A sweeping and eye-opening study of wealth inequality and the dismantling of local government in four working-class US cities that passionately argues for reinvestment in people-centered leadership and offers a welcome reminder of what government can accomplish if given the chance ( San Francisco Chronicle ).
Anderson shows that if we learn to Save our towns, we will also be learning to Save ourselves ( The New York Times Book Review)..
But it doesn\'t have to be that way.
For decades, these governments have no longer just reflected inequality--they have helped drive it.
Our smallest governments shape people\'s safety, comfort, and life chances.
And a social movement in Detroit, Michigan, is pioneering ways to stabilize low-income housing after a wave of foreclosures and housing loss.
In Lawrence, Massachusetts, leaders are figuring out how to improve job security and wages in an era of backbreaking poverty for the working class.
In Josephine County, Oregon, community leaders have enacted new taxes to support basic services in a rural area with fiercely anti-government politics.
In Stockton, California, locals are finding ways, beyond the police department, to reduce gun violence and treat the trauma it leaves behind.
Networks of leaders and residents in these places are facing down some of the hardest challenges in American poverty today.
Instead, Anderson travels to four blue-collar communities that are poor, broke, and progressing.
But this book is not a eulogy or a lament.
In this astute and powerful vision for improving America ( Publishers Weekly ), urban law expert and author Michelle Wilde Anderson offers unsparing, humanistic portraits of the hardships left behind in four such places.
Forty years after the anti-tax revolution began protecting wealthy taxpayers and their cities, our high-poverty cities and counties have run out of services to cut, properties to sell, bills to defer, and risky loans to take.
Mostly, their governments are just broke.
All are routinely trashed by outsiders for their poverty and their politics.
Some are the most diverse communities in America, while others are nearly all white, all Latino, or all Black.
Some vote blue, others red.
Others are big cities, small cities, or historic suburbs.
Some of these Discarded places are rural.
Decades of cuts to local government amidst rising concentrations of poverty have wreaked havoc on communities left behind by the modern economy.
A sweeping and eye-opening study of wealth inequality and the dismantling of local government in four working-class US cities that passionately argues for reinvestment in people-centered leadership and offers a welcome reminder of what government can accomplish if given the chance ( San Francisco Chronicle )
