Bridging the Class Divide - Book Report/Review Example

Bridging the Class Divide Linda stout commences the story of her struggles with inequality and oppression through a horrible incident of automobile accident involving herself and members of her family when she was still very young. Although her father was not responsible for this car accident, the stout family found themselves having to endure and paying the price for being poor, as they received inadequate health care and no compensation from their insurance company for the irreparable damages. This car accident unfortunately left her family in dereliction as her mother lost one of her legs, while her father was left with the burden of paying off hospital bills for the remainder of his life. After this initial struggle with blatant display of class bigotry, Stout continued to experience sexism where she was denied access to appropriate courses tailored towards a college education as teachers and counselors demoted her into female classes, such as home economics. Overcoming a hurdle of obstacles, she made into college briefly, where her self esteem continued to careen downwards. Because of economic hardships and taking on the responsibility of taking care of her mother, Stout left college and moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where she embarked on becoming a social justice activist (Stout, p.1). Joining the various groups in Charleston working towards social change, and still carrying a battered sense of self, due her attempts to include low-income women in a predominantly middle-class group of women whose membership was based on passage of Equal Rights Amendment in one instance, she was quickly overshadowed by men in a peace group that she helped establish. Never giving up even in the face of oppression within progressive forces; Stout gathered the momentum and moved forward and positively utilized her lessons and ultimately formed the Piedmont Peace Project(PPP)in North Carolina. PPP’s mission and purpose is based on economic and social change as it relates to military and peace issues. The membership of PPP was primarily made up of low income white and African American people, with some middle income people to diversify the make-up. Initially PPP’s were characterized by voter registration drives, meetings held through word of mouth, door to door and more .Its dedicated members drove it to receive a lot of attention as they made victories within state government. However, as Stout mentions quite frankly within the book and dedicates the last chapter to this concept: with great power comes great opposition (Stout, p.194). PPP reckoned with this concept as members and volunteers were threatened or shunned from institutions within the community and even through family, co-workers, and employers etc. Public forms of opposition and the problems it created for the organization internally caused PPP to take a backseat, momentarily in regards to their grass-roots efforts. However, in about two years later, PPP came back stronger as they formed partnerships with activists in Boston and other states; the southern Christian leadership conference, coupled with increasing voter turn-out. This allowed PPP to gain media coverage and leverage for economic campaigns within North Carolina. Although PPP’s sense of community was eventually renewed; Stout makes it a point to mention the lessons learnt from PPP’s failed attempts to gain social justice. Through these experiences stout calls attention to the importance of grass-roots organizing connecting local issues with those of the national level in order to create a lasting change. Stout introduces her seven principles for a new organizing model, which she conjured through her experiences at PPP and comparisons on other grass-root models .Additionally Stout explains why PPP’s leadership model based on power sharing, responsibility and authority, has allowed PPP to instill leadership qualities through training, development and encouragement in all of their members even if it took them time to realize their potential. Although grass-root organizations are principally different with businesses: Stout explains that in order to ensure success, it is important for grass-root organizations to examine standard business principles and practices and tailor them to their needs. Stout recommends that it is crucial for organizations to predetermine how they will handle opposition, back-lash etc, that will arise from each campaign from outsiders as it can be very overwhelming and discouraging for individuals within the organization, allies, and the organization as a whole. After all, as Stout says, “If we are not getting opposition, then we must not be doing enough!” (1996, p.180) Conclusion Stout was eventually appointed as a Public Policy Fellow at Radcliffe College. As a result of her appointment, she left North Carolina for a year to move to Concord, Massachusetts. Alongside fulfilling her duties as a fellow, Stout set about writing this book. However, Stout at first was nervous about integrating into the academic community as she did not possess a college degree, and in turn caused her to feel low about herself. Due to these feelings of inferiority, Stout struggled to begin writing her book. However her initial sense of inferiority changed drastically after conducting a presentation at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College in regards to the work she had done at PPP. Because the audiences’ response to her presentation was up-lifting, she began to shed away her previous insecurities and began learning how to communicate her ideas and visions on paper (Stout, p.200). Being integrated into middle-class and academic community allowed stout to realize that every person is capable of confronting barriers and working towards social change, thus in order to build the community organizations must acknowledge and respect individual struggle as well as organizing politically. Stout believes that working for change in competing and separate groups, while having no real plan for long term goals achievements: progressive movements will not be effective in the long run. This is because a united group will possess the needed thrust to face the crises our world is experiencing today. This unity group must out of necessity be highly inclusive while representing fundamental human needs and rights, justice and equality. Stout ends with eight ideas representing a successful unity plan: A) “A look at the history of revolutionary movements within this country and others, to figure out what worked well in the past and what is needed to be done differently in the context of current times(Stout,p.188-189). ” B) A strategic marketing plan. C) A political vision. D) Training of new organizers. E) A political leadership institute. F) Resource development. G) Do not wait for reforms to happen without moving forward with a unity plan. H) Peaceful ways to deal with opposition. Work Cited Stout, Linda. Bridging the Class Divide and Other Lessons for Grassroots Organizing. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. Print. Read More