Grassroots Activisms: Public Rhetorics in Localized Contexts

by Sarah Warren-Riley (Editor), Julie Collins Bates (Editor), Lisa L. Phillips (Editor), Juile Collins Bates (Editor)

Overview

What is the nature of grassroots activism? How and why do individuals get involved or attempt to make change for themselves, others, or their own communities? What motivates activists to maintain momentum when their efforts to redress injustices or paths toward change seem difficult or personally risky to navigate? These questions and more are addressed in Grassroots Activisms: Public Rhetorics in Localized Contexts. Featuring a diverse array of both local activist profiles and original scholarly essays, the collection amplifies and analyzes the tactics of grassroots activists working locally to intervene in a variety of social injustices—from copwatching and policy reform to Indigenous resistance against land colonization to #RageAgainstRape.

Attuned to the demanding—and often underappreciated—work of grassroots activism, this book interrogates how such efforts unfold within and against existing historical, cultural, social, and political realities of local communities; are informed by the potentials and constraints of coalition-building; and ultimately shape different facets of society at the local level. This collection acknowledges and celebrates the complexity of grassroots activist work, showing how these less-recognized efforts often effect change where institutions have failed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814283295
Publisher:	Ohio State University Press
Publication date:	02/05/2024
Series:	Intersectional Rhetorics
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	308
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Lisa L. Phillips is Assistant Professor of English in the Technical Communication and Rhetoric Program at Texas Tech University. Sarah Warren-Riley is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Julie Collins Bates is Associate Professor of English at Millikin University.

Read an Excerpt

From large-scale national and international marches, boycotts, protests, and social media hashtag movements, to smaller localized demonstrations, petition drives, and sewing, knitting, making, or “die-in” sessions, people employ a wide range of activist methods to raise awareness and attempt to bring change in the face of injustice or oppression. We often witness how such activisms unfold in powerful ways in mass settings as they are covered by global media (such as #BlackLivesMatter, the Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement, #MeToo, Women’s Marches, and climate strikes). It’s less common to recognize, much less celebrate, how such activisms unfold in smaller scales in local contexts (for example, activisms that take place in city halls, homeless shelters, church basements, living rooms, border camps, and schools) in response to global or local exigencies. Local grassroots activist efforts are, despite their powerful and innovative measures, often overlooked as sites of and for critical analysis. The overshadowing of smaller-scale, localized activist labors may unintentionally obscure the important rhetorical tactics enacted by people who attempt to make change in their own communities. As a result, this collection specifically focuses on what might be learned and shared by examining instances of local grassroots activisms.

Certainly, understanding the complexities of activisms on any level can be a confounding rhetorical problem. Learning how people take up activisms at the local level allows us to present examples that parse the complexity into manageable sites of analysis, yielding insights that might not be recognized in examinations of larger-scale movements. It also allows us to highlight how activisms are carried out and composed in localized public and private spheres in ways that allow others to join in or undertake coalitional work that meaningfully supports such actions when the need arises. In this context, such efforts draw on Karma Chávez’s (2013) conception of coalition as “a present and existing vision and practice that reflects an orientation to others and a shared commitment to change. Coalition is the ‘horizon’ that can reorganize our possibilities and the conditions of them.” Such coalitional work, as Rebecca Walton, Kristen Moore, and Natasha Jones (2019) assert, requires “redressing inequities, pursuing justice” and supporting practices that include and strengthen marginalized perspectives.

Through this edited collection, we hope to contribute to understandings of how social change is enacted, by focusing on how these efforts take shape on the local level. To do so, the collection includes chapters that illustrate how global and local exigencies are engaged within specific communities. We also include studies that offer not only discussions of “successful” activist efforts but also examples where “success” is indeterminate, incremental, or perhaps not readily apparent at all. We believe it is crucial to amplify the work of community activists and learn from their savvy, locally and culturally situated rhetorical tactics, so we have encouraged contributors to center activists’ work and ensure efforts are represented faithfully. Furthermore, although the larger field of rhetoric and writing studies has been widely complicit in injustice and marginalization, particularly in its citation practices and perpetuation of patriarchy (as discussed by many technical and professional communication scholars such as Haas, 2012; Itchuaqiyaq, 2020; Walton, Moore, & Jones, 2019; Williams & Pimentel, 2014), this collection recognizes that scholars can and should do more to engage with social justice and expand what we value and whose work we deem worthy of study.

Table of Contents

Introduction Valuing, Learning from, and Amplifying Grassroots Activisms

Part 1 Grassroots Resistances to Institutions

Chapter 1 Copwatching, Police Reform, and Grassroots Action: Positioning Video within Strategies of Rhetorical Intervention on the Street

Chapter 2 Nacogdoches Accountability Coalition: Challenges to Grassroots Organizing in Deep East Texas

Chapter 3 Behind the Still Life Image: The Word and Fannie Lou Hamer’s Activist Impulses

Chapter 4 “Creating a Longer Table”: A Conversation about Diversity in Grassroots Labor Organizing

Chapter 5 Engaging the (Counter)Public through Digital Activism: A Case Study of the TFsUnite Protest

Chapter 6 Mobilizing Grassroots Rhetorics for Reproductive Justice: A Q&A with Sara Finger, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Alliance for Women’s Health

Part 2 Sites of Grassroots Activisms

Chapter 7 Resisting Extraction of the Sacred: Indigenous-bBased Grassroots Resistance to Frontier Capitalism

Chapter 8 Community Gardening, Food Insecurity, and Writing Pedagogy: Connecting Classroom, Campus, and City

Chapter 9 The Energy of Place in Florida Springs Activism

Chapter 10 La Conexión: Advocating for Latinx Immigrants in Northwest Ohio

Chapter 11 Off the Wall: The Performance of Graffiti and Vandal Art in Grassroots Movements

Chapter 12 Urban Affairs Coalition: Fifty Years of Organizational Organizing in Philadelphia

Chapter 13 #RageAgainstRape: Nepali Women’s Transnational Assemblage and Networked Performances against Rape

Part 3 Pedagogies for Grassroots Activisms

Chapter 14 OFA’s Legacy: Building Capacity through Personal Stories and Local Networks

Chapter 15 Kairos, Communities, and Writing for DACA Advocacy in Memphis

Chapter 16 Voices from the Anti-Racist Pedagogy Collective: Individual Exigencies and Collective Actions

Chapter 17 Vernacular Assessment Activity in Local Community Organizing

Chapter 18 Enacting Invitational Rhetorics: Leveraging Networks of Care in the US Asylum Process

A Counterstory Afterword in Vignettes

Editorial Reviews

“Focusing on resistances to institutional hegemonies, sites of grassroots activism, and pedagogical considerations, Grassroots Activisms offers a compelling, contemporary, polyvocal approach to activism that is both theoretically sharp and pragmatically applicable, while being inclusive in all the best ways.” —Jonathan Alexander, author of Writing and Desire: Queer Ways of Composing

“Writing studies needs a collection that makes visible the necessary work that is often obscured in activism. This book answers that need through an impressive and original array of stories and studies by and with marginalized communities.” —W. Michele Simmons, author of Participation and Power: Civic Discourse in Environmental Policy Decisions

“[Grassroots Activisms] will be a helpful text in graduate courses on organizational communication, crisis communication, and any courses at the intersection of political communication and media studies. The diverse range of topics the book covers on grassroots activism makes it an essential read beyond communication studies courses.” —Vasundhra Singh, Women's Studies in Communication

From the Publisher