BOOK REVIEWS | spring 2007
Blanche Wiesen Cook
Blue Grit: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians
By Laura Flanders
The Penguin Press
 Who are we now? What happened
to America’s celebrated values—
liberty, democracy, justice?
Why is our constitution under siege?
What do we stand for?
Whom do we praise?
Why are our leading
politicians silent and
supine as “aliens” are
rounded up, disappeared,
and denied
habeas corpus and
court trials?
After two stolen
elections, we find ourselves
in a disaster
zone, where issues of
party, race and gender
have become swamps
of confusion. It was, after all,
Louisiana’s white-woman governor
who bellowed, “Shoot to kill,” as she
confronted Katrina victims “looting”
diapers, infant formula, food and water.
(One wonders, did Democratic
Gov. Kathleen Blanco ever apologize?)
Then there was the black-man
mayor, who simply could not think of
a way to be helpful. Our spineless
Democratic leaders have been shaped
by the Democratic Leadership Council
(DLC), which instructs them to
sound like Republicans in order to
“win” elections. Beyond our borders,
we confront Guantanamo, Abu
Ghraib and other centers of criminal
detention. Who tortures? Who supports
torture? Whose America is this?
Perhaps FDR said it best in 1940:
“We will have a liberal democracy, or
we will return to the Dark Ages.”
In Blue Grit, radio journalist Laura
Flanders gives us a road map for our
journey out of the darkness. Brilliantly
researched with the help of media
activist Eileen Clancy, it is indeed “a
book of good news for grim times.”
Flanders has searched our country for
success stories in the people’s movement
against madness, brutality, war
—and they are everywhere! Oregon
Action got behind Portland’s winning
mayoral candidate, “pro-gay, pro-poor”
former police
chief Tom Potter. In
Arizona, gays and lesbians
worked in concert
to stop a referendum
that would
ban gay marriage.
In South Dakota,
a splendid coalition
of women’s rights advocates
and Native
American activists for
health defeated an
evangelical effort to
criminalize abortion.
In Utah and Montana, there have
been similar stirring victories.
While the Christian-Evangelical
crusade remains a statebystate challenge,
an entirely new movement is
under way, one that unites new and
grand alliances. America’s Heartland
has found its heart; it is bigger and
more expansive than ever before. Local
activism is everywhere on the rise
for labor rights, women’s rights, human
rights, marriage equality.
Flanders tells us about the politicians
elected because they opposed
DLC propaganda and those neocon
fundamentalists who would “starve
the beast,” meaning the public sector.
The future is not about more war,
more torture, more Scripture, fewer
rights, less social spending. Rather,
with the liberal upsurgence that Flanders documents, we can expect a
future that is about national health
care, affordable housing, job security,
public education, real opportunity, urgent
environmental action, a return to
the Enlightenment—including science
education and separation of
church and state.
Democrats!
Listen up! Fundamentalists
won’t vote for you, even if
you sound like them. Of course they
will if you act like them, but then you
are them! In a world gone berserk,
Flanders writes, “a rumble of real
change is rising.” With this book as
our guide, we can restore the promise
of American life.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK is a distinguished
professor of history and professor
of women’s studies at John Jay College
and the Graduate Center, CUNY, and
author of Eleanor Roosevelt, Volumes
I and II (Viking Adult, 1992 and
1999); III, forthcoming.
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