Blue Grit: Making Impossible, Improbable and Inspirational Political Change in America

by Laura Flanders

(NY?: Penguin, 2008)

I haven't yet read this book, but I received a self-promotional email from the author that I thought I'd post. I also found a customer review on Amazon that starts like this:

Blue Grit is what the Democratic Party needs. It's a little bit like soul it's a lot like grits. Whether they get it or whether they will ever get it is another story.

The story that Laura Flanders tells in her prescient book is one that the fourth estate--fawning over Barack Obama's rout in Iowa--would have been well advised to read. They might have learned a thing or two: That progressive movements are not built over night and that they are not built on the backs of candidates, no matter how inspiring they are. Flanders is not a conventional campaign correspondent...

I know Laura Flanders from her feminist radio days at New York's WBAI-FM, back in the 1980s. She went on to be a radio host in left-leaning commercial and internet radio, and the author of several books. You can find out more about here on her own website and in Wikipedia.Here's her note to the friends on her email list about the re-issue of this book:

Dear Friends,

Blue Grit is just out in paperback, from Penguin Books, updated and with a new intro by Naomi Klein (Shock Doctrine.)

The extraordinary turn out in the Democratic primaries so far only confirms the hypothesis I laid out in Blue Grit that somethiing is shifting in this country -- from the bottom up.

The picture of our political process is changing (check out my story on Suites vs. Streets in the new "Reseeding the Grassroots" issue of the Nation magazine.) But the real work lies ahead.

For a glimpse of the grassroots upsurge that I believe is giving the status quo a push, check out the new, updated Blue Grit: Making Impossible, Improbable and Inspirational Political Change in America.

As Blanche Cook wrote in Ms, the Blue Grit folks I write about offer "a roadmap for our journey out of the darkness".

There are fascinating implications for the future of our country -- and our movement work.

Please read the book, review it at Amazon/Powells/Barnes and Noble and/or your favorite site.

And pass this message on. This is the moment to make sure that grassroots organizers get the credit they deserve. Is history made by a few great women or men? I don't think so. Right now it's being made by Americans with Grit. Find out who -- and how -- in Blue Grit: Making Impossible, Improbable and Inspirational Political Change in America.