Front Porch Politics: The Forgotten Heyday of American Activism in the 1970s and 1980s

An on-the-ground history of ordinary Americans who took to the streets when political issues became personal

The 1960s are widely seen as the high tide of political activism in the United States. According to this view, Americans retreated to the private realm after the tumult of the civil rights and antiwar movements, and on the rare occasions when they did take action, it was mainly to express their wish to be left alone by government—as recommended by Ronald Reagan and the ascendant New Right.
     In fact, as Michael Stewart Foley shows in Front Porch Politics, this understanding of post-1960s politicsneeds drastic revision. On the community level, the1970s and 1980s witnessed an unprecedented upsurgeof innovative and impassioned political activity.In Southern California and on the Lower East Sideof Manhattan, tenants challenged landlords with sit-insand referenda; in the upper Midwest, farmers vandalizedpower lines and mobilized tractors to protecttheir land; and in the deindustrializing cities of theRust Belt, laid-off workers boldly claimed the right toown their idled factories. Meanwhile, activists foughtto defend the traditional family or to expand the rightsof women, while entire towns organized to protest thetoxic sludge in their basements. Recalling Love Canal,the tax revolt in California, ACT UP, and other crusadesfamous or forgotten, Foley shows how Americanswere propelled by personal experiences and emotionsinto the public sphere. Disregarding conventional ideasof left and right, they turned to political action whenthey perceived, from their actual or figurative frontporches, an immediate threat to their families, homes,or dreams.
     Front Porch Politics is a vivid and authoritative people’s history of a time when Americans followed their outrage into the streets. Addressing today’s readers, it is also a field guide for effective activism in an era when mass movements may seem impractical or even passé. The distinctively visceral, local, and highly personal politics that Americans practiced in the 1970s and 1980s provide a model of citizenship worth emulating if we are to renew our democracy.