Jeremy Brecher

Common Preservation in Action

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BANDED TOGETHER

Posted by Jeremy Brecher

May 1, 2011

 

ONE COMMUNITY’S RESPONSE TO GLOBALIZATION AND DEINDUSTRIALIZATION

Click here to download a free pdf copy of Banded Together.

Providing incisive commentary on the historical and contemporary American working class experience, Banded Together: Economic Democratization in the Brass Valley documents a community’s efforts to rebuild and revitalize itself in the aftermath of deindustrialization. Through powerful oral histories and other primary sources, Jeremy Brecher tells the story of a group of average Americans–factory workers, housewives, parishioners, and organizers–who tried to create a democratic alternative to the economic powerlessness caused by the closing of factories in the Connecticut Naugatuck Valley region during the 1970s and 1980s. This volume focuses on grassroots organization, democratically controlled enterprises, and supportive public policies, providing examples from the Naugatuck Valley Project community alliance that remain relevant to the economic problems of today and tomorrow. Drawing on more than a hundred interviews with Project leaders, staff, and other knowledgeable members of the local community, Brecher illustrates how the Naugatuck Valley Project served as a vehicle for community members to establish greater control over their economic lives.

Jeremy Brecher is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, historian, activist, and writer. His other books include Strike! and Globalization from Below: The Power of Solidarity. He lives in western Connecticut.

QUOTES ABOUT THE BOOK:

Accessible, clear, and engaged, Banded Together will make an impressive addition to the ways historians understand deindustrialization. Brecher’s narrative is certain to be seen as a model by a new generation of labor historians, scholars, and scholar-activists.”–Peter Rachleff, author of Hard Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and the Future of the Labor Movement

This book is dedicated to the people of the Naugatuck Valley, who have educated me, sustained me, and taken me unto them as their pet outsider. I can truly say of the valley, as Herman Melville’ Ishmael said of his whale ship, that it has been my Yale College and my Harvard.
—The author

If all the people in a city are banded together to make it a better place to live, then it will be a better place to live. That’s what the Naugatuck Valley Project is all about.
—Theresa Francis, NVP leader

Ashes to ashes

Dust to dust

If Seth Thomas doesn’t get you

Plume and Atwood must.

—Thomaston children’s chant

This book tells the story of a group of factory workers, housewives, parishioners, and organizers who tried to create an alternative to the economic powerlessness manifested in the closing of dozens of factories in the Naugatuck Valley region.
—Banded Together

The NVP’s experience is relevant to a basic unsolved problem of modern civilization: most people’s lack of power over the economic forces and decisions that affect them.
—Banded Together

I think the Naugatuck Valley Project is an embryonic sign of what has to develop in the future on a much broader basis for this society to survive and be strong.
—Fred Perella, author of Poverty in American Democracy    

 

  • Learn more about the Naugatuck Valley Project.
  • Learn more about “Banded Together,” the participatory community history project.

Filed Under: Book, Brass Valley, Connecticut economy, Connecticut history, Featured, History

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ABOUT JEREMY BRECHER

11You and I may not know each other, but I suspect there are some problems that we share -- problems like climate change, war, and injustice. For half a century I have been participating in and writing about social movements that address those problems. The purpose of this website is to share what I've learned. I hope it provides something of use to you in addressing our common problems.

For the record, I am the author of more than a dozen books on labor and social movements. I have written and/or produced more than twenty video documentaries. I have participated in movements for nuclear disarmament, civil rights, peace in Vietnam, international labor rights, global economic justice, accountability for war crimes, climate protection, and many others.

PROJECTS

Common Preservation

  Human Survival Movement

Climate Protection

  Climate and Labor

  Climate Insurgency

  Against Doom

  Connecticut Roundtable on Climate and Jobs

Labor History

  Strike!

  Common Sense for Hard Times

STRIKE! Commentaries on Solidarity and Survival

  • Protecting Workers and Communities–From Below | Part 1: On the Ground
  • New Foundations for the House of Labor?
  • Commentary: The Green New Deal – The Current State of Play
  • Commentary: The Green New Deal in the States – Part 2
  • Commentary: The Green New Deal in the States – Part 1
  • If the Courts Won’t Protect the Climate the People Must
  • The Inflation Reduction Act and the Labor-Climate Movement

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