The Backyard Revolution: Understanding the New Citizen Movement

by Harry C. Boyte

Documents the new social revolt now taking place in the home, the workplace, and the college campus

271 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1980

About the author

Harry Boyte is founder and co-director of the Institute's Center for Democracy and Citizenship, and founder of Public Achievement, a theory-based practice of citizen organizing to do public work for the common good which is being used in schools, universities and communities across the United States and in more than a dozen countries.

He has worked with a variety of foundations, nonprofit, educational, neighborhood and citizen organizations concerned with community development, citizenship education, and civic renewal. In the 1960s, Boyte worked for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as a field secretary with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the southern civil rights movement.

Reviews

[Kevin Carson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great overview of the hopeful New Citizens Movement milieu of the late 70s -- the same broad movement that spawned The People's Bicentennial Commission and Common Sense II, along with a lot of populist/decentralist initiatives against corporate and state power. Unfortunately it was either supplanted or coopted by the New Right's money and direct mail campaigns by the early 80s for the most part.

[David Moss · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an historical relic that focused on community organizing in the 70's, it's not bad. Without an additional source explaining what happened in the following 3 decades, it simply reads as anachronistic. How should I feel about McGovern to understand the author's issues regarding his campaign? I have no idea.