by John Anner
South End Press
1966
SKU: 9780896085336
This anthology describes how organizers are building sophisticated, successful multiracial political organizations in low-income communities and communities of color.
“John Anner has put together a wonderfully useful set of essays, rich with immediate experience in community activism, and offering us hope in a time of despair.”—Howard Zinn
“Beyond Identity Politics depicts the creative, militant, and usually successful work that is going on in communities of color across the US and is much needed balm for the burned out and dispirited. It will have you cheering aloud.”—The Public Eye
Must identity politics divert attention from challenging the system into "middle-class campaigns for affirmation, assimilation, and a piece of the pie?" These essays, based on 1993-95 articles from the Center for Third World Organizing's publication Third Force, sketch encouraging alternatives to waging such "middle-class campaigns." In workplaces, classrooms, university campuses, and neighborhoods; in Providence, Los Angeles, New York, and elsewhere; on issues of race, ethnicity, personal and community safety, sexuality, wages, police accountability, and environmental justice, the people who populate these essays are building groups and coalitions that recognize that justice is a multicultural issue. A useful field report on victories that deserve more attention.