Book and Review: Urban Politics in the Era of Black Power

Posted by on February 24, 2014

Book and Review: Urban Politics in the Era of Black Power

Is There Room for Real Change in the Democratic Party?

Thirty-one years before Cory Booker, Junius Williams, another dynamic African-American Yale Law School graduate, moved to Newark with ambitions much like Booker’s. Both had success, but their paths diverged, personifying divisions among those seeking to address America’s urban problems.

While both agree on social issues, like gay marriage, Booker has sought the beneficence of Silicon Valley and Wall Street for their money and ideas. Williams, a progressive growth and redistributionist in the mold of Jesse Jackson, the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, and New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio, believes change comes from the grassroots up, by building community-based movements.

Williams lost his run for Newark mayor in 1982, but he remained in the trenches as a street organizer, lawyer and public school advocate. His persuasive, engaging political memoir, Unfinished Agenda, Urban Politics in the Era of Black Power, is a road map for addressing poverty, failing schools and crime. Williams weaves three separate narratives into one insightful personal story.

His diary begins in the Jim Crow South of Richmond, Va., where he grew up in a supportive, well-educated extended family that pushed academics. As a senior at Amherst College in 1965, he joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the heart and soul of the civil rights movement, known for organizing dangerous local voter registration campaigns and demonstrations.

Read more at: http://rooflines.org/3603/is_there_room_for_real_change_in_the_democratic_party/