The Fight to Save the Town

November 1, 2021

Four decades' worth of antitax revolution have left U.S. communities large and small, urban and rural, blue and red, diverse and homogeneous without enough money to keep running and no more services to eliminate, properties to sell, bills to fend off, or questionable loans to secure. Stanford professor Anderson, an urban law expert, examines four communities to reveal both the consequences and new ways of coping. Stockton, CA, for instance, has found ways beyond policing to reduce gun violence, while Detroit, MI, is responding to foreclosures and housing loss with targeted efforts to stabilize low-income housing. With a 60,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2022
Arresting examination of how poverty-stricken cities are reinventing themselves. Stanford Law School professor Anderson offers a corrective to bigoted narratives portraying cities as toxic boondoggles, showing how postindustrial decline blurred many complex factors. "Places of citywide poverty," she writes, "help document the cause and consequences of widening inequality....This is a book about four places, for the sake of many others." The author presents historically rooted examinations of Stockton, California; Detroit, Michigan; Lawrence, Massachusetts; and Josephine County, Oregon. She focuses on community activists redefining grassroots efforts after decades of disinvestment. As Anderson demonstrates, during the Great Recession's foreclosure crisis, stricken local governments navigated state programs for survival. "In the face of all these hardships," she writes, "advocates in the four places profiled in this book found a way forward." Each of the author's detailed urban narratives is compelling. Stockton "has mostly lost its better-paid manufacturing jobs" following decades of redlining and segregation, and local officials slashed spending between 2008 and 2011. Violence spiked but has been countered by community activism and new policing approaches. In rural Josephine, a "rough and tumble" place with fortunes tied to the volatile timber industry, Anderson tracks "a grassroots movement in favor of new taxes in one of the most anti-government places in America." In the former textile city of Lawrence, the author links forgotten labor activism to a traditional openness to immigrants, who now struggle with service-economy jobs: "Lawrence's public and private leaders have done what immigrants are known for: form tight social networks and look out for the people in them." Finally, Anderson looks at the better-known narrative of Detroit, focusing on the devastating decline of African American homeownership. The author's discussion is complex, though the impact of her arguments is lessened by the repetitive aspects of these narratives of place. Nonetheless, it's a welcome study of life in late-capitalist America. An ambitious, empathetic work documenting community-building versus political intransigence and racial strife.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 30, 2022
Stanford law professor Anderson debuts with a hard-hitting yet hopeful look at how impoverished communities across the U.S. are fighting for their survival. Spotlighting Josephine County, Ore.; Detroit, Mich.; Lawrence, Mass.; and Stockton, Calif., Anderson details how decades of deindustrialization and declining state and federal tax revenues have led local governments to make drastic budget cuts, sell public land and other assets, take on risky loans, and delay critical infrastructure repairs. As a result, crime rates and drug use in these communities have skyrocketed while home ownership and employment rates have plummeted. Despite these strong headwinds, however, locals are banding together to save their towns. In Josephine County, citizen watch groups combat crime and provide “anti-overdose medical services”; in Detroit, housing advocates are working to pass new foreclosure policies that give homeowners more time to restructure debt from predatory reverse mortgages; in Lawrence, Mass., public and private institutions have coordinated on specialized training programs for bilingual teachers and medical assistants in an effort to help increase the median income of local parents by 15%. Throughout, Anderson contextualizes her detailed demographic and economic data with vivid portraits of local families and activists. The result is an astute and powerful vision for improving America. Agent: Wendy Strothman, Strothman Agency.