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"An on-the-ground history of ordinary Americans who took to the streets when political issues became personal. It is widely believed that Americans of the 1970s and '80s were exhausted by the upheavals of the '60s and eager to retreat to the private realm. When they did take action, it was mainly to express their disillusionment with government by supporting the right. In fact, as Michael Stewart Foley shows, neither of these assumptions is correct. On the community level, the 1970s and '80s saw vibrant new forms of political activity emerge. Tenants challenged landlords, farmers practiced civil disobedience to protect their land, and laid-off workers asserted a right to own their idled factories. Activists fought to defend the traditional family or to expand the rights of women, while entire towns organized to protest the toxic sludge in their basements. In all these arenas, Americans were propelled by their own experiences into the public sphere. Disregarding conventional ideas of "left" and "right," they turned to political action when they perceived an immediate threat to the safety and security of their families, homes, or dreams. Front Porch Politics is a people's history told through on-the-ground experiences. Recalling crusades famous and forgotten, Foley shows how Americans followed their outrage into the streets. Their distinctive style of visceral, local, and highly personal activism remains a vital resource for the renewal of American democracy"--

AbstractThis essay analyzes agricultural politics and activism in the United States during the farm crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. Although journalists and social scientists studied farm activism at the time, historians have neglected it. As this article demonstrates, however, the farm crisis is valuable for analyzing why ordinary Americans mobilized as citizens and activists in a period of economic dislocation. Informed by the recent "emotional turn" in social movement studies, the essay frames farm organizing as an archetypal example of "front porch politics". Mostly, farmers organized out of a sense of being wronged; the resulting sense of injustice fueled a rural uprising.