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.
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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.
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.
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