Page 14 RAIN January 1980 "Rural communities, particularly low in- { ) come rural communities, have often been - ORGANIZING ruined in the name of developments: small _ _ farmers and farmworkers have lost their '--------..----------- livelihoods, Native Americans have been Getting People Together in Rural Ameri~ ca, by Barbara Swaczy, 1979, from: The Northern Rockies Action Group , 9 Placer St. Helena, MT 59601 "Helping people win improvements in their lives is the most basic reason for organizing a citizen group anywhere. In the course of working together, people uncover an equally central value of citizen action: an experience of the power that people can exert in a democracy." Unashamedly pragmatic, this little book is a textbook for organizing. It's aimed as much at the Vista recruit as the lifetime resident recently angered into action. One nice aspect of the book is its insistence on process, and step one in the process is "listening well, keeping notes, and not jumping to conclusions prematurely." I prefer to believe that the most effective organizing comes more or less organically from need, so I dislike reading about "local residents .. . Hoing work alongside the organizer." To me that's out of kilter. Even so, this is an approach that's had its successes, and this ltbok will be very helpful to anyone choosing it. I'd encourage anyone to read also The Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols for perspective and humor. -CC (Paper $1.95 from: Ballantine Books, Inc., Div. of Random House, 201 E. 50th, New York, NY 10022.) Rural Development Programs, by The Center for Community Change, 1979, $1.50 from: Eileen Paul, Director of Publications Center for Community Change 1000 Wisconsin Ave. N.W. Washington, DC 20007 This one is aimed at "civic leaders" rather than grass roots organizers. It opens with caution against reckless rural development: denied access to their homelands, small businessmen ruined and valuable agricultural land lost." With that grain of salt the booklet goes on to describe how the public and private sectors can be woven into working teams to attack, strategize and implement change in rural areas and small towns. The bulk of information the booklet offers is in descriptions of the larger public sector financing mechanisms like the Farmer's Horrie Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, HUD, and the Economic Development Administration. They describe the available programs (Titles, Sections, etc.) and give clues to applying for assistance from them. In each instance the programs are aimed at small city governments and there is little information for providing citizen access to the funding. Still, it's a very useful tool, particularly for smaller communities where the channels to local government mav be more open than in large cities. -CC Rise Gonna Rise, A Portrait of Southern Textile Workers, Mimi Conway, 1979, $5.95 from: • Doubleday/ Anchor 245 Park Ave. New York, NY 10017 Rise Gonna Rise is the history of a political movement and the people who are making it in the town of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. It's the story of the struggle by mill workers (over 40 percent of the labor force of North Carolina) to unionize the J.P. Stevens Company. It's a story without as yet a happy ending. When J.P. Stevens took over the mills in Roanoke Rapids in 1956 they ended the era of paternalism that had been key to this 'town since its inception. They replaced paternalism with Be~avioral Systems, Inc., corporate psychology in action (headed by former Minnesota Vikings' quarterback Fran Tarkenton). In the twenty years of its control Stevens has acquired a reputation for miserable working conditions, little or no retirement plans, anti-union activities, and tax fraud. In telling the history of Stevens workers and the union, Mimi Conway focuses on the individuals and families affected by the struggle. Her examples are astonishing. She tells of workers who participated in the great 1934 General Textile Strike (the largest general strike in U.S. history with over a half million workers out) who are' still working for the union! Their stories are told with compassion, respect, journalistic expertise and often undisguised awe. Many of them suffer from brown lung disease, the legacy of cotton dust, and have organized the Carolina Brown Lung Association to fight for the health and safety of mill workers. The textile industry journal in 1969 called brown lung disease "a thing thought up by venal doctors who attended last year's International Labor Organization (ILO) meetings in Africa where inferior people are bound to be afflicted by new diseases more superior people defeated years ago." That's the sort of reasoning -these amazing people of Roanoke Rapids are having to contend with. The book will make you love theni.. With any luck it will make you join the J.P. Stevens boycott. - cc Inuit Journey, by Edith Iglauer, 1979, $6.95 from: University of Washington Press Seattle, WA 98105 In 1959, a handful of Eskimos "almost all on relief" formed the first cooperative business in their history. Now the co-ops are the largest single employer of Inuit (a name they prefer to "Eskimo") in Canada. Their assets are $14 million, with annual sales of $23 million. All from a near bankrupt group of individuals who had to borrow the ten dollar filing fee to register as a business in order to apply for government loans. • Their success stems from an extraordinary coming together of the right people at the right time. The Inuit had suffered the indignities and challenges to their independence that have been the mark of white penetration into native lands. The civil servants who worked with them were exceptional "pragmatic idealists determined to adjust the system." Ms. Iglauer lived among the Inuit and in sharing their daily lives came to love them. Her documentary reflects this love for the people, the land and the culture. Inuit Journey is a good companion book to an earlier one, Farley Mowat's People of the Deer (1968, Pyramid Publications Inc., 919 Third Ave., New York, NY 10022). Together, the two books tell the awful tale of white intervention and a possible alternative route to safeguarding a culture and people. -CC
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz