Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland [Paperback]

Jeffrey St. Clair (Editor), Joshua Frank (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2008

A Red States rebellion is breaking out. It’s been going on for some time. The stakes are high and the odds are long and the battles are waged over the essentials of life: water, food, wilderness, and human liberty.

Out here there are no fixed blueprints for resistance. No organizational flow charts for how to plot a rebellion. No focus groups or pulse polls or field-tested PR strategies or genteel formalities for grant applications. Marx would be confused. The human spirit is the best guide. When Peabody Coal announces its intention to evict your grandmother, dynamite her hogan and strip-mine the family sheep pasture, you don’t have time to consult Weiden and Kennedy for how to spin it to your advantage or wait around for a year on the infinitesimal chance that Pew Charitable Trusts might drop you a few bucks. You must act. As a group if you can, unilaterally if necessary—militantly if you must. The resistance in these places isn’t always about revolution; it’s about maintaining a semblance of dignity in a world where such a thing is in short supply.

This book offers just a few snapshots of grassroots resistance that is taking place in the forgotten heartland of America. These are tales of rebellion and courage. Out here activism isn’t for the faint of heart. Be thankful someone is willing to do the dirty work.


“Thank you to all who contributed to this absolutely necessary book that tells too-often ignored stories of resistance and rebellion from real people—working class people, indigenous people, people with dirt under their fingernails and rage and sorrow in their hearts, as well as a deep and profound love for the land where they live—who are fighting for their lives, for their communities, and for their landbases against the grinding of the creeping fascism of the corporate state.” —Derrick Jensen, author of Endgame.

“The stakes are high, in the so-called ‘Red States,’ as corporate America, the defense establishment, and an array of minions battle against the biodiversity of "the heartland."  In this book, Joshua Frank and Jeffrey St. Clair skillfully present a diverse set of rebels who defy reckless policies and greedy profiteers. It's easy to feel enthusiastic gratitude for this collection of stories. Matching the principled stance of the narrators, however, presents a sharp challenge.” —Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator, Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

“Those of us who are tired of being laid claim to by right-wing politicians and tut-tutted over by coastal liberals can now brandish a copy of Red State Rebels and declare, ‘This is the real story out here!'” —Stan Cox author of Sick Planet: Corporate Food and Medicine.

“No myth is more urgently in need of debunking than the notion that the ‘enlightened’ residents of so-called Blue states are inexorably pitted against the ‘backward’ masses of so-called Red states. Joshua Frank and Jeffrey St. Clair have woven together a collection of gripping stories of these struggles, large and small, that are transforming the political landscape from the bottom up.” —Sharon Smith, author of Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States.

Joshua Frank was born and raised in Montana. He is the author of Left Out!: How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush. His investigative reports and columns appear in CounterPunch, Chicago Sun-Times, CommonDreams.org, and the Anderson Valley Advertiser.

Jeffrey St. Clair was born and raised in Indiana. He is co-editor of CounterPunch, and his latest book is Born Under a Bad Sky.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jeffrey St. Clair is co-editor of Counterpunch, the progressive Left's premier print and on-line journal. He is author of Been Brown so Long it Looked Green to Me and co-author of End Times. He has also co-edited Politics of Antisemitism, Dime's Worth of Difference, and Serpents in the Garden. Joshua Frank was born and raised in Montana. He is co-editor Dissident Voice, and is author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005). His investigative reports and columns have appeared in many publications, among them: CounterPunch, The Chicago Sun-Times, Common Dreams, Antiwar.com, and the Anderson Valley Advertiser.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: AK Press (September 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1904859844
• ISBN-13: 978-1904859840
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,754,533 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Collection of Lively Grassroots Activism, August 9, 2008

By 

BrickBurner (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland (Paperback)

A Review from Media Mouse:

http://www.mediamouse.org/reviews/073108red_s.php

Much has been written during the Bush years about the Red State/Blue State dichotomy that is the United States of America. This faux-populist analysis of politics is seriously inadequate, but since it fits well into the sound bite news media discussion, it is repeated over and over again. This again is the case as the nation is now less than 100 days from the next presidential election. The campaign strategies and news coverage of the campaign trail continues to be framed in the Red or Blue world.

If you are looking for a different read on this country and not wanting to rely on FOX News pundits or CNN experts, then Red State Rebels might be what you need. Co-editor of the excellent online news site CounterPunch, Jeffrey St. Clair has teamed up with Joshua Frank (the author of Left Out!: How Liberals Helped Re-elect George W. Bush) to bring us a fabulous collection of essays that demolishes the checkerboard world of Red States and Blue States.

The focus of this collection is on the lively grassroots activism that is currently taking place in what are generally deemed Red States, but by no means does this book suggest that this grassroots activism is connected to the Democratic Party. In fact, there are numerous stories shared in Red State Rebels of grassroots resistance in GOP territory that is also in opposition to the Democrats. In one essay by St. Clair entitled "The Origin of Western Greens," the co-editor states that during the Clinton years there was tremendous erosion of environmental standards, including:

"relaxed pesticide standards, weakening regulations for the Endangered Species Act, a plan for the Everglades tailored to meet the demands of sugar barons and real estate moguls of South Florida; failure to take decisive action to protect Colombia River salmon due to opposition from the Speaker of the House Tom Foley and the aluminum companies; and the political firing of Jim Baca from his position as director of the Bureau of Land Management for his determination to reform grazing practices on federal lands."

It is the disillusion from these kinds of policies that many of the grassroots efforts described in this book are born. These are individuals and groups who, even though they live in what is labeled a Red State and have contempt for the current administration, do not gravitate towards the Democrats.

The essays are arranged by region, such as Midwest, the Rocky Mountain States, the Southwest, the South, and Indian Country. The topics that are addressed are even more diverse. You might be reading about Native people fighting mining companies in the southwest and a few pages later African Americans are taking a stand against the use of the Confederate Flag in South Carolina. People employ all kinds of tactics in these battle stories, tactics that range from banner drops to direct action and civil disobedience. More importantly, what Red State Rebels provides us with is the message that there are plenty of committed and courageous people in this country who do not put their faith in partisan politics. They rely on critical thinking, organizing and action on behalf of justice.

An important message that can keep us motivated while the Red State/Blue State madness is upon us.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Smoke Without a Fire?, May 24, 2011

By 

Michael A. Kleen "mikefall2" (Charleston, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland (Paperback)

If you are a 'progressive' freegan living in rural Kentucky, Red State Rebels will appeal to you. If you are, however, serious about gaining a complete perspective on the Middle American Revolution, you will be sorely disappointed. Red State Rebels is far from a holistic account of "grassroots resistance in the heartland," and was dissatisfying to this reader, who was excited by the promise of Frank and St. Clair's collection.

The title of the book is deceiving. I expected a digest of radical activity from all sides of the political spectrum, but it quickly became clear that, by "Red State Rebels," Frank and St. Clair did not mean to describe everyone fighting the national status quo within so-called red states. The essays in this book mainly describe groups and individuals fighting against the status quo in the so-called red states. Meaning, simply put, this is a book about only one shade of rebels--pacifists, environmentalists, and progressives--fighting against their classic enemies.

Aside from a brief nod to Randy Weaver and various secession movements, nary a word is spent on the colorful variety of Middle American rebels. Constitutionalists, anti-abortion protestors, Alex Jones, 9/11 truthers, militiamen, and others are conspicuously absent. Their absence is made even more conspicuous because in Frank and St. Clair's introduction, they take great pains to portray their work a focused on a non-partisan approach to the subject. "Neither of us fit in the geo-ideological matrix contrived by the mainstream political establishment," they write. "Neither do thousands of others, left, right and anarcho-libertarians, who reside in the forgotten midsection of the nation."

The articles in Red State Rebels then proceed to breeze past the inhabitants of the Right to focus on champions of the traditional causes of the Left. Including one essay on Randy Weaver does not help balance it out. Furthermore, the "rebellion" covered by Red State Rebels is hardly worth noting. The book portrays a pacifist priest who was arrested for putting a flower on a nuclear missile silo as a great martyr to the cause. Only a handful of the essays address serious actions that threaten the status quo. The great prairie fire portrayed on the cover is revealed, on the inside, to be nothing more than a puff of smoke.

I am afraid that Red State Rebels defeats the editor's own intentions by portraying only traditional Left-wing causes as being worthy of attention in Middle America. I believe there is a desperate need for a second volume of this work, one that fills in the blanks.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The movement beyond the leftist epicenters of San Francisco, Eugene, Seattle, and New York City, October 3, 2008

By 

wildflowerboy (planet earth) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland (Paperback)

In "Red State Rebels", we hear from a broad range of peace, environmental, Native American, anti-racist, and feminist activists working for social justice and ecological sustainability in some of the most right-wing reactionary corners of the United States (like Texas and South Carolina). A few of the book's highlights include: the brilliant essay by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz on the importance of subsistence farming in the struggle against settler-colonialism, capitalism, and genocide, the exciting interview with the American Indian activist and radical scholar Ward Churchill on academic freedom, the excellent interview with the working-class environmental justice activist Diane Wilson, and the interesting interview with the Oglala Sioux reproductive rights activist Cecilia Fire Thunder. Living in a small, poor, conservative, southern town in the middle of an ultra-right-wing red state, I am extremely grateful for this thought-provoking anthology. For those of us living in the deep south or in rural America, it is proof that there are other anti-capitalist, pro-feminist, queer-positive, anti-racist activists among us. Thank you AK Press for publishing these wonderful voices of bravery, compassion, and hope!