Charleston County Public Library

We're still here, pain and politics in the heart of America, Jennifer M. Silva

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

index present

non fiction

We're still here

bibliography

1080556019

Jennifer M. Silva

pain and politics in the heart of America

The economy has been brutal to American workers for decades. The chance to give one's children a better life - the promise at the heart of the American Dream - is withering away. And yet, the groups who stand to gain the most from mobilizing politically appear the least motivated to act. The 2016 election threw into sharp relief how little we know about how working-class people translate their grievances into politics. In We're Still Here, Jennifer Silva tells a multi-generational story of pain and politics that will endure long after the Trump administration. Drawing on over 100 interviews with black, white, and Latino working-class residents of a declining coal town in Pennsylvania, Silva reveals how the erosion of the American Dream is lived and felt. Most of the people she met are critical of politicians who have failed to protect them from poverty, exploitation, and shame. However, the institutions that once reconciled personal suffering and collective struggle - families, churches, unions, and social clubs - have become sites of distrust and betrayal. In their place, she argues, working-class people cultivate individualised strategies for making their pain bearable and comprehensible. Understanding how generations of Democratic voters come to reject the social safety net and often politics altogether requires moving beyond simple partisanship into a maze of addiction, joblessness, family disruption, violence, and trauma. Silva's moving portrayal uncovers the relationships, loyalties, longings, and moral visions that underlie and generate the civic and political disengagement of working-class people. We're Still Here provides powerful, on-the-ground evidence of the remaking of working class identity and politics that will not only spark new tensions, but also open up new possibilities for hope. --, From dust jacket

Introduction: The puzzle of working-class politics -- Fracturing and revival -- Forgotten men -- Coal miner's granddaughter -- In search of redemption -- Something we never had -- Democracy denied -- Conclusion: Breathing life into a dead community

We are still here