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The fight to save the town : reimagining discarded America / Michelle Wilde Anderson.

by Anderson, Michelle Wilde, author.

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New York : Avid Reader Press, 2022.

Municipal services -- United States.

Local government -- United States.

Poverty -- United States.

Social problems -- Government policy -- United States.

9781501195983 (hardcover) :

1501195980 (hardcover)

vii, 352 pages ; 24 cm

First Avid Reader Press hardcover edition.

Introduction: "Aren't we the government?" -- "I won't give up on you, ever": Stockton, California -- Man in the arena: Josephine county, Oregon -- "Marching, marching, in the beauty of the day": Lawrence Massachusetts -- Do not bid: Detroit, Michigan -- Facing forward.

Decades of cuts to local government amidst rising concentrations of poverty have wreaked havoc on communities left behind by the modern economy. Some of these discarded places are rural. Others are big cities, small cities, or historic suburbs. Some vote blue, others red. Some are the most diverse communities in America, while others are nearly all white, all Latino, or all Black. All are routinely trashed by outsiders for their poverty and their politics. Mostly, their governments are just broke. Forty years after the anti-tax revolution began protecting wealthy taxpayers and their cities, our high-poverty cities and counties have run out of services to cut, properties to sell, bills to defer, and risky loans to take. In The Fight to Save the Town, urban law expert and author Michelle Wilde Anderson offers unsparing, humanistic portraits of the hardships left behind in four such places. But this book is not a eulogy or a lament. Instead, Anderson travels to four blue-collar communities that are poor, broke, and progressing. Networks of leaders and residents in these places are facing down some of the hardest challenges in American poverty today. In Stockton, California, locals are finding ways, beyond the police department, to reduce gun violence and treat the trauma it leaves behind. In Josephine County, Oregon, community leaders have enacted new taxes to support basic services in a rural area with fiercely anti-government politics. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, leaders are figuring out how to improve job security and wages in an era of backbreaking poverty for the working class. And a social movement in Detroit, Michigan is pioneering ways to stabilize low-income housing after a wave of foreclosures and housing loss. Our smallest governments shape people's safety, comfort, and life chances. For decades, these governments have no longer just reflected inequality--they have helped drive it. But it doesn't have to be that way. Anderson argues that a new generation of local leaders are figuring out how to turn poverty traps back into gateway cities.

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