Red State Rebels - Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland

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.

"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."