Description

In Barack Obama’s America public works is once again a part of the national dialogue. Today it is offered as a solution to the economic downturn and to the public infrastructure crisis. This timely book examines the reasons for the economic crisis facing Main Street, and connects them to why the nation has structurally deficient bridges, weak levees, poorly maintained dams, and dilapidated schools.

This book explores the new emerging dominant paradigm that will govern the nation, with a particular focus on the federal government’s new emphasis to create jobs and build infrastructure. The book analyzes the history of U.S. public works, drawing upon and updating lessons from the New Deal, to understand the most effective way to organize a modern U.S. civic works project, as well as a civic works pilot project for the Gulf Coast. The pilot project is based on the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act, which would create a minimum of 100,000 prevailing wage jobs and training opportunities for local and displaced workers on infrastructure projects and restoring the coastal environment using emerging green building technologies.

One chapter features new contributions from Howard Zinn, Angela Glover Blackwell, and other leading scholars, public policy advocates, and community organizers weighing in on how an U.S. civic works project might solve our economic, infrastructure, and environmental crises. Issues discussed in this section include using civic works to create green jobs, to alleviate poverty, to train the next generation of Rosie the Riveters, to organize Gulf Coast residents, to end the human rights crisis in the region, and to implement a national government-run public works project.

Listen to the Journey Home Radio Show interview with Scott Myers-Lipton: Journey Home Radio Interview

• Explains how a program more expansive than Obama's can better solve America’s crisis
• Details our neglected national infrastructure and ways to improve it
• Clearly explains how the United States got into the current economic crisis and provides a solution
• Critiques Obama’s economic stimulus plan
• Offers specific suggestions, based on the history of public works and post-Hurricane Katrina, on how to improve on Obama’s next stimulus plan
• Suggests how to bring about social change based on the Gulf Coast Civic Works campaign

Author Info

Scott Myers-Lipton, an Associate Professor at San Jose State University, is the author of numerous scholarly articles on education, civic engagement, and racism. To explore solutions to poverty, Myers-Lipton has taken students over the past fifteen years to live at homeless shelters, the Navajo and Lakota nations, and to Kingston, Jamaica.

Reviews

“Progressives will applaud the call for federally run employment programs to put millions to work and rebuild America. … Policy wonks, political scientists, and New Deal fans will love this book.”
—Library Journal

“In Rebuild America, Scott Myers-Lipton convincingly lays out the case for a public works offensive, and also points to the civic value of engineering an economic recovery around social investment. Everyone should read this book, and one American in particular should take it to heart—Barack Obama.”
—Robert Kuttner, coeditor for the American Prospect and author of Obama’s Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency

“Welcome to the New Era of Progressivism! Scott Myers-Lipton offers some solutions to many of America’s most nagging problems. An important and well-written call for action.
—Douglas Brinkley, author of The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast and The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America

“If Obama does not show boldness, it will be up to the citizenry, as it always has been, to raise a shout that will be heard in the White House and the halls of Congress, and that cannot be ignored.”
—Howard Zinn in Rebuild America

“In Rebuild America: Solving the Economic Crisis through Civic Works, Scott Myers-Lipton provides a historically informed and sophisticated set of policy recommendations for our present moment. His argument—calling for local involvement, strong oversight, and equitable development—is essential reading for anyone interested in how we might achieve a sustainable economic recovery.”
—Jason Scott Smith, author of Building New Deal Liberalism

“Professor Myers-Lipton has quickly become a leading voice for the principle that our economy and our nation can be rebuilt only if we do it the old-fashioned way: through public works and public investments. Rebuild America is an historic blueprint to make that happen.”
—Dr. J. Larry Brown, Founder of the Center on Hunger and Poverty, Harvard University

“Rebuild America provides a concise and persuasive argument for a new civic works initiatives to address problems that existed in the U.S. Gulf Coast before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans as well as strategies to address lingering poverty and unemployment problems among African Americans and other people of color.”
—Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D., author of Dumping in Dixie

“Rebuild America makes a cogent and forceful case for a national civic works plan to address the economic and infrastructure crisis. After 25 years of free market conservative policies that left the country in shambles, there’s now a chance to make things right—along the Gulf Coast and beyond. Scott Myers-Lipton offers up a hopeful and exciting blueprint of how this can happen—by the people, of the people, and for the people.”
—Tia Lessin, producer and director, Academy Award–nominated film, Trouble the Water