roots of Revolt; Tiptoeing Through the Senate; Framing the Debate: Seizing the Symbols; Courting the Media; An All Court Press; Building Momentum; Bury Bork--Or the Campaign?; "Lynch Mobs" and Other Distractions; The Final Round: Bork v. Bork; Hard Questions; and A Taste of Empowerment. Also includes Chronology; Appendix A: Cast of Activists; Appendix B: Alphabetical Listing of Organizations; Bibliography Essay; and Index. As chairman of the Federal Trade Commission from 1977 to 1981 and a commissioner until 1984, Pertschuk worked to strengthen the FTC's consumer protection powers. Wendy Schaetzel Lesko is co-founder of Youth Infusion as well as co-founder of the Youth Activism Project. Lesko is an author of several books on advocacy, especially in the public policy arena, and recognized nationally as an expert and intergenerational collaboration. Derived from a Kirkus review: A passionate rendering of the 1987 grass-roots coalition campaign to defeat the Reagan nomination of Robert Bork to replace Lewis Powell as Justice of the Supreme Court. Pertschuk, former Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, is author of Revolt Against Regulations and Giant Killers. Conservatives damned the anti-Bork campaign as an unconscionable politicalization of a process meant to be insulated from politics. Liberals might well be damning the campaign in retrospect, since the ultimately successful candidate for the Court, Arthur Kennedy, has proven to be more intractably conservative than Bork may have been. But the authors insist that the campaign was a "necessary and measured response to Reagan's politicizing of the judiciary." The campaign itself--which forged a bond between action groups as diverse as the ACLU, the American Nurses Association, the Children's Defense Fund, the National Council of Churches, and the Organization of Chinese Americans--was a great lesson, the authors state, in the advocacy skills of coalition-building, networking, lobbying, research, grass-roots organizing, and media advocacy. In the end, the authors conclude, the coalition was a model for future "grand progressive alliances": it overcame the fragmentation that progressive groups had experienced through the Reagan years; it blended "inside" Washington groups and "outside" networks; it provided a lesson in the utilization of professional lobbyists, organizers, and media specialists, it mobilized Democratic Party leaders in Congress as no other issue of the decade; and, most importantly, it renewed hope for empowerment among progressives. A liberal answer to Bork's own The Tempting of America.…